Talk:Connections established on startup - Firefox

Pinging when you click a link

An entry was just added for: * Pinging when you click a link. See browser.send_pings
I was wondering if this really belongs in the article since it involves an action on the part of the user (clicking a link). The title and first sentence of the article imply that these connections are automatically established when Firefox starts up. Alice 01:06, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I wondered same as you. Couldn't the ping nevertheless happen at startup if link prefetching is enabled? -- Tony 01:25, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

* Prefetching links if the page it's on defines any... is already included in the article. Alice 01:30, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

yes, yes, but what about if one of those prefetched links has a ping= attribute? Wouldn't that ping the target of said attribute in addition to that of the link? -- Tony 01:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

In any case, it would still be the result of prefetching, wouldn't it? From what I read in the linked Prefetching FAQ, prefetching can be disabled by setting "network.prefetch-next" to "false". Anyway, I'll wait to see if FatJohn has any comments since he added the "ping" entry Alice 01:49, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I suppose some people might want to enable link prefetching (for speed) but disable pings (for privacy). Though I suppose the line about pinging might be moved to a subentry of the one about prefetching. -- Tony 02:04, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing and agree that the "Pinging" entry should be a sub-part of the "Prefetching" entry; also "when you click a link" should be removed. I made those changes. Alice 12:00, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm quite happy with it as it now stands. I'm sure many paranoids agree... :) FatJohn 15:09, 23 October 2007 (UTC)