Improve switch timings between collapsed groups

[maverick74]

Describe the bug
Presently, if a user has lots of open tabs (e.g.: >100) switching between collapsed groups takes some time loading the collapsed group. As a suggestion i would like to ask to improve this time

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. create 2 groups each with a "many" tabs
2. collapse group2
3. load group2
4. collapse group1
5. load group1
6. GO TO 2 (<-- yeah that's a Sinclair BASIC command! I'm THAT old! ahah XP)

Expected behavior
Tabs have a delay/Lag in hidding and showing up.
The switch should not have delays and tabs should load "instantly"

Additional context
(This is more of a "control" issue to implement improvements asap as i'm aware the problem is (/was?) mostly on the Firefox side: kesselborn/conex#215 )

[metastable-void]

Thank you for reporting.

---

Performance has been the most prominent problem of this extension for a while. There are many different problems related to performance. Some are coming from the nature of WebExtensions APIs and Firefox. Some are coming from incomplete implementation of the extension. Nevertheless I will continue to improve performance of the extension. For example, tab sorting is faster up to 100x (when we have hundreds of tabs) since 11.6.0 release. We are also planning to improve rendering of popup (#174).
Our resource is limited, so user voices are an important factor when deciding what to implement first.

[metastable-void]

When listeners are registered for tab hidden/visible status changes, if we hide or show a loto of tabs, those listeners are called for each of the tabs. So if one extension (this extension or any one) registers a heavy listener, tab hiding/showing becomes very slow.

[metastable-void]

So one thing I can do is to reduce heavy operations on listeners.

[maverick74]

But, from what i understood from some interactions with Conex and other similar extensions the Hide/Show performance of a tab is a Firefox problem mostly, no?

I mean, all addons that manage tab groups and have show/hide feature suffer from this tremendous lag.

The situation can already be fixed (it's probably a couple of years or more since i got this info), but if i remember correctly it was something about the way firefox handles "that" many tabs

[metastable-void]

Yes, it is sort of Firefox problem in the meaning that the problem is not fixable just by our effort, and that the API is far from ideal.

[maverick74]

@metastable-void are you aware of any bug report concerning this API "problem"?

[metastable-void]

@metastable-void are you aware of any bug report concerning this API "problem"?

No, I do not know one. Possibly submitting one is of worth.

[metastable-void]

Currently in popup page we make a full snapshot of browser state every time any changes in tabs occur. This is not optimal, I think.

[JohnLGalt]

If a bug is submitted, please share it here so I can upvote it as well, and follow.

My previous profiles in both Fx Stable and Fx Nightly were getting a bit ... unwieldy, and were getting rather slow, especially in stable, when opening new tabs swapping between containers, and more. Since I experienced a completely different glitch which I also reported (in the discussions), I assumed all of the slow-down was due to my glitch, and am only just now seeing this.

I can report that a brand new profile in both Stable and Nightly has improved things rather dramatically, but I've only populated about ~50 or so tabs in both profiles, so I'll keep trying to populate more in both until I get close to / exceed 100 and see if it starts acting slowly again.

[metastable-void]

Could you guys test this new (unsigned) build?

ctg-11.8.0-1683370520-9fbcd6f.xpi.zip

This new version does not have heavy operations on listeners, and it makes a small delay in rendering the sidebar/popup, to improve overall performance. Container display now has a small delay, but actual hiding/showing containers should be faster.

It should improve situations for this problem and #198 too.

[metastable-void]

Ok, this build has a minor bug which causes the sidebar to display every tab ever selected as "active".

[metastable-void]

Ok, this build has a minor bug which causes the sidebar to display every tab ever selected as "active".

ctg-11.8.0-1683373056-1910788.xpi.zip

This is the fixed version.

[metastable-void]

Following is the latest version with minor bugs fixed.

ctg-11.8.0-1683473442-8fee94a.xpi.zip

[JohnLGalt]

Sorry, I was unavailable yesterday. I'll test this latest today.

I'll use a new profile again in Stable to test it SxS with my current (new) profile.