Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

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Evil Overlord
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:05 am

Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by Evil Overlord »

Let's say I have a ten page/screen e-mail. I open it in its own tab, and read down to about the center of it. Then, I get a new e-mail notification, so I go back to the main tab (e-mail folders, previews, etc.). When I go back to the single e-mail's tab, it reloads, showing the top of the e-mail. It's really annoying to lose my place in a long document so frequently.

How can I prevent this behaviour, so that an e-mail open in a tab doesn't automatically reload? :?:
Last edited by Evil Overlord on January 8th, 2019, 7:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by tanstaafl »

I'm not aware of a way to do that. Its not specific to tabs, the same thing occurs if you are reading mail using the message pane. It occurs with both POP and IMAP accounts and Local Folders.

I searched Bugzilla but couldn't find a relevant bug report, though that could easily be due to what keywords I tried. I suspect what you want would be considered a requested enhancement, rather than a bug since I see the same problem with other email clients I've tried such as "eM client".
sfhowes
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Joined: April 1st, 2012, 10:21 am

Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by sfhowes »

The scrollbar position is remembered if you open messages in windows, but not tabs or the Message Pane.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by tanstaafl »

I can't reproduce that using TB 60.4.0 under Windows 10.

I have seven full size windows open (all for the same mail folder), scrolled down several of them using the mouse and then used Next and Prev on the message toolbar to move between windows. Whenever I switched messages using Next or Prev the thumb for the vertical scroll bar always reset to the top (lost its position). Same results if I used [ and ] or F and B instead of the toolbar buttons.

The only way it preserved the vertical scrollbar position was if I used the mouse to explicitly select a different (already open) window (rather than using Thunderbird's controls/buttons). Is that what you did?
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Evil Overlord
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Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by Evil Overlord »

I recall that either Chrome or Firefox offered an admin tweak to prevent tabs from reloading as you switched between them, and I wondered if this might be related. I don't know what mechanism Thunderbird uses to display messages.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by tanstaafl »

https://superuser.com/questions/508972/ ... ng-browser

I think the browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand and browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand settings in Firefox would prevent automatic re-loading of tabs on startup, you'd need to click them to reload them. But we're not talking about restoring a session on startup (in Thunderbird), we're talking about what happens when we re-select a tab (after having selected a different one).

I don't have the same problem in Firefox and am not aware of a setting that I tweaked to prevent it. However, if you find one (and its existed for several major versions) there is a good chance it exists in Thunderbird too unless its due to an add-on.
morat
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Joined: February 3rd, 2009, 6:29 pm

Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by morat »

There is a ten-year-old bug about the issue with dozens of duplicates.

Tabs don't maintain exactly what was shown when switching tabs
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=487386
sfhowes
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Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by sfhowes »

tanstaafl wrote:I can't reproduce that using TB 60.4.0 under Windows 10.


The only way it preserved the vertical scrollbar position was if I used the mouse to explicitly select a different (already open) window (rather than using Thunderbird's controls/buttons). Is that what you did?
Yes, I switched between windows with the mouse.
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Evil Overlord
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:05 am

Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by Evil Overlord »

1. I may have been thinking about Chrome's 'tab discarding', though Firefox does have a 'accessibility.blockautorefresh' setting.

2. It seems from the Bugzilla link that this is a known, 10 year old bug, so I guess we shouldn't expect a solution anytime soon. I don't recall seeing this behaviour for more than a couple of years, myself.
thunderbirditalia
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Re: Stop e-mail from reloading on tab change

Post by thunderbirditalia »

I would like to say that this behavior is incredibly annoying and unnecessary! It should be just a simple option!
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