Help: Switched to Firefox, and strange behavior on BGA

[madhattr999]

I recently switched to Firefox from Chrome, and I regularly have a turn-based Ark Nova game going. After I come back to the tab when my opponent plays a game, all the images are missing, and it takes a minute for the tab to refresh. It always works correctly after refreshing (manually or automatically, but it takes a minute). I am guessing it is some mechanic to save memory in Firefox, and I would like to disable it, but I don't really know how.

I don't play anything besides Ark Nova right now, so I don't know if it is game-specific, but other websites are not exhibiting this behaviour. I am not sure its a bug, so I didn't think creating a bug report was the right choice to get help. Anyone have any suggestions? (Or maybe I should create a bug report after all?)

Thanks.

[GTSchemer]

I assume this is on Windows? I have always used Firefox on desktop and am not aware of any such issue, especially for a fresh Firefox install.

Also, how much memory does your system have, and how much is in use while you are playing? If you are running low on memory I could imagine Firefox unloading some of the images.

[madhattr999]

It's Windows 10. Firefox is using about 1.5-2GB, and I have 24GB of RAM in my system.

The Firefox install isn't fresh, and I imported all my data from Chrome. If I have to, I can reinstall Firefox, I guess. I was just hoping it was more easily explained by a setting.

I have several extensions, so I'm going to try disabling them and see if the problem goes away.

[GTSchemer]

That is so strange, I really do not know what to advise. A Firefox reinstall MIGHT help.

Before you do that, you might want to try going to this URL: about:preferences#general

Or you can just go to Tools -> Settings -> General.


If you scroll down you should see a "Performance" setting. You can try unchecking recommended settings, then see if the behavior persists. If it does, you can try unchecking hardware acceleration. If it STILL happens after that, I am not sure what to suggest.

*edit* Definitely disable all extensions or do a clean install, yeah.

[madhattr999]

I tried disabling all my extensions.. Didn't fix it.

I tried turning off the setting "browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory" in about.config .. Still hasn't fixed it, though it seems to be happening less.. so maybe that is part of it.

[GTSchemer]

I tried disabling all my extensions.. Didn't fix it.

I tried turning off the setting "browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory" in about.config .. Still hasn't fixed it, though it seems to be happening less.. so maybe that is part of it.

I thought I saw a post about NoScript but I can't find it now.

Did you try disabling (or enabling -- try both settings) hardware acceleration as described above?

If not, then it's either a system-wide thing, or Firefox itself needs a clean install.


And if you are seeing unloadOnLowMemory triggering that seems VERY odd since you have so much free. *edit* Technically you did not say how much you have free, only that you have 24GB total. So who knows if something is running in the background using other memory.

[madhattr999]

Yeah, at first, I thought it was noscript, but the problem came back (since it's intermittent, it's a bit hard to confirm). So I deleted that comment since it would be confusing.. (but I guess it was still confusing, my bad).

I did disable hardware acceleration, and that has helped in other ways, but didn't solve this issue.

I have tons of free memory.. I was doing some googling and found people report that Firefox's ability to determine low memory can be buggy, so maybe that is why it kept trying to unload the tab.

I agree that a fresh install might help for testing.. I want to create a new profile (which should be the same as a re-install) and use that for a bit, and see if the behavior continues.

[GTSchemer]

Yeah, at first, I thought it was noscript, but the problem came back (since it's intermittent, it's a bit hard to confirm). So I deleted that comment since it would be confusing.. (but I guess it was still confusing, my bad).

I did disable hardware acceleration, and that has helped in other ways, but didn't solve this issue.

I have tons of free memory.. I was doing some googling and found people report that Firefox's ability to determine low memory can be buggy, so maybe that is why it kept trying to unload the tab.

I agree that a fresh install might help for testing.. I want to create a new profile (which should be the same as a re-install) and use that for a bit, and see if the behavior continues.

In general, Firefox has been very reliable and stable for me on Windows 10, so that's why I want to emphasize this is pointing at something unique (e.g. virus, hardware problem, system configuration, etc.) that does not normally happen.

The only time I might have seen Firefox take a moment to reload images is when I have a ton of applications using memory and/or lots of tabs. If you have (for example) 40 tabs open or something, that could be causing issues. A good test case would be a clean install and/or different Windows 10 system, using just 1 tab to play a game or two. If it still happens, you know it is not tab-related.

[madhattr999]

If you have (for example) 40 tabs open or something, that could be causing issues. A good test case would be a clean install and/or different Windows 10 system, using just 1 tab to play a game or two. If it still happens, you know it is not tab-related.

Yeah, I have about 12 pinned tabs, and 3 non-pinned tabs open. BGA is the only tab exhibiting this behaviour, though. I do have twitch streams playing while I do other things, google maps open, messenger, reddit, etc. But I would have expected this behaviour to happen in other tabs besides just BGA.

I appreciate the suggestions. I will try a clean install next.

[madhattr999]

I still didn't try a fresh install.. But I thought about it a bit.

After I disabled "browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory", the situation was happening much less often, but still would unload the tab after a while. So I decided to look for other unload settings. I found "browser.tabs.min_inactive_duration_before_unload" which is by default set to 600,000ms (10 minutes). I think this coincides with why it's still unloading the tab once in a while, but less than it was before. I've now set it to 14,400,000ms (4 hours), and I'm hoping to see the behavior go away unless I'm not at my computer for a few hours.

(I have enough memory that I don't have a problem with tabs staying active for a few hours.)

Hopefully, this resolves the issue.. We'll see