mozilla-mobile
Slow perceived performance of opening external links
STR:
Firefox needs to be not open or backgrounded. Opening screen is set to last tab.
- Open an external link in Firefox
- Firefox loads and shows the previous tab and proceeds to reload the tab.
- Once the previous tab reloads then it opens a new tab and loads the external link.
Result: Depending on the connection the loading the previous tab can be slow and gives the impression that the click on the external link did not work as expected. Since the last tab needs to be reloaded first, perceived performance of page load is slow.
Expected: Open a new tab and navigate to the external link immediately without reloading the previous tab.
┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task
Thanks @vickychin for reporting this. I have seen it many times lately and users also complain about this. I will work with the team to find a solution to this.
➤ Alexandru Farcasanu commented:
Norberto Andres Furlan I have did investigations here… as I verified, reloading the previous tab is not a problem. To test that, I have completely removed the previous tab, when external link is opened. (please see videos below). Also, is the opening external link process, slow? 🙂
When removing the previous tab:
!removed.mov|width=924,height=2006,alt="removed.mov"!
Without removing the tab:
!not removed.mov|width=924,height=2006,alt="not removed.mov"!
cc: Nishant Bhasin any inputs here, may help. 🙂 🙏
➤ Nishant Bhasin commented:
Alex try the following just to see where the issue might lie
- Disable homepage and load the external link
- Compare it against other browsers a) Try to not have any tabs open b) Try to have few tabs opened
compare both a) and b) against others to see where the slowness comes from
then we can take a deeper look into our deeplink mechanism on whether homepage is the culprit or its something elese
➤ Alexandru Farcasanu commented:
Did the tests… but no major visible differences between browsers and between FF (with/without disabled homepage).
- FF - no multi tabs, disabled/enabled homepage cases
!FF no tabs.mp4|width=592,height=1280,alt="FF no tabs.mp4"!
- FF multi tabs, disabled/enabled homepage cases
!FF multi tabs.mp4|width=592,height=1280,alt="FF multi tabs.mp4"!
- Chrome Browser
!Chrome.mp4|width=592,height=1280,alt="Chrome.mp4"!
- Safari
!Safari.mp4|width=592,height=1280,alt="Safari.mp4"!
➤ Nishant Bhasin commented:
Alexandru Farcasanu One more test please, try it with 50 and 100 tabs
- Open a page with 50 tabs or so to make it slow
- You can do this via debug menu (settings > tap version 5 times > open Mozilla tab 50 times)
- Now close Firefox and see how it behaves on opening new link
➤ Alexandru Farcasanu commented:
Nishant Bhasin I did many tests and verifications on this side.
Tried to test the performance with more than 50 tabs opened but no visible differences. Also, I have verified some parts of code that may cause this issue. No results.
I will continue to say, most probably a bad internet connection, may slow this flow because I don’t even see other problems.
➤ Nishant Bhasin commented:
Yeah I am out of options here as well. Leave it open for now, tomorrow I will do one last pass and maybe send it for QA but mostly looking going into unknown territory here.
➤ Nishant Bhasin commented:
Andrei Bodea have we heard any reports around this? Wondering if this is still an issue
➤ Andrei Bodea commented:
Hello, Nishant Bhasin I can look into it and return with more information.
I continue to experience this when the app was previously killed by the OS. It takes a while to load the previous tab and then load the new page.
@vickychin next steps will be to get some logs from your device. Will dm you tomorrow with instructions but its best to send them as soon as you experience it so we can assess / debug
Below are steps and video on how to capture logs
Steps:
- Open Firefox
- Go to settings
- Tap 5 times on the Firefox version
- Copy log files to App container
- Open files app > On my iPhone > Firefox > Logs > Share the file.
Can DM me if you don't feel like uploading it here
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/65cdf105-5d58-4064-9a9f-9cbe03d1aee5
In general I see an uptick in hang and have a general idea on where to look but the logs will help verify if that's the correct area to address
Hello, @nbhasin2 I was not able to find anything like this reported. I’ve tried with the steps provided above and I’ve noticed that if I open a web page > minimise FF > open an external link > the last opened website is displayed for few seconds and then the webpage I opened is correctly loaded. Please note that I’ve had many opened tabs but there was no visible loading times, everything loaded fast and as expected. Device: iPhone 15 Pro (17.5)
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/338e97db-28b4-4ea0-958c-82ab8859a3e4
I attached the logs too in case it helps. Firefox.log
