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Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 4:25 am
by dsklskiu
I was reading snappy blog here:
http://blog.mozilla.org/tglek/2012/04/1 ... -april-19/

It mentions that adblock plus author might create extension for suspend background tabs. Is that true?

If so, that would be awesome. I've always wanted such a extension. Firefox would be a lot better if background tabs would completely pause (with a white list for a few exceptions such as email site, social networking etc)

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 10:46 am
by Wladimir Palant
Yes, I created that extension some time ago: https://hg.adblockplus.org/suspendbackgroundtabs/ (currently no build available).

However, it only manages to suspend timeouts. I couldn't find a good way to suspend network traffic yet. And of course, Flash (which is the biggest offender) stays active. So I'm unsure whether that extension is very useful in its current form which is why I didn't publish it.

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 8:08 am
by Wladimir Palant
Ok, Taras convinced me that this extension is useful so here it is: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/suspen ... ound-tabs/

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2014 11:23 am
by Quax
Wladimir, why did you remove your extension?
Were there problems, and if so, which were they?

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2014 12:26 pm
by mapx
it was removed from mozilla, if you want take a look:
https://hg.adblockplus.org/suspendbackgroundtabs/

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 5:53 pm
by smileypete
Took me a few mins to work out how to download it, as follows...

Go to this link and click on the latest .xpi version:

https://hg.adblockplus.org/downloads/file/
https://hg.adblockplus.org/downloads/fi ... -1.0.1.xpi

Then right click on the 'raw' link on the right, select Save as, and it should save the .xpi file, then drag .xpi file to browser window.

cheers, Pete.

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2014 5:23 pm
by avada
mapx wrote:it was removed from mozilla, if you want take a look:
https://hg.adblockplus.org/suspendbackgroundtabs/
That doesn't actually answers the question asked. :)

But more importantly. How do I get newer builds? 1.0.1 is two years old. And apparently there were some updates since then.

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2014 5:27 pm
by mapx
smileypete posted the links, so 1.0.1 is the last, give it a try

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2014 5:22 pm
by avada
Was this addon abandoned? I can't even see a build now at https://hg.adblockplus.org/downloads/file/ .
It'd be a shame. It's really useful.

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2014 8:53 pm
by avada
So....
Not even talked about anymore? :)

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 2:50 pm
by lewisje
I guess Palant & Co. never figured out how to make it work well; I know that for Chrome there's something called The Great Suspender that works nicely, but it relies on Chrome's multi-process nature, so maybe Suspend Background Tabs could work once the Firefox Electrolysis project works out the kinks.

Re: Suspend background tabs?

Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 7:19 am
by austin11
Another option of interest is a whitelist that prevent the suspending of certain sites when they are open in Firefox.

Suspend Tabs handles the unloading of tabs different than other extensions of its kind. It only unloads the tabs contents and fastload caches but not metadata which in turn means that there are fewer side-effects.