Slow down the background tabs in favor of the foreground tab

David.P · Post by **David.P** » May 14th, 2014, 2:16 am

Hi forum,

is there any way to tell Firefox to put more juice into whatever is happening in the foreground tab -- and to look after those half dozen tabs that are being loaded in the background only every so often?

This is the very reason background tabs are loaded in the *background* in the first place: in order for the user to read/interact with the *foreground* tab, and then after a while, to be able switch to a background tab and start read/interacting there.

However, it seems that Firefox can put the majority of its CPU time into the loading and rendering of those *background* tabs, such that the foreground tab can be slowed down to almost unusability (try and open like 5 Amazon product tabs in the background).

Note that I'm aware of settings and plugins that prevent the loading of background tabs until you switch to them. This is however not what I'm after, because I'd like those background tabs to be ready at some stage, but in any case before switching to them.

Thus, is there any setting or possibility to reduce the CPU time that is allocated to the background tabs, in favor of the responsiveness of the foreground tab?

Thanks
Regards David.P

patrickjdempsey · Post by **patrickjdempsey** » May 14th, 2014, 2:59 am

If you use Tab Groups, any groups which are not visible are not loaded. If you move a tab from a visible group to a hidden group, it is unloaded.

David.P · Post by **David.P** » May 14th, 2014, 3:22 am

How am I going to open new background tabs (like by middle-clicking) directly in tab groups?

David.P · Post by **David.P** » May 15th, 2014, 12:53 am

...

David.P wrote:Note that I'm aware of settings and plugins that prevent the loading of background tabs until you switch to them. This is however not what I'm after, because I'd like those background tabs to be ready at some stage, but in any case before switching to them.

patrickjdempsey wrote:If you use Tab Groups, any groups which are not visible are not loaded. If you move a tab from a visible group to a hidden group, it is unloaded.

Ahh, was that a "I've read the headline so why bother to read the text before posting something that might be remotely related"-answer?

Anyway, it seems Mozilla are working on it, sort of.

Cheers David.P

patrickjdempsey · Post by **patrickjdempsey** » May 15th, 2014, 1:23 am

David.P wrote:Ahh, was that a "I've read the headline so why bother to read the text before posting something that might be remotely related"-answer?

No, it was a "I read your entire post but there's currently nothing close to that in Firefox and the extension that used to do that was abandoned by the developer and the various forked versions all have bad reviews, have not been updated in a long time and probably don't work, but here is an example of something you can do right now." -answer.

David.P · Post by **David.P** » May 15th, 2014, 1:26 am

Mhh, good to know because my telepathy-glass ball that should have received all that useful background information of yours is defective....

patrickjdempsey wrote:here is an example of something you can do right now

Which leaves the follow up question still open:

David.P wrote:How am I going to open new background tabs (like by middle-clicking) directly in tab groups?

patrickjdempsey · Post by **patrickjdempsey** » May 15th, 2014, 1:32 am

The bill is in the mail.

David.P · Post by **David.P** » May 15th, 2014, 1:34 am

David.P · Post by **David.P** » May 15th, 2014, 2:15 am

...the bill for what?

For not explaining that what you proposed means (....I might be wrong due to my broken crystal ball):

Open those other interesting things and links (that you want to read next) in background tabs (e.g. by middle clicking on the links), then
Very quickly (in order to not act on already loaded tabs which would be useless) open the 'group tabs' view (Ctrl-Shift-E), and
drag all those tabs (that you actually wanted to slowly load in the background in order not to disturb your foreground reading and scrolling experience) to a new hidden tab group (where they are not being pre-loaded, but hey), then
Switch back to your foreground tab (where you actually had wanted to simply stay and continue scrolling and reading), then finally
Continue scrolling and reading in your foreground tab.

Not to mention that some more steps 6.) through 9.) [or something] are required to afterwards continue with those (now hidden) background tabs -- that however are not preloaded, therefore you first have to start all over again with like steps 2.) to 5.).

Or was this not what you were going to imply when you were suggesting to "use Tab Groups"?

Regards David.P

Slow down the background tabs in favor of the foreground tab

Slow down the background tabs in favor of the foreground tab

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Re: Slow down the background tabs in favor of the foreground

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