I have gone to the Accessibility section of help/troubleshooting and it says permission for accessibility is set to True. When I go to Options Privacy (etc) Permissions I only see 3 options, related to 'do not disturb', pop-ups and add-ons. Nothing about Accessibility (in V56 and V57). Where can I find this option?

The 'Chosen Solution' is NOT a solution - it asks for help!!!

By the way, where are the other answers; I do not see the 27 of the page stats

Hi henryfm, please try the search box on the Options/Preferences page:

• Windows: "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options
• Mac: "3-bar" menu button (or Firefox menu) > Preferences
• Linux: "3-bar" menu button (or Edit menu) > Preferences
• Any system: type or paste about:preferences into the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it

In the small search box at the top of the page, type perm and Firefox should filter to the "Permissions" section, as shown in the attached screenshot.

That is the setting referenced in the original question (more of a suggestion than a question).

No, I don't see this option. As I remember, I didn't see it on Quantum either.

In about:config, accessibility_force_disable has the default value 0; would a value of 1 (or what) have the same effect.

Also, would browser.tabs.loadInBackground set to false in 56.0.2 work in Quantum prevent FF from trying to load everything at startup and thereby freezing?

henryfm said

No, I don't see this option. As I remember, I didn't see it on Quantum either.

My screenshot was from Firefox 59 (available for testing as Nightly). Firefox 56 did not have the same accessibility features.

In about:config, accessibility_force_disable has the default value 0; would a value of 1 (or what) have the same effect.

Checking the checkbox sets the value to 1.

Also, would browser.tabs.loadInBackground set to false in 56.0.2 work in Quantum prevent FF from trying to load everything at startup and thereby freezing?

The preference to defer loading of inactive tabs when you restore a previous session (at startup or using History > Restore Previous Session) is:

browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand => true (default value)

Hello jscher2000 Just wanting to check: what are the best setting to stop tabs loading until they are required, for Quantum and later versions of FF? I have attached sessionrestore parameters from 56.0.2. After long years of experience, parameter names can be ambiguous, e.g. setting browser.sessionstore.restore_tabs_lazily to false could mean non-active tabs won't be reloaded unless required, or they will be reloaded quickly. Not sure what true means - are tabs loaded progressively, giving rise to the reported problem of FF grinding to a halt. Questions: 1. are specifications of the parameters listed? 2. what are the best setting of these, other new sessionrestore parameters (in Quantum, Nightly, etc) and any other parameters to provide a stable version of FF that will not grind to a halt due to large numbers of tabs, etc, so that it might be worth trying to upgrade to Quantum again? 3. Could the developers please put a short-cut into about:preferences to enable suppression of automatic tab loading, rather than having to go into the generally unrecommended about:config?

Hi henryfm, there used to be a checkbox on the Options page corresponding to browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand back when restoring your previous session was a new option, but over the years it was removed as the page was streamlined.

Are you using any session manager type extensions? I think users of Tab Session Restore observed that restoring a session with that extension loads all the tabs immediately.

Note that for pinned tabs there is this pref:

• browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand

jscher2000 said

Are you using any session manager type extensions? I think users of Tab Session Restore observed that restoring a session with that extension loads all the tabs immediately.

What is a "session manager type extension"?

There used to be a checkbox on the Options page corresponding to browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand back when restoring your previous session was a new option, but over the years it was removed as the page was streamlined.

Maybe if the default has been changed (as appears to be the case with Quantum), the Option needs to be restored. Users aren't inconvenienced if tabs don't load automatically - only a small delay. But with a decent set of tabs problems will occur. Could explain a lot of the current forum input wrt problems with Quantum

(No pinned tabs)

henryfm said

What is a "session manager type extension"?

An extension which creates its own store of previous session windows and tabs to supplement or replace Firefox's built-in feature (typically because users want to change among multiple sets of tabs).

Maybe if the default has been changed (as appears to be the case with Quantum), the Option needs to be restored.

The default remains "true", restore on demand meaning restore when made the active tab. Is true still working for you or is your Firefox restoring inactive/background tabs even when the preference is set to true?

I guess I haven't got a session manager type of extension. V56.0.2 is working OK for me at present. Is it worth reloading Quantum again? I'm unsure. Perhaps I should wait for V58 or V59 in the hope that some problems will have been resolved. One thing I guess is to prevent multiple processes, as the help system reports that that feature takes up memory that I could use for other jobs.

Hi henryfm, since we still don't know what caused your tabs to all restore at once, I really couldn't say whether anything will change in the future.

Regarding multiple processes, see: Firefox's performance settings.

For my problem, I don't know whether all tabs (progressively) load on restart; all I know is that Quantum runs slower and slower, and my guess was that tabs were reloading unnecessarily (i.e. not specifically opened). I read on a support page Firefox uses too much memory (RAM) - How to fix :"Using fewer tabs: Each tab requires Firefox to store a web page in memory. If you frequently have more than 100 tabs open, consider using a more lightweight mechanism to keep track of pages to read and things to do, ...." Although I have around 1800 tabs for my various interests, rarely would I get close to the 100 actually active, deliberately opened in the session. With Quantum, the memory usage (as shown by Process Explorer progressively rises, even if I am not active. So I assumed tabs were loading themselves in the background, on the basis of the claim for Quantum for faster operation, which, I speculated, could be achieved by pre-loading tabs. Maybe not, but commit memory creaps up from maybe 5 GB to 16 GB, with physical memory getting close to the installed 8GB! As an alternative cause, I wondered if the default true setting of browser.sessionstore.restore_tabs_lazily would have this effect. Also, whether limiting the number of parallel processes in Quantum (which each grab memory) to 1 or maybe 2 would prevent the memory explosion, which can't help fast operation. I see I can increase the cache memory on disk - another possible useful move.

I have tried everything listed in these help forums. I tried about config and such but nothing is working or I do not see the suggested fixes listed. I'm very frustrated and I would like my old firefox back because that at least worked. I need simple easy directions to fix this because apparently, I'm too dumb to fix this

Having failed with V57, I reverted to V56. However, when V59 became available, I thought I'd try it. This time it seems to be under better control and doesn't run away with memory, at least not yet... One thing I have noticed is that it can be reluctant to load some web pages. Sometimes I have to click on the address bar and press Return. In some cases, this doesn't work, possibly because the web page is not available, but the page remains blank rather than posting a message. A bit surprising as one feature of Quantum is fast page loading (but maybe this feature helps prevent unnecessary loading of pages in the background)

Hi henryfm, I replied in your thread here: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1188379#answer-1090327