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why doesn't firefox update its address bar immediately when opening slow web sites

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When you navigate to a web site which is slow to respond the address bar keeps showing the previous address until the web page loads or a network error occurs. It may take minutes. It happens for instance when clicking a a web search result or when the site itself redirects to another web page.

This Firefox behavior is there for years and I even remember that Internet Explorer had the same behavior during its era.

Is there any particular reason to do that? Because I only see downsides: for instance, you can't copy the URL to check in another program or device.

Somebody might argue that it's because you can press Esc during load and stay on the previous page. I think it would be more convenient to revert the address bar value when this happens.

When you navigate to a web site which is slow to respond the address bar keeps showing the previous address until the web page loads or a network error occurs. It may take minutes. It happens for instance when clicking a a web search result or when the site itself redirects to another web page. This Firefox behavior is there for years and I even remember that Internet Explorer had the same behavior during its era. Is there any particular reason to do that? Because I only see downsides: for instance, you can't copy the URL to check in another program or device. Somebody might argue that it's because you can press Esc during load and stay on the previous page. I think it would be more convenient to revert the address bar value when this happens.

Modified by basinilya

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basinilya, if nothing else then it is more accurate if the address bar reflects the current page, rather than showing the address of a page that is not the current page, and may never be reached.

Plus restoring the address on a load cancellation would require Firefox to potentially be remembering and discarding addresses multiple times as you launch various websites and links. Not impossible by any means, but this would introduce extra processing steps for page loads? Maybe they prefer to avoid doing this as much as possible?

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