736578 - Provide a preference to control the frequency at which we clamp timers in inactive tabs

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, defect)

Description

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Bug 633421 clamped timers at 1hz. This appears to be fine for desktop, but on mobile there has been concern about killing battery life (see bug 735246).

Could we get a preference exposed so we could adjust the value? We'd also want a "suspend" value as well. To be clear, this setting would be used anytime a tab becomes inactive, whether that happens while Firefox is in the foreground or in the background.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> Could we get a preference exposed so we could adjust the value?

You mean like the "dom.min_background_timeout_value" preference bug 633421 added?  ;)

There is no "suspend" value, but you could just set the clamp to 31536000000 (that would be 365 days), for pretty much the same effect.

Comment 2

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

(In reply to Boris Zbarsky (:bz) from comment #1)
> > Could we get a preference exposed so we could adjust the value?
> 
> You mean like the "dom.min_background_timeout_value" preference bug 633421
> added?  ;)

\o/

> There is no "suspend" value, but you could just set the clamp to 31536000000
> (that would be 365 days), for pretty much the same effect.

Something like that should be fine. Thanks.

Closing as WFM. I'll open a Fennec bug to pick a good clamp value.

Comment 3

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

filed bug 736602