Improve killing resource-hogging tabs
This isn't strictly related to Hulu but using it as an example: Hulu has some bug right now where it will occasionally suddenly use a lot of CPU power and completely lock up Firefox, and to some degree my whole system. If I manage to "close" the tab, it *appears* to close, but it's very clear that whatever Hulu is doing is still going on in the background. This time I was at least able to open the task manager and kill Firefox – which immediately alleviated the problem, and upon reopening Firefox, the Hulu tab was still there (indicating it never closed).
I don't know if this is possible, especially given I don't know what's causing the bug with Hulu, but it would be nice if Firefox was better able to handle a tab getting out of control like that.
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To add onto this, I just experienced it again with Hulu. I noticed upon waking my computer that there was no video, which I've noticed to be an indication of the bug where it starts eating up resources. I attempted to close the tab, and it did visually, but then Firefox locked up completely for about 5 seconds while it presumably was trying to kill the tab. My system seemed to be perfectly responsive during this time – it was just Firefox that was locked up.
You can check the about:memory and about:processes pages for info about all processes. See also the about:unloads page for info about the tabs.
Thanks, but that's not what I was asking about. What I am asking for is for Firefox to better prevent tabs from being able to lock up the entire browser. I'm sure that's much easier said than done, but it is very frustrating that a single tab is able to freeze Firefox – even when trying to close it.