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How to inhibit animations/twinkles/flickers/waves that are replacing loading elements ?

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  • Last reply by V-Robin

V-Robin
V-Robin
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SUMMARY : I would like to disable all animations/twinkles/flickers/waves that indicate some elements inside a Web page are missing and are being loaded. I think all these "animations" make my computer lag.

Hello,

I would say that since Firefox 89, my browser has begun lagging like hell when it loaded some rich Web pages. And I have the impression it is worse with Firefox 107. When I'm saying Firefox lags, I mean it uses heavily my CPU (over 50%), and Firefox is almost unresponsive (for complex Web pages. For Wikipedia or Amazon, I don't have any trouble for example). I have to wait for Firefox to finish to load the full Web page and to display all elements before the usage of my CPU gets back to 1%. And it can take several minutes for some sites/pages.

The problem doesn't come from my connection. And the trouble doesn't come from sites I'm visiting because once all elements are loaded Firefox is responsive.

More precisely, for some sites, when I start loading the page, Firefox replaces missing (i.e not yet displayed/loaded) elements of the page with a rectangle of the same size of the element and each one of these rectangles are slightly flickering to inform me that AT THIS PLACE there is an element of the same size that is going to be displayed. When I'm saying "flickering" I could say it looks like a rectangle with a gradient of gray that is "waving" slowly. Sometimes it's a very light gray, sometimes a dark gray. It depends of the sites.

And all these kind of "animations" are killing my computer. And I would like to totally disable these animations/twinkles/flickers/waves. For example, would it be possible to replace the color gradient animation with a static pink color ?

I have a 10 years old laptop with iGPU (an Intel i5-2410M exactly) without discrete GPU. That doesn't help. I know. For me the trouble comes from there. But currently I can't afford buying a new laptop. I think all my drivers are up to date as my Ubuntu 20.04 is up to date.

WHAT I'VE TRIED WITHOUT SUCCESS 1. I removed ‘.mozilla’ folder in my profile (i.e the folder that contains all addons and customizations) 2. Firefox in Safe Mode 3. I disabled hardware acceleration 4. I've tried Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources

I really would appreciate your help because now, surfing on some sites becomes a big pain and I'm becoming mad (LOL).

Thank you in advance :)

'''SUMMARY''' : I would like to disable all animations/twinkles/flickers/waves that indicate some elements inside a Web page are missing and are being loaded. I think all these "animations" make my computer lag. Hello, I would say that '''since Firefox 89, my browser has begun lagging''' like hell when it loaded some rich Web pages. And I have the impression it is worse with Firefox 107. When I'm saying Firefox lags, I mean it uses heavily my CPU (over 50%), and Firefox is almost unresponsive (for complex Web pages. For Wikipedia or Amazon, I don't have any trouble for example). '''I have to wait for Firefox to finish to load the full Web page and to display all elements before the usage of my CPU gets back to 1%'''. And it can take several minutes for some sites/pages. The problem doesn't come from my connection. And the trouble doesn't come from sites I'm visiting because once all elements are loaded Firefox is responsive. More precisely, for some sites, when I start loading the page, Firefox replaces missing (i.e not yet displayed/loaded) elements of the page with a rectangle of the same size of the element and each one of these rectangles are slightly flickering to inform me that AT THIS PLACE there is an element of the same size that is going to be displayed. When I'm saying "flickering" I could say it looks like a rectangle with a gradient of gray that is "waving" slowly. Sometimes it's a very light gray, sometimes a dark gray. It depends of the sites. And all these kind of "animations" are killing my computer. And I would like to totally disable these animations/twinkles/flickers/waves. For example, would it be possible to replace the color gradient animation with a static pink color ? I have a 10 years old laptop with iGPU (an Intel i5-2410M exactly) without discrete GPU. That doesn't help. I know. For me the trouble comes from there. But currently I can't afford buying a new laptop. I think all my drivers are up to date as my Ubuntu 20.04 is up to date. '''WHAT I'VE TRIED WITHOUT SUCCESS''' 1. I removed ‘.mozilla’ folder in my profile (i.e the folder that contains all addons and customizations) 2. Firefox in Safe Mode 3. I disabled hardware acceleration 4. I've tried [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-or-cpu-resources Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources] I really would appreciate your help because now, surfing on some sites becomes a big pain and I'm becoming mad (LOL). '''Thank you in advance :)'''

Modified by V-Robin

All Replies (2)

Terry
Terry
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For animations you could try changing the following preferences in about:config to the values I have indicated. image.animated.resume-from-last-displayed > false image.animation_mode > none. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox

You could also try adding the following preference as a number and giving it the value 1. ui.prefersReducedMotion

For other changes you will need to create a file userContent.css. I also use a bookmarklet named zap cheap effects. The content blocker uBlock Origin may help.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Animations and memory usage are vexed issues. There is a button labelled Minimize memory usage on about:memory which can help. It also helps usually to close a tab using excessive memory temporarily. There is one site I have to reopen in a new tab. To see how much cpu and memory tabs or extensions are using open the Task Manager (menu bar menu Tools > Browser tools > Task manager, 3 bar menu More tools > Task manager OR about:performance).

V-Robin
V-Robin Question owner
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First, excuse me for my late reaction. I'm very sorry.

Secondly, I thank you very much, Dropa and Terry for your advice.

@Dropa I've inspected (mouse right click, then ‘Q’) some annoying elements and it seems they are almost all related to CSS. So I've searched the Web with key words "firefox CSS disable animations", and on Superuser Web site, a guy had the same trouble as me. And he wrote an addon to disable CSS animations https://superuser.com/questions/1224596/disable-css-animations-on-firefox But sadly its addon isn't on Mozilla site anymore. But I've found another addon ‘Disable Transitions’ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-transitions/ I've tried it and it seems to do the job very correctly. The only think that annoys me is that, this addon is used by only 20 users, the developer isn't famous at all, and when I install this addon, Mozilla warns me this addon “Access your data for all websites”. It's not cool if this addon can get my bank login and password :( Do you think I can trust it ~blindly~ ?

@Terry I've set your 3 variables to the value you said, but unfortunately, there were no improvements. I'll try to create a ‘userContent.css’ file, but, currently, it's beyond my skills I think. Yes, uBlock Origin was already installed. It is a must have addon :) But it doesn't help me concerning my troubles. Thank you for guiding me to ‘about:memory’ and ‘about:performance’. I didn't know them. It may be very useful for me. Thanks.