ultimate firefox optimization guide

so you have finally realized that internet explorer is severely limited and that there is a much better option out these days, the recently record breaking 3.0 version, Mozilla Firefox to the rescue! i will share with everyone a few hacks, must have extensions and recommended configuration. first i will tell  you which extensions are in my point of view absolutely mandatory for all users.

extensions:

1. Foxmarks. bookmarking manager/backup/online sync. This is a great tool that ive been using for some time and i really love it because in my case it allows me to view my bookmarks, up-to-date, anywhere I go, whether it be at work, another house or if I am in Linux on another partition. I highly recommend this tool for everyone. Click on the link above to install it. (all of the extensions for firefox download and install for you automatically without you having to do anything)

2. Adblock Plus. popups, advertising, spam, unwanted links. Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock” from the context menu – the banner won’t be downloaded again. Maybe even replace parts of the banner address with star symbols to block similar banners as well. Or you select a filter subscription when Adblock Plus starts up the first time, then even this simple task will usually be unnecessary: the filter subscription will block most advertisements fully automatically. Remember that the important thing with Adblocker is that you ad many filter sets to it.  If you need help with this, get at me.

3. IE Tab. ie integration. OK so I just got done talking shit about IE, well, unfortunately, we still need it sometimes right? whether it be for windows update, hotmail or some application/webpage that just needs IE or maybe the page you are on doesnt load right… so just open it up in an IE Tab. i have it setup so that certain pages automatically open up in IE Tab for me.

4. No Script. javascript blocker/flash blocker. This tool is one of the greatest things ever created for Firefox. It takes some time to learn how to use it and configure it correctly, but once you do it saves you alot of time and lets you surf more comfterably. Allow JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from sites you trust. This will block EVERYTHING, even youtube videos, forms, everything so  you need to configure it little by little allowing only the things you want. Only use this addon if you think you can configure it and  use it correctly. Dont come back to me asking me why your pages dont load anymore.

OK thats it for the addons. There are a few more that I certainly recommend but arent necessary. I posted the other day about this you can check them out here.

hacks/tweaks
1. Minimize Hack. The first hack that I have here is the popular Firefox Minimize Hack that has recently flashed through the internet. The purpose of this hack tries to keep Firefox from eating up your physical RAM and instead puts the burden on your hard drive, or at least that is the general reason behind it. To implement this hack, perform the following steps.

1. With Firefox up and running, type about:config and hit enter.
2. Right click on the new page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the pop-up window, type in “config.trim_on_minimize” without quotes and hit enter.
4. In the next pop-up window, select True and hit enter.
5. Restart your browser

With that done, open up a bunch of tabs and monitor the memory usage. In my first run without this hack, Firefox was using 137.8 Mb of Ram. With all 30 tabs open again, Firefox was using 118.4 Mb, but when minimized this dropped to an astounding 4 Mb. However, this was too good to be true, I left Firefox minimized and came back 12 minutes later and the memory use had slowly creeped up to 42.4 Mb. While this was 10 times larger than the initial 4.2 Mb, I was still saving about 75 Mb. One note about this, the memory was still very slowly creeping up by about 1 Mb per minute, maybe more or less per minute, but either way it was still creeping. I would have liked to test to see if it would creep up to the original 118.4 Mb but that would have required more than an hour and I am impatient. Another note, when I had Firefox maximized it was using 66 Mb with Flickr.com as the main tab, but 119 Mb when I quickly browsed through all my tabs and then quickly retreated back down to 66 Mb. I don’t know what causes this, but either way, for the most time it was using 66 Mb. The verdict: useful and free with no downloads.

2. Back Button Hack. The next hack deals with Firefox’s Cache. Whenever you jump around the Internet, Firefox caches your previous pages to make your internet browsing blazing fast. However this causes Firefox to consume memory that you may not ever need to use. To implement this hack, perform the following the following steps.

1. With Firefox up and running, type about:config and hit enter.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers” and instead of the -1 setting, change it to 0 and hit Enter.
3. Restart your browser.

Before using this hack I went to Cnn.com and entered 10 different articles but never touched the back button, just using links. Upon the 10th article, Firefox was using 41Mb. I performed the hack and performed the same step by visiting the same sites with a cleared Cache, and memory usage was down to 33.7 Mb. This value never changed even after a few minutes left idle on the final page. Verdict: not a large saving with a slight decrease in browser rendering speed, worth it if you are ram limited.

3. Cache Hack. This next hack deals with the memory Firefox uses as cache. In the default setting, Firefox will adjust the cache size to fit however many pages you have open. While this is useful, if you tend to only have a few pages open at a time, you can manually reduce the setting to a specified amount at the cost of reducing performance when Firefox runs out of cache. To implement this hack, follow these steps.

1. With Firefox up and running, type about:config and hit enter.
2. Right click on the new page and select New -> Integer.
3. In the pop-up window, type in “browser.cache.memory.capacity”. In the following pop-up window, specify how many Kb of ram you want to dedicate to the cache, I selected 32768(32Mb). I suggest a number between 16Mb and 64Mb, anything lower and performance will suffer, anything higher is excessive. Here you should experiment, or don’t bother if it worries you.
4. Restart your browser

I don’t know how much this helps or hurts performance, so far with 32Mb enabled I have yet to see a major difference, memory use dropped from 42Mb to 39Mb with the same pages open, but I don’t think this hack is what did that. Verdict: not sure if it is useful at all.

That’s all for now. I will update this page if I run into anything else.

- cultavix

if you dont already have it, download it at getfirefox.com