Disable tab refresh on select after session restart

Discussion of features in Mozilla Firefox
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romarin12
Posts: 3
Joined: August 24th, 2008, 6:05 am

Disable tab refresh on select after session restart

Post by romarin12 »

Dear All,

I'm a heavy FF user: several windows, totaling more than 100 tabs.

Tabs are automatically refreshed once an old session is restarted. Either all of them, or one at a time when selected, depending on the "Don't load tabs until selected" setting.

I would very much like to disable all kinds of auto refresh on tabs when FF is restarted and old tabs are restored. I would like all tabs to be restored from the cache, and simply displayed as they were when FF was closed.

It seems other (heavy) users would like this feature as well:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/918496
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/936102
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2496425
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/940633

This can be useful in many scenarios:

- Say you have to restart/wakeup your PC when working with several FF windows and many tabs. Say, some of the web pages had restricted accessed (logins). When you restart your PC, FF and its sessions, you will have to re-login into these restricted pages. Other pages will have to be redownloaded as well (when selected in my case). All this takes time.

- Say you have several FF windows and tabs opened on your laptop. You put your laptop to sleep/hibernate, and you take a flight to a nice place. You won't be able to look at the web pages while off line on the plane.

I'm unsure if this is a feature request or a bug: it may have something to do with the duration a page stays in the cache, or caching being overridden by the session manager. Could be also cache cleared on exit. I'm familiar with cache settings, and stuff such as browser.cache.check_doc_frequency. It has no effect.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for you help.

Best regards,

Olivier
lee78
Posts: 3
Joined: December 28th, 2012, 9:38 am

Re: Disable tab refresh on select after session restart

Post by lee78 »

Years ago firefox by default started with all tabs restored from the cache. This was wonderful because I live out of range of cable & DSL, so it takes minutes for a page to load by dial-up. I hated when that feature went away -- now I have to make sure every tab is saved before closing firefox or restarting the computer.

Reloading tabs is NOT a trivial delay! Please supply an option so that tabs can be restored from the cache, and firefox starts up looking like it did at last shutdown, WITHOUT having to connect to the web and reload!

Lee
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James
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Re: Disable tab refresh on select after session restart

Post by James »

mozillaZine is not Mozilla so asking for features here is limited.

lee78, You can change this in "Tools (Firefox button) ->Options->Tabs-> [] Don't load tabs until selected" when you have the "Show my Windows and tabs from last time" selected in General-> Startup: When Firefox starts.
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Deckah
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Location: Tulsa, Oklahoma
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Re: Disable tab refresh on select after session restart

Post by Deckah »

James wrote:mozillaZine is not Mozilla so asking for features here is limited.


I'm just piggy-backing. Until someone knows and can link the better outlet, then I guess we could compile stuff into one thread and email it. I'm not going to be that optimistic though ](*,) .

-----

I had the original OP issue ever since going from v3.6 to v11. It really sucks when you have multiple dynamic pages open, then FF decides it wants to pull it's pants down on you mid-50+ tab sessions, then having to reload tabs to find out certain pages expired.

Certain times placing FF in 'work offline' works(to load cache), but it seems to only benefit more recent tabs that were open (I have my cache limit set high). Not sure what that's all about.
lee78
Posts: 3
Joined: December 28th, 2012, 9:38 am

Re: Disable tab refresh on select after session restart

Post by lee78 »

James wrote:mozillaZine is not Mozilla so asking for features here is limited.

lee78, You can change this in "Tools (Firefox button) ->Options->Tabs-> [] Don't load tabs until selected" when you have the "Show my Windows and tabs from last time" selected in General-> Startup: When Firefox starts.





Thanks, that has helped partially. About half the tabs that were open when I shut down Fx still come up "Problem loading page" when I restart Fx, but the other half DO load from the cache since I changed "[x] Don't load..." to [ ]. That is progress, before making this change ALL the tabs came up "Problem loading page". There may be one exception I don't understand -- one tab that required a login used to be (before I changed "[x] Don't load..." to "[ ]") restored correctly as if I'd already logged in; and now after the change it comes up "Problem loading page."

Is there a better description that could be used for that control? The way it is worded and the discussion I've seen makes me think it has to do with when or how many tabs will be reloaded, which is not my problem -- my problem is the SOURCE from which they are reloaded, I want them all to be reloaded from cache when Fx starts.

I did already have "General-> Startup -> Show my Windows and tabs from last time".

I have been leaving "File-> [ ] Work Offline" unchecked; if the phone line is hung up I am offline and have not noticed that Fx cares whether I've checked Work Offline or not.

I have always had "[ ] Override automatic cache management". I rarely have more than 10 tabs open, I'm hoping default cache is plenty for that few tabs. I see the cache is currently using 3.1 MB.
romarin12
Posts: 3
Joined: August 24th, 2008, 6:05 am

Re: Disable tab refresh on select after session restart

Post by romarin12 »

Hi Lee,

you may try setting browser.cache.check_doc_frequency = 2 in about:config

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.check_doc_frequency
lee78
Posts: 3
Joined: December 28th, 2012, 9:38 am

Re: Disable tab refresh on select after session restart

Post by lee78 »

romarin12 wrote:Hi Lee,

you may try setting browser.cache.check_doc_frequency = 2 in about:config

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.check_doc_frequency



Thanks, I thought I had changed that long ago but now I see it was set to 3. If I don't come back here assume that solved my problem. Fx didn't have a problem, I wasn't thinking enough about about:config.
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