Hacker News Reader

Well, Superuser, not Stack Overflow.

Go to about:config and set browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionstore.resume_from_c...

That does what I want. Thanks.

In about:config, change browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash.

A while back I remember using an extension that would restore all of your previous tabs on start up, but not actually load them until you clicked on them. It fixed the situation you describe, but sadly it looks like it no longer works with the current version of Firefox.

This is default behavior as of Firefox 4. When you launch a new browser, the (default) home page has a "restore last session" button.

you could also try using the session manager add-on. I find it pretty handy for when FF crashes with 20+ tabs open in the HN tree, another 10 or so in whatever google search tree I have open, and some other miscellaneous tabs.