Try to disable multi-process windows in Firefox to see if that has effect.

You can disable multi-process windows in Firefox by setting these prefs to false on the about:config page.

• browser.tabs.remote.autostart = false
• browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 = false

You can open the about:config page: via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

• http://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/22/multi-process-firefox/

After checking the "about:support" page I see that multi-process is not "true". Also I have never seen more than one Firefox process in the Task Manager.

What multi-process does for one, is entirely unclear. It does seem to use "up to 20% more memory". Great. It already HOGS an incredible amount of memory, doing what? No clue.

Regardless, I did start it in SAFE MODE, and then NEWLY OPENED Windows, WITH NEWLY OPENED *TABS* did *NOT* do the "auto refresh/reload" bit!

Now going back to non-safe mode, suddenly the auto refresh magically has stopped, at least for now.

Also what "browser.tabs.remote. autostart" controls hasn't been made clear. Perhaps it controls MORE than the thing I want? Do more searching... and doubtless finding obscure and cryptic information, will that help??

Ever see a 1980s vintage IBM VM "manual"?? About 10 large size binders. Ever see a 1980s UNIX "manual"? One small book. Why does Mozilla look a lot like an undocumented IBM manual?

Peh.

This sort of thing ought to be a straightforward feature to control. It's bloody 2017, not the age of DOS.

Also what "browser.tabs.remote. autostart" controls hasn't been made clear. Perhaps it controls MORE than the thing I want? Do more searching... and doubtless finding obscure and cryptic information, will that help??

Why does Mozilla look a lot like an undocumented IBM manual?'

cor-el gave you 2 links (one to what about:config is and does and a ghacks article to multi-process Firefox) so if you want to know what the browser.tabs.remote.autostart does, I suggest looking into it the articles that were linked. Mozilla has MORE than enough documentation for you to figure out what the hell that pref controls. READ. READ. READ.

I don't remember this behavior in Firefox 48, or any version of Firefox. Maybe your cache was damaged, forcing a fresh retrieval??

As I'm sure you know, version 48 has been superseded by several subsequent versions and is not secure -- Mozilla discloses security flaws after each new release.

What's holding you back?

It's rather inane that people who have made themselves "expert" at this narrow slice of the world, in this instance "mozilla" would be quite so didactic in their responses.

The FACT that you are "experts" is exactly the issue. Not only do I not want to waste my time being "expert" I expect clear and concise responses from those who purport to *be* experts. If you worked for me, you'd have just been fired, frankly.

Jscher2000, "what's holding you back"?? Surely you are kidding. But alas, no. After spending more than an hour searching, reading and finding only increasing levels of complexity and a LACK of clarity or explanation, I finally wrote my query here. What's holding EVERYONE BACK, and the REASON you have this "support" page is that the software is bloatware, opaque and convoluted, with few means for mere mortals to delve into the required depths and figure out what to do that will not BREAK the bloody thing even more.

So, IF my "cache was damaged", how would one KNOW that? How would one repair it?

As far as "secure" that's the line thrown out for each successive new version. So, apparently nothing is "secure" for very long, so how does it matter one way or the other?

While I appreciate people who somehow have learned what goes on inside this browser, I also think that the condescending approach is quite off-putting. And, yes, I am mentioning that the "Emperor has no clothes" in a somewhat forceful way.

Hi bearzbear, I'm not going to be able to tell you definitively what caused Firefox to reload pages every time you changed tabs. I've read a lot of threads here and never heard of that happening on a desktop OS version of Firefox; it used to happen regularly on Firefox for Android on devices with low memory availability. Since the problem went away without doing anything unusual, I don't know that we will ever find out. The representation of each tab loaded in a session (and still open) -- page layout, scroll position, form input, etc. -- is held in a memory cache, so I was speculating that something was going wrong with that structure.

When I asked "what's holding you back" I meant holding you back from upgrading, not from asking a question. I understand why you asked a question.

You are correct that there's probably no secure software. Developers try to fix security vulnerabilities when they are discovered or reported by third parties, and then the vulnerabilities that were fixed are disclosed. But as events of earlier this week show, there often are vulnerabilities that have not been reported to developers when they were first discovered because it was in the interest of a government or criminal group to keep it secret and use it for their own purposes. And once the vulnerability becomes known and a patch is released, the attack may come before everyone has installed the fix.

Prompt updating is your best defense, but everyone has to make their own assessment of risks vs. benefits. If you believe there is a problem with Firefox 53 (or the Extended Support Release of Firefox 52) that prevents you from upgrading, then I ask, what is that, what's holding you back?

Thanks for the reasoned response.

In general, my experience with "upgrades" includes the addition of "features" and other changes to the way the software looks and works that I find are not improvements at all.

Frankly, if the prior versions were not obsoleted by deliberate incompatibility going forward, with some exceptions I'd not have "upgraded". It's rarely clear that the new version will not do something that is undesirable. AND, it is unclear how much of a royal PIA it will be to "roll back" and/or if certain information will or will not be lost.

Additionally, this auto reload/refresh problem occurred when I did install a "new" (at the time) version on a "new" (at the time laptop/OS). I am pretty sure that the issue was present from the start, which is more than a year now. I just lived with it until now.

Notice that 3 others said (or it says above) have the SAME problem??

So, now that the problem appears to have "gone away" (by magic essentially) you suggest that I chance upgrading to a potentially buggy or otherwise unstable "new" version?

Dunno about that advice.

You could consider using the ESR version. Mozilla certainly initially intended that for corporate use not ordinary end users, however that does change more slowly, and gets critical security backports. It is not going to be a recommendation from Mozilla that you use ESR on Windows 7 as an ordinary user rather than as an Enterprise but it will be more secure than staying on totally outdated versions of Firefox.

• Please see https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/organizations/faq/
• Other readers of the thread may wish to look at Install an older version of Firefox

As for controlling the multi process features and performance settings there are pre release versions out already where this is controlled form the main settings menu with no need to start flipping prefs.

By the way if you do not already know nearly everyone here is just a fellow user of Firefox and not an employee of Mozilla.

john99, Thanks. Interesting approach. No idea what that means in practice, looks like another deep hole to explore. Wait, should I bring an extra tank of air? How deep will I need to dive, and how long to decompress?

I don't mind at all controlling "multi process features" by altering some flags manually or even changing some lines of something or other. That's not the issue. The issue is FINDING OUT what to do, and avoiding doing something that will have dire outcome(s) or trash what is saved or working.

The question is WHAT ARE all these "features" and why is it so difficult to get concise, clear information? The fact that all this is so obscure (as it is with Mucroshaft software) in my view IS the underlying issue.

I realize that you all are "volunteers". It is baffling to me that anyone has the time or energy to learn all of what I call "magic incantations" and then to post thousands of times to reply to the questions of hapless users (like myself).

I still have no idea IF the "auto refresh/reload" issue is at all related to something "multi process" or not!!

Fact is, that it remains completely unclear WHY anything changed in the operation of my v47.02 when all I did was to go from SAFE MODE back??

My guess is that nobody actually knows what really goes on with the OS or Mozilla. I sure don't.

OK, brilliant question now:

IF one wanted each tab TO refresh/reload each time they selected a tab, WHAT would they change/do??

D

                _-_-

bearzbear said

OK, brilliant question now:
IF one wanted each tab TO refresh/reload each time they selected a tab, WHAT would they change/do??

As far as I know, there is no setting for that. You could try to disable all caching in about:config to see whether that does it, including (but possibly not limited to):

• browser.cache.disk.enable => toggle to false
• browser.cache.memory.enable => toggle to false
• browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers => change to 0

There's also a setting for how often Firefox re-requests documents versus using a cached copy, but simply switching among tabs shouldn't trigger it. See: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.check_doc_frequency

I should mention that restored tabs that Firefox carries over from an earlier session are not automatically loaded all at once at startup, for performance reasons. Only the last active tab in each window is loaded. Then when you select a different restored tab, it is loaded from cache (assuming the site didn't bar that) rather than refreshed from the network. But once they load, they shouldn't reload on switching among them.

Tnx Jscher2000.

appreciate the information... it still remains very odd and unclear why it was behaving differently. Even stranger that it now behaves (apparently) as it ought.

If I did not think otherwise, I'd think that someone saw my post, and went in a "backdoor" and made a change. But whatever.

For now this horse is fully beaten. Poor horsey...

                 _-_-

Note that iIt would be best to disable the memory cache only as a test because Firefox needs some caches in order to be working properly (Firefox may reserve some memory for caches anyway).