Can I stop a page from loading?

[FrankSMS]

How often have we been scanning down a page and as it detects we're in a certain area everything slows down because its loading some ads or some video? The old Opera had a feature where you could just hit the Escape button and it would kill that incessant loading. Wondering if Firefox offers anything like this? Hitting Escape doesn't do anything it seems or maybe websites are getting more sophisticated and can bypass whatever Escape does in Firefox. I do use an AdBlocker and its great but often the content is video that isn't blocked by AdBlocker. I don't even know what this feature would be called so I can look for a possible extension. Of course it would be best to be able to do this without an extension/add-on since we all know how often they are rendered useless after a Firefox upgrade.

One of the worst offenders is Facebook. So often things crawl when the Status Bar on the bottom pops up informing me something is happening with Facebook. Is there any way of blocking all connection with Facebook? That would be great! They're like a dead weight when you're browsing. Maybe Firefox will add a Facebook block in Permissions in a future build. Better yet it should be in Options for the entire browser!

[Grumpus]

When loading a page the reload icon should change to an X. Clicking on that X should stop the process.
You should also be able to click the back arrow or, if you set home to about:blank that would do it as well.

[FrankSMS]

Cool...I'll try that.
Since its videos that seem to be the biggest resource hogs (besides Facebook), can I block videos from ever loading in about:config? I didn't see anything in Permissions that seemed relevant but there are a pile of options in about:config that are video related. I don't have a clue though which one I should try. It would be much better to be able to do it per website but hey, beggars can't be choosers!

[siffemoz]

In about:config, media.autoplay.enabled set to False will stop videos from playing until you click to play.

Re Facebook, not sure if what you're talking about popping up is FB push notifications, but if it is, you can disable that in FB settings (https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=n ... =push&view). And you can also block them in FF Options > Privacy and Security > Notifications.

[Brummelchen]

media.autoplay.enabled set to False will stop videos from playing until you click to play.

you got the "zonk" now. and if clicked he only gets audio, video is dead.

[FrankSMS]

Got it! Thanks!

[James]

The media.autoplay.enabled preference can cause issues on some sites and people may forget they have it set.
ex: Bug 1231886 - media.autoplay.enabled set to false is breaking user experience (videos won't play)

A alternate preference to try instead is to try toggling the media.block-play-until-visible Preference to true as it stops media from auto-starting in background tabs.

Another Preference is media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground

[FrankSMS]

> A alternate preference to try instead is to try toggling the media.block-play-until-visible Preference to true as it stops media from auto-starting in background tabs.

I don't have that one. I do have
media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground
set to true though.

[FrankSMS]

Sad to say but ads are the worst in this regard. I have every autoplay option disabled and still they play. The only answer is disabling Javascript which really stops them but it stops most everything else as well. F9/Reader View is helpful as well but often doesn't work on some websites. Or it reveals only a small part of the actual page.
We live in a world that is hinged on advertising so this is going to get harder and harder.
Books never looked so good.

[kerft]

The autoplay settings continue to change, but you may want to use an adblocker like Ublock Origin and maybe reset its settings to the defaults to make sure you have good filters in it.
Also check that you have media.autoplay.default set to 1 and media.autoplay.allow-muted set to false.
If you don't need them you can go to add-ons manager, the plugins tab and disable OpenH264 and Widevine.

[FrankSMS]

Thank you kerft but neither does anything. Foxnews.com is one of the worst. Their videos just start AND they overlap the text. I'm using a 1920x1080 monitor so a very standard resolution and the idiot web designers still can't get it right. In Site Preferences I have "Automatically play media with sound" blocked. So how can it play? How can a web designer override the settings of the browser itself?

[kreemoweet]

How can a web designer override the settings of the browser itself?

To put it simply: many of the settings/options in Firefox are "Fake", i.e., they don't do anything. People have been trying to stop video autoplay in Firefox for many years.
People have also been trying to stop websites from depositing who-knows-what kind of data on their machines, and there's a Fake Firefox setting that supposedly requires
the sites to get your permission first, but it does nothing.

The FF extension uBlock Origin has a setting that allows you to block all media files that are greater than a given size. This includes videos and large images. It works.

EDIT: This facility of uBlock Origin can be activated on a per-site basis, or globally: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/ ... a-elements

[FrankSMS]

Blocking by size....brilliant. Talk about cutting it off by the end. Love it. When all else fails.....LOL.
Your reply makes perfect sense and its understandable because of the high ad revenue and impact moving images have over us. Unfortunately they are very disruptive to learning. A good website will never allow them. They're like digital promiscuity. Unfortunately many GIF's are probably small in size. You can tell a lot from a website's advertising. Some have nothing but scams on them. Even large sites like CNN have tons of scams in the ads promising the world to us. Seems strange that so many online ads have the substance of something you'd see in the National Enquirer. Are we online folks really that stupid that we click on those ads? Scary.

This forum's designers should really make links open in a new tab. That's so fundamental and used on almost all forums now. Almost never do you really want to leave the forum when clicking on a link in the forum.

[mightyglydd]

https://lifehacker.com/the-many-things- ... 1565756062