668271 - Identify being an Android app in the background with being minimized

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 679923

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Alon Zakai (:azakai)]

Bug 648045 will throttle timers in minimized windows on desktop. It would be nice if when Fennec is in the background on Android, it would count as 'minimized', so that we would get that stuff working automatically, and other stuff as well.

We currently have some low-memory notifications on background on Android, I believe - perhaps that could be hooked in a similar way (that is, to being minimized).

Not sure what we need to hook up to what here.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

It looks like we fire an internal nsSizeModeEvent on size mode changes.  See http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/xpfe/appshell/src/nsWebShellWindow.cpp#361

Can fennec do that when backgrounded?

We'd still need a way to communicate that to the JS.  I'm thinking an event fired at the window.  Then the JS would need to do something with it.

Comment 2

[Alon Zakai (:azakai)]

I just noticed that when I run the benchmark in bug 633627, it pauses completely when I alt-tab to another window (I can tell since I have printouts to a console). It resumes when I return. I assume this is a feature of mozRequestAnimationFrame. It doesn't work on Fennec on desktop (and I assume not on Android).

This isn't identical to the original issue in this bug, but very closely related.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

For what it's worth, that's the approach I'm going to take in bug 648045: fire a sizemodechange event and have the JS check the windowState on the window.

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> it pauses completely when I alt-tab to another window

That's.... odd.  mozRequestAnimationFrame in a background _tab_ is throttled (exponential backoff, not paused), but Alt-Tab should not affect that.

Comment 5

[Alon Zakai (:azakai)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> > it pauses completely when I alt-tab to another window
> 
> That's.... odd.  mozRequestAnimationFrame in a background _tab_ is throttled
> (exponential backoff, not paused), but Alt-Tab should not affect that.

My mistake, it was something in the test code that did that.

Comment 6

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

I think the goals of this bug are accomplished by the patches in bug 679923.  Resolving as duplicate.  Please re-open if I am wrong.

Comment 7

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I think you're wrong.  This is not propagating the active state to the content process docshell; it needs to do that.

Comment 8

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Er, nevermind.  It's sending messages and such...  Something is still broken, though.