Safari/Firefox is exiting my windows

Whenever I hit the red x on my web browsers the window hides, but when I open it back up none of my tabs are there. Instead it just goes to my homepage. This just started happening a few hours ago and I cannot seem to figure out how to fix it. Any insights on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Hi, welcome to the forums.

The red x in the left corner is to quit/remove the window, not hide the window. The reason why your tabs are removed is that you are opening a new window since you have killed the old one.

The orange button to the right of the red button will minimize the window. Using the orange button will keep your window and your tabs when you restore the window to the screen.

An alternative to minimizing the window is to hide the window. The easiest way to do this is hit Command/Apple Key+h. This will hide the window but not minimize it. The advantage to hiding versus minimizing is that when you hide a window switching applications using Command+Tab will bring the window up whereas with a minimized window you physically have to bring the window back up via the dock or expose.

Hmm that's odd. In the past the red x did "hide" the window and I could reopen it back to the way it was. And this still works for all my other applications.

No, it's the yellow (orange?) button (the middle one) that does that. Always has been. That "parks" the window in the Dock, where it remains available until you Quit the application.