Found: A Working Tab Unloader

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CodeLurker
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Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by CodeLurker »

I can't think that it is too bright, that SM had broken every tab unloading plugin that there was (not to mention requiring conversion to support FF ones). That being said, I tried every one I could come across, and then some. Finally, I found a Pale Moon one that worked in SM! It is in the Pale Moon addons: BarTab Tycho. I had a video playing in the background, and was startled that it stopped, thinking something had crashed!

I'd tried every FF and PM addon for unloading tabs that I could find. This one has only six options, but they are well-chosen. Unloaded tabs are greyed out, and they dutifully come back when selected. Without an unloader, CPU bandwidth gets more and more used up over time if you are activating but not closing tabs. WIth this, it can get reclaimed. While this doesn't prevent a single tab from locking up the browser, it does do a lot to keep it from getting progressively bogged down if you are opening a lot of tabs to research an idea.

I tried copying the URL and putting it into the Addon Converter; but that failed. However, when I right-clicked the Addon, and saved the XPI file to disk, and then uploaded that file into the converter, it worked!

I really hope SM implements per-tab CPU throttling, and multi-processing. Until then, this can be a useful tool in preserving CPU bandwidth, which is at a premium in the still single-threaded SM.
Last edited by CodeLurker on June 7th, 2018, 8:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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therube
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by therube »

This URL is better, https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/bartab-tycho/, as what you've linked to is a "development" (addons-dev.palemoon) page, so could have issues (which there was when I looked, but I got them to straighten it straight away).
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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CodeLurker
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by CodeLurker »

Odd. I did a fc of what I initially downloaded with the non-dev vers. you linked to. They came out identical, despite your "which there was [i.e. issues] when I looked" comment. That being said, it is better to link to the non-dev site. I'm updating the link now.
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therube
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by therube »

I'll give it a whirl when I get some time.
I'll throw it to a page with a "miner" & see what it does with that.

While "Tyco" is based on earlier work (BarTab, circa 2011), it does have changes (mainly) in prototypes.js.
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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therube
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by therube »

They came out identical, despite your "which there was [i.e. issues] when I looked"
The issue was with the page code itself (the #dev end is ongoing changes), as in when I checked, it threw an error, so I (no one, at that point) could download (or install).
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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CodeLurker
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by CodeLurker »

I'm using UAControl, with the UA string: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0

My browser is: SeaMonkeyPortable_2.49.3_English.paf.exe

Before conversion, my BarTabTycho4_0.xpi has a CRC-32 of 78C2D246.

It's working for me, under Win7 SP1 32-bit.
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therube
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by therube »

(The file itself it not in question. The availability of the file - was.)

OK, maybe I misunderstood what this critter does?
I thought it would allow you to put a loaded tab "to sleep" (aka, unload it).

What it looks to do is stop a tab from loading, like when restoring from Session Restore (except for the current tab).
Then allowing you to load it when you are ready.

But...

Edit | Preferences | Browser -> When restoring sessions and windows ===> Only restore tabs when I need them (set)

With that, other tabs are "there" but not (fully) loaded, so lessening RAM requirements, stopping from videos from autoplaying ...

I was thinking this would take the existing tab, the one that the miner is using, & "unload" it, stopping it from eating CPU.
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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therube
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by therube »

OK.

It does have "unload" capability (Unload & Unload other tabs) - but those parts did not make it over to SeaMonkey.
So, assuming that part can work at all in SeaMonkey, you'd have to make manual adjustments, code changes, to the .xpi.
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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therube
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by therube »

In Pale Moon, you can load this page, https://start.me/p/WaL9r0/start (PM's default "start" page) - which does eat CPU, & use BarTab Tycho to unload it, reducing CPU ;-).
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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CodeLurker
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by CodeLurker »

I just thought I'd give that info for anyone who has any doubt.
therube wrote:OK.

It does have "unload" capability (Unload & Unload other tabs) - but those parts did not make it over to SeaMonkey.
So, assuming that part can work at all in SeaMonkey, you'd have to make manual adjustments, code changes, to the .xpi.
No. It unloads tabs; and not just preventing them from loading them on startup. It does not add itself to a tab's context menu in SM. (I've noticed that SM has managed to break that for seemingly most old plugins.) However, I set mine to unload tabs after 20 min. Setting it to e.g. 30 secs. provides a quick test. It won't unload the foreground tab.

I have noticed a side effect of this plugin: it seems to create new tabs at the beginning of my list of tabs for the current window. Since I've set SM to create blank pages for new tabs, I don't know if it creates e.g. speed dials for browsers set that way.

The critical functionality of this plugin works. This increases my impression of SM from about a 6 to about a 9 out of 10. It should be possible to add these context menus back for tabs, for some1 who knows addon programming. Also, it should be relatively easy to prevent it from creating new tabs at the beginning of a window's list of tabs, with some determined hacking out portions of the addon code on a test plugin.

This proves that somehow, somebody missed ripping this crucial functionality out of SM. This is very useful for me right now. If a kindly developer were to polish this up and put it up as a SM addon, I think it would be fairly popular - and very useful for those who open lots of tabs. If some psychopathic socialist doesn't quickly rip this functionality out of SM; I'd say it will improve the utility of SM for those who open many tabs, considerably. It is beyond me why, by now, with today's JavaScript CPU hungry webpages, and armies of bad JS programmers out there, why this was never built into SM in the first place. (For Chrome and its variants, it is highly recommended you use "The Great Discarder" to do this.) Waiting until you need to restart SM, e.g. by hitting a SM restart button may well be just waiting until SM is no longer responsive.

I'm not mincing words about this issue, because it is crucial, IMHO. There are far too many browsers out there that are completely high-handed about what the users want, and keep doing something else instead (much like governments). The result is browsers that are either non-performant, whose performance degrades over time, that regularly break plugins, and important ones still don't work correctly (session saving in FF) or are a PITA to use (anything Chrome-ish - although Vivaldi shows promise if it didn't go into what is apparently crippling garbage collection mode with some frequency).

In spite of the plugin breaking spree SM has also been on, I've gotten all the ones I care about to work, except an offline text-to-speech converter and something to make new tabs appear immediately to the right of the current tab. Also, having SM's GUI on a separate thread would also do wonders for its responsiveness. That being said, all other browsers with the exception of Pale Moon and perhaps other FF variants (which I haven't tested recently, out of concern for their being kept up to date - and besides, the Suite is nice too) are worse or have recently gotten worse (IHMO). I'm a bit sore about having spent some months researching just to achieve a decent browser. After some weeks of configuring and getting addons for SM, I feel I at long last have. Make no mistake. I've been searching for this functionality for some time, and I know when a background YouTube video stops and when it doesn't. This plugin works for SM - lets call it about 65% of its functionality works, but enough to seemingly unload my tabs reliably.

I weep for users who must deal with a SM repository of addons where all plugins but a handful are indicated to not work for the current version, it is indicated that they might not work in the current version, or they may not work at all. The portal doesn't tell you you need to install AMO browsing for SM. Until there's a new portal, I'd say SM ought to have been shipping with it all along. New and returning users also will have to go through hell to get a decent array of plugins to work - and that is more technically inclined than most are. True, many can be converted, and many pre-Web Extensions versions still work, usually with conversions; and alternate ones can be found, but what a pain!
frg
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by frg »

As far as I know nothing was broken or removed in SeaMonkey itself in the latest releases wrt. extensions. We picked you changes from Gecko which certainly broke some add-ons but that is it.

tab unloading and other tab stuff was never in the tabbrowser code. Also customizeUI is missing which alot of Fx addons rely on.
I started porting some of the missing functionality but there is only so much time so don't expect a quick solution unless more devs shows up ( which at time point in time seems unlikely).

FRG
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by CodeLurker »

Awesome. I salute you then. It sounds like it's Gecko that is breaking plugins. Perhaps you ported some unloading code. This plugin really is unloading tabs. I'd really look for some crowdfunding, if I were you. You could offer bounties on implementing and porting needed features. A little prize money can motivate people greatly. I don't really have much info on the porting, being new to SM; nor can I say that Pale Moon, Water Fox, Ice Weasel, or other FF forks can't do what I want - I haven't evaluated them. I do know I got fed up with the instability of FF; and either the GUI or the performance sucked in all Chrome variants I tried - and that was a lot.
CodeLurker
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by CodeLurker »

BTW frg, I should warn you. I don't know how the code works, but the session saving plugins in FF 60 all lose their data when you update FF; and it seems as if some of the tabs don't get saved sometimes. You might not want to be in a hurry to port that code over if that is in the works.
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Eakamai
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Re: Found: A Working Tab Unloader

Post by Eakamai »

Thanks for sharing this info! - These types of add-ons appear difficult to code as so many are discontinued. This one may now be as well. :(
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