Will the ability to restore multiple /separate FamilySearch pages ever be reimplemented?
Some months ago I reported the loss of the previous ability to restore separate FS (specifically Family Tree) pages that had been left when I had closed my browser.
I would be grateful if a moderator could pass the question to the appropriate team, as my question remains unanswered - i.e., was the change was by accident or design?
For example, I closed my browser without logging out of Find My Past earlier today. I had two tabs open and, upon signing back in (to FMP) the two separate pages opened without problem. This was the case with FamilySearch previously, but now if I leave multiple tabs open, upon signing back in, all that I can open against these tabs is the exact same page.
I didn't mind that I had to actually re-sign in several times (unlike FMP, where one sign-in allows me back to multiple pages), but not be able to return to the pages one was working on earlier is really unhelpful.
I would stress this issue is totally unrelated to the one of no longer being able to remain signed in for two weeks - I never specified that in the past, yet could still get back to the multiple pages I'd left open during my previous session.
(BTW - I appreciate this only worked where one has the browser set to not automatically clear the cache / cookies upon closure. But I specifically have my settings in one browser to clear everything automatically upon closure, but in the other browser my settings force me to do this manually.)
Answers
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I routinely leave at least two FS tabs open overnight: the Community in one and the profile(s) I'm working on in one or more other tabs. I also often have further FS tabs open, containing record images, search results, and index detail pages. I only ever need to sign in on whichever tab I go to first, which is almost always the Community. Once I've done that, all of the other tabs work just fine, and don't require a new sign-in.
It sounds like you're not leaving anything open overnight; instead, you were relying on your browser's ability to restore a session. The closest I get to this is when Windows takes it upon itself to update, in which case I get back to a browser session that behaves like someone caught in the act of doing something naughty: all of the tabs are labeled as before, but none of them have loaded any actual content until I open them, at which point they scramble to fill the blank screen with whatever's at the link in the address bar. I still don't recall ever needing to sign in on multiple tabs, though, except when I open a group of FS links from an email or some such without realizing that my session's expired. In those cases, the right hand doesn't know about the left, so signing in again is the simplest solution for getting at the page (usually an image) that was linked.
So long story short, I think perhaps there hasn't been any change because most people, including the programmers, are using a different procedure from yours?
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Thank you for your response, Julia. I am writing this using Firefox, whilst switching to Chrome to try this out again.
What I am about to do is leave two Family Tree and two Find My Past tabs open (in Chrome) whilst I close the browser, without closing any of the four tabs. Let's see what happens….
Right, I've now reopened Chrome and - yes, I believe I see what you mean. Under History / Recent Tabs, I clicked on the title of the first Family Tree tab I'd left open (instead of my usual action of Restore Session and restoring all 4 tabs), signed in to FamilySearch and up came that page. But, when I repeat this against the title of the second tab, indeed it opens directly. So, this will be the "workaround" for me in future!
However, as mentioned earlier, I do not have any issue in reopening my Find My Past tabs. Possibly because I restored the FMP tabs (I would stress together, not separately) quite soon - about fifteen minutes - after closing my browser (and/or that I didn't switch the PC off), I didn't even have to sign back in to FMP. (Unlike earlier today, where I switched the PC off for a few hours and did then have to sign back in to FMP - albeit, only once after choosing to Restore Previous Session.)
It's just past 0100 here in the UK, so I'm now closing down completely for the night, but will continue to experiment tomorrow. But two things I am clear on are:
(1) In taking the action of restoring the previous session, the behaviour does differ in opening multiple tabs in FMP and FS, respectively.
(2) There has (for me) been a change of behaviour in the way I have always got back to my FS / Family Tree left-open tabs. Until around a few months (maybe more) back, true I had to sign in multiple times to reach each page, but at least each one did open separately. Now, using the exact same method (of restoring the tabs left open in my previous session), it proves pointless to have left them all open, as my multiple sign-ins all take me to the same FT page!
Still, at least you've provided me with a relatively quick way to get back to them (opening them individually from History), although I still don't see why I have no need to do this with the FMP tabs I'm leaving open: I don't have to click on the individual page titles in History with these - restoring my previous session works just fine.
Till tomorrow!
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Thank you again for showing me how to best get back to the multiple pages I'd been working on in a previous session - before, say, logging out of the browser and shutting down the PC for the night.
I had actually worked (using Chrome) in two windows last night. So, this morning, I have used the restore recent tabs option to get back to my FMP pages. Surprisingly, I had no need to sign in when opening the first page, but was presented with the sign-in page when trying to access the second. No matter, after signing in I was taken straight back to the required page.
Having failed so many times in using this method to restore individual Family Tree pages, upon opening the other window I ignored the option to restore the FT tabs, but (right) clicked on each of the page headings. In this case, I had to sign in to access the first page, but the second opened fine without an additional sign in. So I'm glad I re-raised the issue, because even if the previous behaviour had been implemented by the engineers, I would still have had the hassle of having to sign in multiple times, albeit the tabs - once opened - would have been for the multiple, separate pages, rather than having multiple copies of just one of the pages.
Of course, I am probably being unreasonable in comparing FS with the way FMP works. For example, if I leave a page on the FreeBMD website open overnight, I do get back to it next session, but any "advantage" is quickly lost because, upon the first click of the mouse, I am presented with a page showing I have been timed out and then have to re-enter my search criteria from scratch!
As I'm sure you have found, there is a general issue of inconsistency when working on different websites. On some I get a warning that I will be automatically logged out if I do not click on the presented option to remain logged in, but with others I'm unceremoniously booted out (sometimes after as little as 20 minutes) without any warning / option to extend my period of remaining on the site! (Particularly annoying when I have to phone the website's Help line and it takes over 30 minutes to answer my call!)
In summary, I guess I will just have to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of the FamilySearch website compared to others - especially when it comes to signing in. Having said that, I still believe Find My Past appears to have the issue far better sorted than FamilySearch, or many other websites! On the positive side, FamilySearch handles many other issues far better that Find My Past, so their respective engineers could no doubt learn from each other.
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There is a lot of reinvention of the wheel and building of better mousetraps in web programming, and the whole access-and-security thing involves a large amount of magical incantations or voodoo.
(One of the Hungarian forums that I'm on takes it into its head every now and then to invisibly log me out and lose my typing — sometimes two minutes after I just posted — and then absolutely refuses to accept my credentials again during that browser session. This means that I have to actually deal with all of my open tabs so I can close the browser [which I pretty much never get around to doing otherwise], which is annoying beyond belief. FS's current setup also has its annoyances, but at least it times me out quite visibly, and fairly predictably.)
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What I find is that if I have multiple FS tabs open in multiple windows, and I step away long enough to trigger the authentication timeout (seems to be a few hours, definitely less than 24 hours), the "foreground" tab in each window prompts to re-authenticate, and after I re-authenticate to all of them they all display the same content (whatever page I had been at in the first-opened tab).
If I leave one of those tabs without reauthenticating, and try to do so later, I get an error-page.
But the other tabs in each window are all still at wherever I left them, the day before or whatever, as long as I make sure not to switch to them before reauthenticating in at least one tab.
It does push me to use external notes and the "Follow" feature more, and actually close some of those extra tabs where I can't even remember why I was looking at that person or record. Another workaround is to open an "extra" (protective) FamilySearch tab in each window before stepping away or rebooting. But I agree that it's an annoyance.
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