Suspender

[Moonchild]

This topic is to announce and support Suspender, a tab unloading/suspending extension for Pale Moon and Basilisk in the vein of Lull the Tabs and BarTab.
It was forked from JustOff's Lull the Tabs and will pick up that extensions' preferences on first load, if present.

v1.0.0:

• Initial release

License: MPL 2.0, incompatible with secondary licenses.
I don't have a source repo set up for this, but if you need the source code, check the contents of the XPI.
Link: https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/suspender/

[Tohuwabohuix]

This topic is to announce and support Suspender, a tab unloading/suspending extension for Pale Moon and Basilisk in the vein of Lull the Tabs and BarTab...

Thank you for "Suspender"!
I welcome this great replacement for "Lull The Tabs" after I uninstalled almost all add-ons from external sources.

Off-topic:
I long for the day I will not work for 60 hours a week and will have time to make me familiar with XUL to fork/create add-ons myself.

[curiosity]

I come here to report a bug. The option "When closing a tab, select nearest loaded tab" doesn't work for me. I suspect that it may be related to me having Tree Style Tabs enabled as well (which I am reluctant to disable). I don't know who should be responsible for fixing this or if TST has anything to do with the bug in the first place, so I'm posting this here.

[Moonchild]

I just don't think those options are compatible. The "nearest tab" will be looked at from a linear strip perspective, but TST obviously reorganizes that into a tree. What is nearest in a tree structure?

[curiosity]

To be honest, I will be content with just any loaded tab at this point.

[Moonchild]

There's very little I can do. TST completely changes the way tabs are organized.

[BobbyP]

Thank you for, among many things, this extension. For some time now, clearing memory has been less than successful for this user, and so I have been happy to be experimenting with Suspender, 1st in one Profile, and now in a second. As a chronic TST addict, I was just about to post a finding similar to curiosity's above post, with the additional "New Feature" request, if possible of course, of the ability to select the Unloading of just the single focused Tab, or for Parent Tabs, just the Parent Tab, or just all of it's Child Tab(s), or the whole "Family".

From the very little I understand, it is clear that TST presents challenges (and/or out-right barriers), and so also fully understand if nothing more can be done, as you have indicated concerning selecting were Focus is to shift after Unloading. Thanks again for having the chance to try out Suspender in the first place!

[Moonchild]

I'm sorry but the tab strip which the extension's logic uses to select a different tab after unloading an active tab is linear.
There is no concept of "parent" or "child" tabs in the browser's normal UI. I'm also unlikely to make some complex logic part of suspender just so it will be able to handle something not native to the browser but only to one particular other extension. Suspender extends the browser, it does not extend another extension.

[curiosity]

Speaking of feasible feature requests, it would be nice if I could specify a list of sites to be unloaded automatically, as opposed to the present exception list. Then I would be able to automatically unload all those annoying sites that constantly run scripts in background for no good reason.

A finer customization of the tab context menu options would also be nice, but most people don't care to implement such detailed settings, so this is more of a "just in case" request.

[moonbat]

it would be nice if I could specify a list of sites to be unloaded automatically, as opposed to the present exception list. Then I would be able to automatically unload all those annoying sites that constantly run scripts in background for no good reason.

That's...what it already does. The exception list is for sites that you ḓo̭ṋ'̭ṱ want it to unload ever even if you're not using them. The purpose of the extension is to reduce browser memory usage by unloading all tabs other than the currently open one, it isn't about whether this or that site is 'annoying'. You should already be using a properly configured adblocker with filter subscriptions to get rid of advertising and analytics scripts that add to resource consumption overhead.

[curiosity]

That's...what it already does. The exception list is for sites that you ḓo̭ṋ'̭ṱ want it to unload ever even if you're not using them.

In case it wasn't clear, I'm asking for the exact opposite of the existing function.

The purpose of the extension is to reduce browser memory usage by unloading all tabs other than the currently open one, it isn't about whether this or that site is 'annoying'.

As far as I can see, the purpose of this extension is to let you unload tabs. What tabs I use it on and based on what criteria is up to me.

You should already be using a properly configured adblocker with filter subscriptions to get rid of advertising and analytics scripts that add to resource consumption overhead.

I do use an ad blocker and it works. But if you ever been to the internet, you may have noticed that some sites' implementations themselves are shitty. And, as it is the functionality of the site, you can't do much anything about it, at least not without significant effort (reimplementing it all). One such prominent example is Youtube.

[Moonchild]

What tabs I use it on and based on what criteria is up to me.

No, it isn't.

The extension is designed to unload (= suspend) all tabs after a certain time of inactivity for each tab, and to make exceptions for those you absolutely want to keep loaded at all times (= not suspend) if open.
Asking for the opposite will require completely different logic. If you want that, then you'll likely have to write your own or fork-then-swap-logic.

[curiosity]

I can't imagine how the same checking against a list but inverted would require a completely different logic, but okay. Thanks for answering.

[moonbat]

If an extension doesn't do what you want it to then it is up to you to either find an alternative or fork it and make a version that works for you. This extension itself is forked from JustOff's 'Lull the tabs' after his extensions were moved off the addons site to his Github page.

[Moonchild]

I can't imagine how the same checking against a list but inverted would require a completely different logic

It would. Because all this is based on timed events the core logic would have to be different.
Of course the code for actually suspending the tabs would be the same (but that's primarily a toolkit-supplied thing) and if you fork there's no reason to keep that, but it's really not going to be the same when comparing "suspend everything after x time of inactivity" with "keep a list of tabs to suspend".
While it would be possible to add the "other mode" to suspender given enough time and effort, I personally don't see a reason to. But you're free to go ahead and make your own based on it that does things differently.

[jobbautista9]

Of course the code for actually suspending the tabs would be the same (but that's primarily a toolkit-supplied thing) and if you fork there's no reason to keep that

Don't you mean "there's no reason not to keep that" or "there's no reason to remove that"?

[Moonchild]

no reason to not keep that

[adampale]

Could an option be added to disable the darkening of unloaded tabs, or use an icon alternative? Would be nice for addons like TabMixPlus which has its own coloring for unloaded tabs or certain themes which make readability more difficult when combined with darkened unloaded tabs.

[Moonchild]

It's not necessarily darkening. The only styling that is applied to unloaded tabs is that they are made semi-transparent.
If you find that 50% is too much and causes readability issues you can use a userChrome override to disable it:

Code: Select all

  .tabbrowser-tab[pending=true],
  menuitem.alltabs-item[pending=true] {
    opacity: 1 !important;
  }

instead of 1 you could also use a different larger value like .8

[adampale]

Thanks that works perfectly