Flaming fox doesn't appreciate interruptions...

August 26, 2013 1:30 PM

Help me make Firefox less cranky when losing/restoring tethered network via android phone?

The players:

- PC laptop with Windows 7 64 bit and Firefox 23.01
- Samsung galaxy s3 running "stock" Android 4.1.2 on Verizon 4GLTE network with "approved" tethering (I pay Verizon for the privilege of tethering) via USB cable

The story:

Laptop web browsing with Firefox via the tethered connection works great as long as tethering connection isn't interrupted. If I do break the tethering connection (like taking my phone with me while going to lunch or out on a break), when I later reconnect it Firefox gets all offended and refuses to load any new information - all previously loaded pages/tabs are still there, but if I try to click a link or refresh a page I'll get the spinning "loading" indicator forever and nothing will load. Other internet-enabled applications happily continue to work while Firefox is balking (for example, I can open up a command prompt and continuously get successful pings of google.com while Firefox refuses to load a single thing).

The only way I've found to get Firefox working again is to close it and then restart it (works maybe 25% of the time), or close it, then pull up windows task manager and do an end process on firefox.exe, and *then* restart Firefox (the other 75% of the time).

Is there something I should be doing/not doing so that Firefox can more gracefully handle the interruption/resumption of a tethered internet connection?

posted by de void to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Hi, I'm a Firefox developer who has worked on Firefox for Android and for Windows. I haven't seen this problem before, and I didn't find much useful in this support page. It does suggest checking your proxy settings, which could be one reason for Firefox to behave differently from other browsers on your system. You should also see whether the same thing happens if you start Firefox with add-ons disabled.

You can also ask a question on the official support site in case someone there knows more than I do.
posted by mbrubeck at 2:07 PM on August 26, 2013

Best answer: Does setting Firefox offline before unplugging your phone help? (File>Work Offline). I sometimes find myself doing that for other networking reasons and/or superstition.
posted by comealongpole at 2:16 PM on August 26, 2013

I have this same issue with Firefox on Xubuntu when coming out of suspend mode. I sometimes have to close the browser and reopen in order to do anything. I haven't found a solution, but at least you know it isn't just you.
posted by COD at 5:39 PM on August 26, 2013

Response by poster: Comealongpole for the win - setting Firefox offline before disconnecting the tethered phone, and then toggling the "work offline" off after re-establishing the tethered connection has worked 4 times in a row now, so I consider this problem solved!
posted by de void at 2:05 PM on August 27, 2013