[acqq]

Storing a lot of static images as JSON base64 encoded, every 15 seconds is certainly not something that users should be blamed ("some users have 300MB JSON files"), just the poor programming.

It would be interesting if somebody would actually analyze what takes the most of the mentioned 300 MB. I see a lot of base64 encoded stuff, if they are "favicons," come-on. There are so many caches in Firefox already, JSON files certainly aren't the place for these images.

[Yoric]

Nobody is blaming the user for the 300Mb. It's just a factor we need to take in consideration.

But yeah, storing favicon in Session Restore would be pretty bad. I didn't remember that it was the case, though.

[acqq]

I don't see favicons too, but I've just did one "image extraction" attempt:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569999

700 KB of binary images in a 1.7 MB session file, which can be compressed only to the 70% of its size.

I also see a lot of things like \\u0440 which spends eight characters for one unicode character (in another file, not from me). But that file was reduced to 37% of initial size with LZ4. It seems LZ4 is still worth doing, if the content remains easily accessible with the external tools, e.g. lz4cli.

[sundarurfriend]

As an Fx user, I'm glad that favicons are stored though. The icons are a much easier, quicker indicator of what the tab is, when I'm scrolling through dozens of tabs to see which one to click and load.

[alphapapa]

There's no need to store favicons in the session JSON. They're stored in the browser cache. If the cache gets cleared in the meantime, they can be redownloaded.