I can't believe this...

[SMU]

To Mozilla developers.

Please help me understand the reasoning behind this policy:

You open one window or tab of a multimedia-rich website, the site is sort of heavy, or demanding, but everything runs OK.
Then you open a second tab of another website, a third, a fourth and no matter how many sites you open, you notice that ALL websites continue to run simultaneously, despite the fact that you can only watch one website at a time. Then you notice that NONE runs OK anymore, even though you are still watching a single website at a time!

Why on earth should the background windows/tabs still operate (Javascript, Flash, etc) ???
This is a disaster recipe, as the resources are shared, it causes from crawling performance to crashes, it brings the computer to it's knees, it allows ads to run and play audio messages in the background, and no browser-developer seems to ever notice and do something about it!

The obvious thing to do, is to temporary freeze the code of all other windows/tabs except the one that the user watches.
Now this is 2014, browsers exist for more than 20 years, please don't tell me this is impossible.

[patrickjdempsey]

There are no Mozilla developers here:
http://www.mozillazine.org/about/

You may be confused by the name of this subforum: "Mozilla Development". The name refers to people developing software to run on the various "Mozilla Platform" products, which includes Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and at one time many other products.

Also note that the behavior you are complaining about is actually wanted. JavaScript sites are expected to run in the background. For instance, if you have one tab open to GMail, you would certainly want it to update in the background so you would still get emails right? Many webmail/messenger/social sites update the tab title to let you know you have unread messages/comments.

There is an option to limit tabs loaded on session restore so that only the clicked tab is loaded. Also, if you use Tab Groups, tabs in inactive groups are unloaded. The issue of Flash running in the background is mostly fixed by enabling Click To Play in the Plugins tab of the Addons Manager. Also, I haven't seen ads in years because of AdBlock Plus.

It's 2014, time to learn how to use the browser.

[LoudNoise]

Moving to Fx general.

[SMU]

Ok sorry ...wrong number thanks for clarifying, but the title is confusing for sure.

Still, I'm developing software (Flash) to run via webpages and I consider this behavior simply unacceptable. Also, as a user, I have even more problems with that behavior than with the software I'm developing.

Also note that the behavior you are complaining about is actually wanted. JavaScript sites are expected to run in the background. For instance, if you have one tab open to GMail, you would certainly want it to update in the background so you would still get emails right?

No. I can get the emails as I'm reading them. No need to let the website load emails, play audio, video, ping-pong or whatever in the background, undermining the performance of the foreground I focus all my attention!

Many webmail/messenger/social sites update the tab title to let you know you have unread messages/comments.

What if the user wants the full performance of a single window/tab without having to close/save all other tabs? What if he doesn't care about social messages at all, or for a few hours?
One second of thinking is enough to solve it, as the solution is obvious:
There should be a choice for the multimedia-rich window to make it run in exclusive mode -and since you mentioned the tab, it could be right on that tab for maximum usability -a little button for example. So when you click back to that button OR select another Tab, it would exit the exclusive mode. No harm and only benefit.
That would solve the problem for everybody and would allow the full CPU and GPU resources to be devoted to the high performance website of interest with one click.

There is an option to limit tabs loaded on session restore so that only the clicked tab is loaded. Also, if you use Tab Groups, tabs in inactive groups are unloaded. The issue of Flash running in the background is mostly fixed by enabling Click To Play in the Plugins tab of the Addons Manager.

No relation to what I'm talking about:
-After you load each Tab, it will continue running in the background. Then what?
-Who uses tab groups? 0.001%? Should each website start with a tutorial for the browser? Not even close as a general, practical solution.
-I'm not seeing any "click to play". You have to go to Tools, Add-ons, Plugins, Shockwave Flash-Always Activate button, then choose "Ask to Activate", close window. Then on the website a message appears "Allow x website to run Adobe Flash?" Two options, "Continue Blocking" and "Allow". Click on Allow, then another pop-up message appears "Allow x website to run Adobe Flash?" Two more options, "Allow now" and "Allow and remember", click on "Allow now" -top notch usability! And when you open another window, the previous one continues -back to square one.

Also, I haven't seen ads in years because of AdBlock Plus.

There are "good" ads too but sometimes annoying, eg visit actionscript.org and go to forums. There is the IDG News Service which is interesting, but continues to play in the background.

It's 2014, time to learn how to use the browser.

The best solution is always the one that requires the least effort. Demanding from a billion+ of users to adapt to a few developer teams, is obviously not the best solution. It's 2014, time for a proper browser for a change!

[Frank Lion]

Ok sorry ...wrong number thanks for clarifying, but the title is confusing for sure.

Still, I'm developing software (Flash) to run via webpages and I consider this behavior simply unacceptable. Also, as a user, I have even more problems with that behavior than with the software I'm developing.

Also note that the behavior you are complaining about is actually wanted. JavaScript sites are expected to run in the background. For instance, if you have one tab open to GMail, you would certainly want it to update in the background so you would still get emails right?

No. I can get the emails as I'm reading them. No need to let the website load emails, play audio, video, ping-pong or whatever in the background, undermining the performance of the foreground I focus all my attention!

Many webmail/messenger/social sites update the tab title to let you know you have unread messages/comments.

What if the user wants the full performance of a single window/tab without having to close/save all other tabs? What if he doesn't care about social messages at all, or for a few hours?
One second of thinking is enough to solve it, as the solution is obvious:
There should be a choice for the multimedia-rich window to make it run in exclusive mode -and since you mentioned the tab, it could be right on that tab for maximum usability -a little button for example. So when you click back to that button OR select another Tab, it would exit the exclusive mode. No harm and only benefit.
That would solve the problem for everybody and would allow to the full CPU and GPU resources to be devoted to the high performance website of interest.

There is an option to limit tabs loaded on session restore so that only the clicked tab is loaded. Also, if you use Tab Groups, tabs in inactive groups are unloaded. The issue of Flash running in the background is mostly fixed by enabling Click To Play in the Plugins tab of the Addons Manager.

No relation to what I'm talking about:
-After you load each Tab, it will continue running in the background. Then what?
-Who uses tab grooups? 0.001%? Should each website start with a tutorial for the browser? Not even close as a general, practical solution.
-I'm not seeing any "click to play". You have to go to Tools, Add-ons, Plugins, Shockwave Flash-Always Activate button, then choose "Ask to Activate", close window. Then on the website a message appears "Allow x website to run Adobe Flash?" Two options, "Continue Blocking" and "Allow". Click on Allow, then another pop-up message appears "Allow x website to run Adobe Flash?" Two more options, "Allow now" and "Allow and remember", click on "Allow now" -top notch usability! And when you open another window, the previous one continues -back to square one.

Also, I haven't seen ads in years because of AdBlock Plus.

There are "good" ads too but sometimes unnoying. eg visit actionscript.org and go to forums. There is the IDG News Service which is interesting, but continues to play in the background.

It's 2014, time to learn how to use the browser.

The best solution is always the one that requires the least effort. Demanding from a billion+ of users to adapt to a few developer teams, is obviously not the best solution. It's 2014, time for a proper browser for a change!

Yeah, fascinating, but you are not the first to do a purple-faced rant about this here and the devs are not going to change it.

Set Flash in Plugins part of Addons Manager to 'Always Allow' and install Flashblock, so you can select just the Flash you want and the rest will be blocked.

Yeah, yeah, I know, your reply will be 'But you're missing the point!!! Why should a user be expected to........<continues for 10,000 more words>...' but every word will be one that we've heard here ad fin here before. Everyone always thinks they are the first and every rant is like damn Groundhog Day.

In other words ...we already know 'the shortcomings' of this stuff.

[Gingerbread Man]

Bug 675539 - Automatically unload (stall/hibernate) longly unused tabs to free RAM
Please read the Bugzilla etiquette page before deciding to comment on that bug report.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/unloadtab/
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/
Note that such add-ons are experimental, so they may break everything plus the kitchen sink.

[patrickjdempsey]

Well, if you are the one developing the Flash application, then don't make it autoplay. That is *your* responsibility.

Personally, when I don't want a tab running in the background, I do the obvious thing, and close it. Problem solved.

[Caspid]

I agree it's annoying and multimedia should be paused by default. It makes things like opening multiple YouTube videos in tabs a pain. Click-to-play helps a bit, but doesn't work with the HTML5 player yet, and I agree the implementation could be better (I think it used to be better, where it was a single click on an element to enable it). You're preaching to the choir though.

[VanillaMozilla]

SMU has a point, though. On an old computer I sometimes have trouble even closing a tab. And if I have several tabs open, it's hard to know which one to close.

I would think first priority should be given to (1) the UI and (2) the active tab. I guess this is not so easily implemented, however, or they would have done it by now. I think that's your answer, SMU, but we can't do anything about it. You can file a performance bug report if you want, but frankly, my experience is that bug reports by ordinary users are a waste of their time.

[patrickjdempsey]

And they are working on separating the chrome and content into two separate processes, but AFAIK it's still a ways off and is expected to break many popular extensions, so it's a risk to deploy.