restored tab delay ux
when a session is restored, tabs are not all reloaded immediately (it's currently implemented by using an empty web page with the metadata like <title>
, but this is not relevant here), because this would be too much on cpu, ram, and data.
when you have many tabs:
aaa x | bbb x | ccc x | ddd x
and you need to get from tab aaa
to tab ccc
with the keyboard, you will use ctrl+tab or ctrl+pagedown to go through the tabs in order. but you probably don't want any of the tabs between to start loading while you're switching, so loading has to be delayed.
what is currently done when a restored tab becomes active:
- wait 300ms
- if the tab is still visible, start loading
but this makes restored tabs feel a bit slow in web, when especially when clicking, and doesn't accommodate users with slower keyboard interaction.
i think an easy way to detect if the user is still switching is to check if ctrl is still held.
so i suggest changing to something like:
- if no modifier keys are pressed and sticky keys is not enabled, start loading now
- when either double-click duration passes (400ms by default in gnome), or all modifiers are released, and the tab is still visible, start loading