Option to completely suspend page that isn't visible

Option to completely suspend page that isn't visible

This concerns tabbed browsing. I love it, but I am conscious that nowadays a great many web pages use (Flash etc) animation. These animations continue to run (in Opera) even when I am viewing a different tab (such that the other page is totally obscured). The problem with tabbed browsing (and the feature to "start where you last left off") is that it encourages my users to leave open a great many web pages. Some of these pages are so aggressive (eBay - depending on item - is one popular culprit, for example), that they lift the base load on my CPU by 10% or so. These loads concern me because I am in a perennial race to dissipate the heat from my CPUs. It also means that I am simply wasting electricity. I would appreciate if future versions of Opera featured a Site Preference that allowed the page to be completely suspended when not showing (basically, as if it wasn't open in the first place). This preference should be set to "suspend" by default. Users may have pages open which they rely on to refresh periodically. I had thought this is the exception. For these pages, the user should be able to explicitly change the preference to "animate while obscured". Thanks.

Well, while I agree that the idea may look good I would not support it.
From my observation - many of my friends open multiple pages (research) and they want to use dynamic content there to refresh. Even more often - they open tabs in background (google reader, blip.pl) with dynamic titles to know if anything new happen on those tabs... or just open playlist on youtube to listen to the music.

Long story short - I think that most users relay on dynamic background tabs and such behaviour (especially by default) would greatly irritate majority of users...

All valid points. It just seems to me that all the actions you describe are quite discriminate, meaning that people consciously want something to occur in the background. Would they then not be happy to edit Site Preferences, specifically for these services? How about this: when the user tabs away from a page that shows great activity (not sure whether Opera can tell?), pop up a dialogue to ask what Opera should do (with that page) while you focus on another tab. The answer will be stored in the Site Preferences. Then add a global parameter to configure this dialogue like so:

(1) "don't ask..."
(1a) "...and default Site Preference to 'animate'"
(1b) "...and default Site Preference to 'suspend'"
(2) "ask"

Let (1a) be the default "out of the box" setting, which mimics exactly what Opera does today. I would prefer to configure (2) (or perhaps even (1b)) for our box, so that my users at least think first whether that Flash content (ads mostly) really does need to continue running.

Thanks for your input.

Well, IMHO it would be an overdoing. Most ppl either tend to leave something in background consciously or close it (and even when they would leave them the cpu usage isn't *that* big IMHO). It would apply only to some that want to leave some tabs but also want to freeze them. Ergo - an additional option "freeze tabs", off by default and placed in site preferences. Majority wouldn't even notice it. Those few who have problem could enable option in main preferences and disable it on per site preferences?

Ollie2893, lwiczek - I totally agree with both of Your concerns.
E.g. some users want all/most of their inactive pages to keep running.
Unfortunately, users who prefer opposite/selective behavior face the lack of such feature in Opera.

Despite my personal preferences I'm convinced by Your arguments
that default settings of any new feature must be backward-compatible (at least to prevent confusion of other users).

As for UI design/etc - let's postpone it till feature gets enough VOTEs: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=565171

FYI - my cooling fans went whirring late last night so I took a quick look why the box was cooking. For once, the offending user was actually myself. I had left eBay open, sitting in "My eBay". Some moronic Flash ad was counting money. Load on otherwise idle CPUs: 30% - a new record. As soon as I closed the page, idle load dropped to 10% (still high, but there's a lot going on). I resorted to Blocked Content when I checked "My eBay" this morning. I just found Blocked Content not as effective as it used to be. Got the impression that site owners have cottoned on and are subtly changing page layouts periodically to defeat these algorithms...

There is a Pro and Con for this behaviour.
And I DO NOT like (another...) Pop-up box.
But one could (hopefully easily) implement a simple "Stop page activity" (or something like that) as an option when you right click on the offending tab in the menu that comes up (maybe another one that says "stop page activity and remember"), something along those lines should work quite nice:
- Inexperienced Users or Users that WANT Background activity will not be burdened
- Experienced Users not using this feature will not be bogged down with "stupid" Pop-ups
- Experienced Users using this feature can easily use it (Maybe give it a Hokey too for added convenience for the experienced user?)

I hear you, marwerno. Unfortunately, my concern are the inexperienced users. I think that my suggested scheme works better because experienced users could (deliberately, consciously) configure (1b) for their Opera, whereby never getting a pop-up. When their radio station on page x then suddenly stops playing as they navigate to page y, they *will* know why. They would know that they configured (1b) and would right-click, as you suggest, to change the site preferences to (1a). The problem with unexperienced users is that they are blissfully unaware what load they are putting on the CPU with all those open pages.

(Just back on the computer coz one CPU was SOLID displaying flash ads on the Radio Time web site (somwhere in the background of my wife's Opera session) - arrrrgh !!! I am just counting my blessings that Opera doesn't seem 100% multi-threaded to date. I am sure the day will come when the Radio Times will manage to hijkack ALL CPUs on this box.)

I vote for this. My PC is a bit old, and less tolerant of Flash type cruft than many. This would be a good option to have.

+1

All the naysayers must be using Windows (where Flash issues are less pronounced) or something.

I found another reason why this should be done:
Ever had several pages open to hear suddenly a LOUD sound and you have no clue WHICH stupid advertiser decided to put a "catching" sound on a add and you closer several web pages just to find out WHICH page has been the offending one?
I don't really care in which way it is done, at this stage I would be happy to except any solution as long there IS a solution to switch off offending pages!

BTW:
I found little workaround regarding Flash advertisements (some of them not all :-(
In the Global configuration of the Flash Player set local storage to "0Kb" (default I think is "10Kb")
In this way the flash player has to ask the moment it wants to store something on the computer and doesn't start playing until you hit the "Allow" button :-)

I tried your little trick, marwerno, with not much joy. My entire Opera session hangs each time I try to interact with the Flash site after I set the storage amount to 0. The problem could be resolved by restarting Opera, but would recur the moment I went to that Flash site again (for instance when clicking on Flash Player/About). Also, as you write, the success of that measure seems a bit hit'n'miss: the Flash adverts on FT.com, for example, continued unaffected.

I am glad that you have come around to support this request.

PS: We have the sound problem, too - compounded. I often have some lullaby in the background, emanating from the Opera session on the inactive desktop of my youngest :-(

is it even technically possible? plugins are AFAIK not controlled by opera at all, its "3d party application" running on it sown..

Dunno. The plug-in is invoked via a HTML tag, so Opera is aware of it. The plug-in does not show as a separate process, so it's probably a thread. These threads are under the process control of Opera. Whether Opera can actually tell how resource-intensive a given thread is, is indeed an open question. I am also unclear whether the OS offers an API to suspend a thread. However, there's probably some interaction between the main thread and the plug-in. That would probably be enough to suspend it via some semaphore. It may not be an easy thing to do but it would be a VERY worthwhile feature to brag about. Particularly when you consider the recent breed of lowly-speced web-appliances (netbooks, iPads, etc).

i dont think flash has APi to be "suspended" - at least i never heard of such options.you cant just "stop" a process

Well, as I said, it is NOT a process - merely a thread. Opera can very clearly "stop" it coz otherwise the thing would run amok even after you closed a tab. I do not know whether there's an explicit "suspend plug-in" API but threads must contend for shared process resources (like the DOM element into which the Flash content is projected) and use semaphores to do so. Such semaphores could be used as a proxy for suspend. I am reasonably certain that it is technically feasible to suspend a page. Question is just whether this is where Opera want to focus resources at present. As a long-time user of the Opera browser, I am beginning to get increasingly concerned that Opera are diverting resources into all sorts of projects which are not really core to a "browser". Think Opera email, Opera Unite, ... IMHO, these projects need not - should not - be part of Opera's core. Learn from Firefox and incorporate a strong add-on manager, then create these projects as add-ons that people can download, if wanting. Then refocus on the core browsing experience. To my eyes, Chrome is becoming more and more interesting because it is what Opera used to be: small and efficient.

Opera's always had M2; the recent attention to it is pretty much the only (visible) upgrade to it since the addition of feeds. You cannot say that giving it some well-deserved attention makes it any less what I'll call Chrome-like than it's ever been. Unite... well, that's the exact opposite of what Chrome wishes to accomplish, in a sense.

Originally posted by Ollie2893:

Learn from Firefox and incorporate a strong add-on manager, then create these projects as add-ons that people can download, if wanting.

You do realize that many of the most popular add-ons are also made by Mozilla, i.e., they "divert" at least as many resources. At any rate, Opera recently got quite a few extra engineers on the core team.

Originally posted by Ollie2893:

To my eyes, Chrome is becoming more and more interesting because it is what Opera used to be: small and efficient.

I suggest you actually compare sizes, and, for that matter, responsiveness and speed.

@Frenzie: Agreed. It was foolish of me to invite a Chrome-Opera comparison - it will send this thread OT. So let's forget about Chrome - everyone can form their own opinion of it. I was merely trying to say that, to this user at least, Opera will unlikely succeed to differentiate itself through non-core add-ons (like Unite, and mail), simply because there are many comparable offerings out there that are simply much more complete (because they are core products to whoever makes them). Opera will live and die by the browsing experience it offers. And this thread is trying to draw attention to an area of core browsing that could benefit from improvement. Thanks.

Agreed.

I wanted to congratulate the Opera team on the idea of stacked tabs in the new Version 11. Now my users can keep still more tabs open, some of which they may never see again (but will still keep chucking away in the background). I think that a feature to suspend inactive pages has become still more important.

+1

This kind of page suspension would be really cool, if possible.

+1

+1