Firefox 4,5,6 refreshes all tabs although no internet connection exists
Since I've updated Firefox 4 and later to Firefox 5 and Firefox 6 (Aurora) I've been missing one particular feature which was working very nicely inFirefox 3.x. In Firefox 3.x I could start it without a internet connection and almost all of my open tabs were still loaded (with websites having the information in state I left it when I was closing Firefox. With this I was able to read my open sites in the train where I have no internet connection, or I was able to get back to something I had open and now it's gone. This does not work in Firefox 4 or newer beta's or even aurora version. If I launch Firefox 4,5,6 I see all my open tabs but the content is not available. It seems that the new version tries to refresh all tabs on startup. Is there a possibility to disable this behaviour and enable the old one?
All Replies (7)
Make sure that you not run Firefox in permanent Private Browsing mode.
- https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Private+Browsing
- You enter Private Browsing mode if you select: Tools > Options > Privacy > History: Firefox will: "Never Remember History"
- To see all History and Cookie settings, choose: Tools > Options > Privacy, choose the setting Firefox will: Use custom settings for history
- Deselect: [ ] "Permanent Private Browsing mode"
- Do not use Delete browsing, search and download history on Firefox to clear the cache
I have private browsing disabled and I keep every single history I can get. I even use Firefox as portable so I never loose history or bookmarks even with reformats. The problem I have is that default behaviour for Firefox changed between 3 and 4 and now when opening firefox it tries to refresh all pages I left open. Before it wasn't doing that. With internet there's no problem, without one I can't read what I left open... That's the problem. I want to turn off auto refresh on Firefox start.
"I even use Firefox as portable ..."
That problem or change may be something that is unique to the Portable Firefox version, which isn't actually made by Mozilla. You might want to inquire about that in the proper forum for that version.
http://portableapps.com/forums/support/firefox_portable
Have you tried testing the problem yourself? Open websites, close firefox, take the cable out and start it up. Does it show up properly ?
The portable Firefox version has the disk cache disabled to prevent wearing out USB and SSD storage devices that only allow a limited number of writes.
I've got almost the same problem after updating from 3.6.16 to 5. For me, 3.6 (not 'portable' but the regular 3.6) never displayed old tab content on restart if I wasn't connected to the internet. BUT, if I had a lot of tabs open often I purposely disconnected from the internet when restarting, so those tabs wouldn't load and would just show "problem loading." That would use far less memory, CPU etc., then I would work thru the tabs at my leisure, just reloading each when I wanted (I could see the URL when on the page, but unfortunately not in the right hand drop down menu).
When I upgraded to 5, the second I reconnect to the internet ALL the 'problem loading' tabs immediately start loading. Which promptly bogs the computer/firefox down to the point it is unusable, and if I've got a lot of tabs open it stays unusable.
I very much want to turn that 'feature' OFF, and would really appreciate it if anyone could tell me how to do it.
This page may solve your problem:http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.check_doc_frequency
To access these settings type "about:config" in the url address bar. Before changing anything, do a search for pref.js and back it up. (Copy and Paste to a different location) If anything goes wrong, you can just paste the backup over the existing. In addition, deleting pref.js will set Firefox to create a new pref.js with the default settings.
In a nutshell, if the header of the webpage is expired (which you can't control) the default setting of Browser.cache.check_doc_frequency = 3 will always reload. 3 = expired web page 2 = use cached version always (not recommened) 1 = check for new version of page everytime 0 = check for new version once a session (til' the browser is closed)
In addition to this, Firefox loves to store most all memory resources in your RAM which is volatile and will be deleted on shutdown, if it hasn't already been written over or fragmented.
browser.cache.disk.enable (boolean) must be set to true to store data to disk. browser.cache.disk.capacity determines the size stored to your drive, if set to -1, then firefox controls the cache size. (I prefer to set the size myself, this link details the features of this setting http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.disk.capacity
Another setting, Browser.cache.memory.capacity determines how much cache is stored in memory. By default, it is normally set to -1, (same feature as above) although it may not even be in config, to create right click in the page, "new integer"
This link provides some useful information if you want to set it to a static value: [http://example.com http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.memory.capacity ] browser.cache.disk.enable & browser.cache.memory.enable must be set to true for either, respectively with the same category. (ie.memory or disk)
Another solution to view pages offline.......save them to your hard drive. Holding the "Ctrl" key on your keyboard and "S" will prompt you for a location. When your ready to read, open up firefox, switch to work offline and open the file.