1260254 - Lazy load tabs on session restore

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎)]

In bug 1257554 we removed a checkbox that allows the user to require all tabs are loaded on restart. What we should actually do on session restore is:

a) immediately load the current tab
b) in a sequence, load/prefetch pinned tabs
c) load/prefetch other tabs

Comment 1

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Jeff, how does this feature request differ from the existing behavior when the "browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand" pref = false? By "lazy load tabs", do you mean restore on demand/focus or restore leisurely in the background?

Comment 2

[Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎)]

(In reply to Chris Peterson [:cpeterson] from comment #1)
> Jeff, how does this feature request differ from the existing behavior when
> the "browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand" pref = false? By "lazy load
> tabs", do you mean restore on demand/focus or restore leisurely in the
> background?

There are two key differences:

1. pinned tabs would not restore on start, but shortly afterwards and not all at once
2. other tabs would restore in the background

An implementation detail of this idea I think is important is, at no time should we ever load more than 1 or 2 tabs, I think currently we suffer from a thundering herd problem with any number of documents attempting to load all at once. With pinned tabs this is even worse because the types of sites that get pinned are much heavier ( gmail, irccloud, fb )

Comment 3

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

(In reply to Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎) from comment #2)
> An implementation detail of this idea I think is important is, at no time
> should we ever load more than 1 or 2 tabs, I think currently we suffer from
> a thundering herd problem with any number of documents attempting to load
> all at once.

btw, in my investigation of bug 1037179, I saw that session restore appears to be throttled to load three tabs at a time. In contrast, "Open All in Tabs" from a bookmarks folder is not throttled and will try to load 10–20 tabs simultaneously.

Comment 4

[Willy_ Foo_Foo]

(In reply to Chris Peterson [:cpeterson] from comment #3)
> (In reply to Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎) from comment #2)
> > An implementation detail of this idea I think is important is, at no time
> > should we ever load more than 1 or 2 tabs, I think currently we suffer from
> > a thundering herd problem with any number of documents attempting to load
> > all at once.
> 
> btw, in my investigation of bug 1037179, I saw that session restore appears
> to be throttled to load three tabs at a time. In contrast, "Open All in
> Tabs" from a bookmarks folder is not throttled and will try to load 10–20
> tabs simultaneously.

exactly right there should be a pref to control both behaviors
(most users like to load tabs or bookmarks at once/ or 1 or 2 at a time)

Comment 5

[Willy_ Foo_Foo]

would love to see tabs after session restore throttled and load 1–2 tabs simultaneously(user's pref of 1 or 100 whatever the user like)

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Is this different from bug 1256472?

Comment 7

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

I think it might be, yes. I suspect bug 1256472 is about taking advantage of the work going on in bug 1243707.

Comment 8

[mirh]

Wasn't this handled with bug 906076?

Comment 9

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 25 votes.
:dao, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 10

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.