Board Game Arena

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

madhattr999 wrote: ↑19 October 2024, 15:59 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.

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.

madhattr999 wrote: ↑19 October 2024, 16:23 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.

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.

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