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Main Area and Open Discussion => General Software Discussion => Topic started by: dantheman on February 02, 2009, 12:56 PM
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Most of the tweaks i saw in this vid didn't do much for me.
But a little further into the clip, there were a few i had never seen and so i decide to give them a shot. Working on XP Home SP2, this has made a notable difference for me. :Thmbsup:
Link to video (http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1586500/make_firefox_3_load_faster/).
Be advised that you may want to lower your speaker volume...
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Why oh why make a video of something like that, instead of a blog entry?
/me sighs.
EDIT: wouldn't follow that guide... blindly enabling HTTP pipelining for proxies without knowing if it's supported is bad, and disabling IPv6 DNS seems misguided. And what's with "Expose full path to plugins", hmm? Initialpaintdelay=0 could spike up your CPU usage dramatically because a page might need a lot of re-flowing as it's loaded.
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Video clips like these could be handy for nerds like me. :-[
With regards to CPU usage, that could be true but with the improved start up speed i noticed, i guess at this point i'm ready to take the chance. Heck, it's almost just as fast as Opera 10 alpha! 8)
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IPV6 delaying DNS queries was a known bug in older versions of Firefox. AFAIK is has been fixed for some time.
IMO Mozilla needs a warning when you install addons that warn they may significantly slow Firefox. I'm SOOOO tired of people whining about Firefox being slow, only to discover they're using 50 addons.
Ehtyar,
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dantheman: wouldn't a blog entry with screenshots be just as good? In addition to being readable at your own pace, instead of a video that's either too fast or slow moving?
Besides, those tips don't speed up loading time of FireFox, but have to do with page load time (pipelining) and perceived rendering speed (initial paint delay... which doesn't make the page load/display faster at all).
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If you are obsessed with speed you may want to try seamonkey 2 alpha. It has the JS engine of the latest FF and it's actually very stable.
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If you are obsessed with speed you may want to try seamonkey 2 alpha. It has the JS engine of the latest FF and it's actually very stable.
-urlwolf
Can't see how that would make pages load faster nor make the browser start up faster? :)
(But how it helps with javascript-heavy sites - sure!)
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urlwolf,
Every time i've installed Seamonkey to give it a spin, it seems to conflict with existing Firefox installation.
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f0dder,
Actually, i kind of liked the video idea.
I could pause it etc.
But i do agree with you that it's not the best method.
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@urlwolf,
Hey! Guess what?!
I decided to listend to you and just installed one of the Seamonkey Alpha's and it is just dynamite! :Thmbsup:
It picked up my Thunderbird configurations and data in a synch.
But i wonder why it picked up my IE favs instead of my Firefox ones?
People still use IE? :huh:
Seamonkey starts up like it's going to the moon and it's not even sitting on my taskbar.
The search field for the mail app is just superduper fast!
All and all, i'm really impressed since last time i tried it over a year ago. 8)
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umm...I'm not a technical Firefox user who knows what these settings are specifically but...
Articles:
http://chris.pirillo.com/speed-up-firefox/
http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_1.html
http://codebetter.com/blogs/darrell.norton/archive/2005/01/28/48720.aspx
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/8-hacks-to-make-firefox-ridiculously-fast-468317
Add-on:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9148
Software:
http://lifehacker.com/353826/speed-up-firefox-launch-with-firefox-preloader
P.S. I could never get MetaCafe videos working so I'm just guessing these are what the video is about.
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DanTheMan, thanks for your kindness & help.
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NewsAndHistory (that's an original alias!)
I am humbled! :-[
Honestly, i'm don't feel i contribute much here and feel more like tiny player in the midst of big league players.
BTW, welcome to the forum!
:Thmbsup:
Oh! Before we go off the subject, Minimize to Tray (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10488) is a nice addon for Firefox and Thunderbird.
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FF3 seems fast enough as is.
Pipelining actually slowed it down. imo.
Fasterfox, or Lite or Tweak Network,
all seemed to have a slower effect on my machine.
Granted it's not a top of the line computer.
But I've found that many functions are already in FF and just hidden. Cutting down on add ons.
'Toolbar Buttons' gives these extras a quick access point to put in the toolbars.
I have 24 add ons that seem to not be bothersome.
Using 'Minimize to Tray' which is officially 'experimental', ha!
I just have to restart FF once in a while when it gets a cold and needs to blow it's nose.
Now we are at 3.0.6 and I don't think these tweaks are keeping up. I don't keep up with any nightly builds though.
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"Minimize to Tray" is probably 'experimental' because it's been adjusted to FF3 and to work with Thunderbird at same time.
A cold start on my ol' notebook doesn't take away any snot.
For some reason it always takes about a minute before i can type in any urls or do anything else with it. :huh:
And i have about 20 extensions too.
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Love Firefox III.
Been using the Gecko system way back in Netscape 4.1
I utilize about 54 add-ons. Now granted this slows Programs start-up, but it is a fair trade off for the add-ons that I use.
Load time is about 73 seconds.
Now over the years I have learned that there is little you can do about load time for Firefox.
My load time is delayed by a handful of my Add-ons, but I find that if I unload my add-ons or start Firefox in safe mode, the increase in load time is nominally faster by just a few seconds, approximately 14 seconds.
The load time for Firefox is incredible compared to any version of IE, Opera, or Safari so I have no complaints.
Now depending on how much bandwidth you have for an internet connection, I can speed up your specs well beyond the current specified Firefox spec's, and do so while being stable.
But as for load time we are stuck.
Now the biggest slow down to loading Firefox, or any web application, is monitoring software (ie, anti-virus, process watchers, Threatfire, nortons IS, AVG IS, Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D so on). The more of these running the slower the load time.
You want to see the load time on your browser reduced, shut down any Anti-virus or process monitoring software.
Now as for the Minimize to tray; there is a huge trade off for this little add-on. This allows FFIII to run in the background all the time, and if you set it up to run on boot, your computer takes longer to boot. You definitely do not want FF slowing down your system or slowly consuming your resources while sitting in your tray. Trust me on this one.
Realistically: there is no instant on. Only compromises.
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I use cleanmem to keep firefox in check. While it doesn't clear the memory cache of FF, it does knock the program down to around 5000, every 30 minutes, then slowly back up to 60,000 or 80,000, but not like it was going up to 200,000. Worth it to have quick access to FF and where ever I left off.
Also there is an add on called 'cache status' but it sometimes hungup on the memory deal and locked. Plus I think it was a mem leaker like quite a few of the add ons. So I try to stay away from those.
Flash block really helps with quick page loading. Seems every one is embedding flash everywhere!
Came across this, but I don't know. I'm surfing fine now, I'd hate to screw it up.
http://www.esnips.com/doc/c0a4daf1-23bf-4410-931f-597740e955a6/firefox-ultimate-optimizer-11
Edit-further research shows no real comments of value or actual tests.
I advise against this 'ultimate optimizer'.
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Wow! That was quite the writeup Magis esse! 8)
And so many extensions! :o I'm surprised you don't have many more issues.
Anyway, i did a quick search and someone in another forum pointed out that the History being kept is set at 90 days! :huh: Yup. So i changed it to 7, cleared history cache and cookies and, although it may be too soon to tell, everything seems to be pretty well in ship shape now.
BTW, "MinimizetoTray" isn't to be confused with "Firefox Preloader" (which has been upgraded since 2005). The latter would preload/boot with the OS, not "MtT"
@cmpm, ya, i kind of had that intuition.
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Firefox page loading (and rendering) is plenty fast - when people say "load faster" I immediately think of loading the application which could be a lot faster. I really hope the dev team will focus on that issue soon. Preloading and minimize-to-tray are just symptomatic fixes, and minize-to-tray seems like a bad idea to me (while a very large amount of memory leaks have been fixed in FF3, it still has a few here and there).
Pipelining actually slowed it down. imo.-cmpm
Sounds weird - works wonders here. But for the few servers that use broken HTTP daemons that bork on pipelining, you could face slowdowns or even pages that refuse to load. But while you might not see speedups (especially on slower connections) pipelining shouldn't cause slowdown.
The load time for Firefox is incredible compared to any version of IE, Opera, or Safari so I have no complaints.-sgtevmckay
Yeah, incredibly slow :) - IE6 loadtime is hard to beat. And please no "IE is part of the OS" argument, it's bullocks (besides, hot-cache loads of FF are still slower than cold-cache loads of IE6).
I use cleanmem to keep firefox in check.-cmpm
Is that one of those snake-oil "memory optimizers"? Those applications are pretty counter-productive. First, they cause flushing to the pagefile (disk write == super slow), followed by a re-read from the pagefile when the app needs the data again (disk read == slow). Second, windows will do this "trim working set" as needed, and start with the least used applications. Third, it doesn't really fix the memory leaks.
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Works for me fodder. It doesn't 0 out everything.
No change in the page file when CleanMem is run.
I've checked it by running it manually.
If you have a way to fix the mem leaks, lets hear it please.
I just avoid the worst add ons, that leak mem,
and that's about all I know to do.
I took out Fasterfox and Tweak Network and it seems to improve speed and stability.
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from
http://www.pcwintech.com/node/145
So now lets start with how Cleanmem works. Cleanmem is very small as it doesn't need to do much. First off Cleanmem doesn't clean the memory from the processes itself! It asks Windows to do that. When the program starts up it grabs a list of running processes. It then grabs the ID of each process and calls the Windows API EmptyWorkingSet for each processes, Cleanmem of course checks the ignore list and skips those processes. Then Windows cleans the process, and once all the processes have been cleaned Cleanmem closes itself.
Well that's the part that seems to freak some people out, if the memory is being cleaned then the process itself will suffer! the memory will be pushed to the hard drive! the world will end! And guess what they are wrong. So let me explain why. The API call only removes memory no longer being used by the process. It doesn't touch memory in use
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Fixing memory leaks: hunt down bugs in source code and recompile. No way around it.
As far CleanMem, at least it doesn't use the L-A-M-E old method of grabbing a truckload of memory - good. But it's still utterly useless, since Windows automatically does this trimming when needed. And while it's not guaranteed to flush things to the paging file, it can do that. Besides, even when not flushing dirty pages, clean pages (code from .exe/.dll files) will have to be re-read from disk if the application needs it. Since CleanMem runs through all processes (except blacklisted ones), it doesn't do the Least-[/b]Recently-Used which Windows itself does.
Stop obsessing over how much "free memory" windows task manager says you have, as this is a pretty useless figure.
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and what has you thinkin i'm using task manager?
Fixing memory leaks: hunt down bugs in source code and recompile. No way around it.
i'd be glad to do this if i knew what i was doing
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i'm not obsessing over anything, the main reason for me to use cleanmem is because i use minimize to tray and don't want to restart ff when mem gets crazy
and YES ff pops up right away out of the tray
like it's supposed to, like i want it to
sheesh...
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Hi,
The main reason i was looking to make Firefox load faster was because of a theme (Silvermel) that stalling my browser (could type in url box, click links in toolbar etc for about 2 minuntes after start up, sometimes browser would simply go into limbo). The reason why i am absolutely certain now is because of the latest update that rendered my search engine box inoperative. It's not easy when you have about 20 extensions and half a dozen themes.
Thanks Mozilla team for this excellent browser! :Thmbsup:
Just wish any extension/theme would cease to come into conflict with similar or with browser.
Opera doesn't have this issue with widgets (but they have other issues of course).
Don't need minimize to tray anymore! ;D
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Run Firefox with no more than 3 extensions/addons and your ok! 8)
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Wow! That was quite the writeup Magis esse! 8)
And so many extensions! :o I'm surprised you don't have many more issues.
Anyway, i did a quick search and someone in another forum pointed out that the History being kept is set at 90 days! :huh: Yup. So i changed it to 7, cleared history cache and cookies and, although it may be too soon to tell, everything seems to be pretty well in ship shape now.
BTW, "MinimizetoTray" isn't to be confused with "Firefox Preloader" (which has been upgraded since 2005). The latter would preload/boot with the OS, not "MtT"
@cmpm, ya, i kind of had that intuition.
-dantheman
Thanks for the heads up about the history cache. It was something I'd overlooked and of course, it was set at the 90 days default! I've done all the tweaks to FF I want, ISTM. My main way of keeping the load time down is only using 7 extensions and 2 themes. FF loads for me in just under 30 seconds, but I'm not in a hurry. YMMV
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You know, sometimes i wonder what the impact can be between extensions themselves?
I mean, perhaps you only have 7 extensions but maybe one of those doesn't like the face of only one other in the group.
Could this happen if there were even more like 30?
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I have 7 extensions and 10 plugins. I run a Vista Premium box. FF3 opens in about 4 seconds. I had changed many of the settings, but then reinstalled the default settings. I have experienced no problems loading FF3.
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Good for you stoobee! :)
And welcome to DCF!
7 extensions is a pretty safe amount i would say.
Problem is that i like to try new ones.
Question is, do extensions have conflicting issues with others or with the browser or both?
Does re-installing extensions all in one shot using FEBE for example have an impact or is better to re-install them one by one, separate from the other?
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Try the Firefox 3.1 beta2. It does seem considerably faster and more responsive than 3.06 in a lot of ways. Albeit, I'm not sure that load times are that much faster.
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I have 39 extensions and FF3 3.06 loads in 3-5 seconds. Fairly new, fairly fast laptop running XP SP3.
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The only problem I've had with FF is the Real video plugin, and frankly, I think it has more to do with the fact that Real is such crap, and less with FF.
I installed the version of Real that offers the handy download this video function, so that I could grab neat vids from webpages.
Then the new version of FF came out so I upgraded, on;y to find out that the real plugin isn't compatible with FF3. Not only that, but FF3 has never been able to locate an update to the Real plugin and on top of that, I now can't uninstall the dysfunctional Real plugin.
So I have a piece of Real crap hanging around that I can't get rid of nor can I update. Really burns my biscuits.
/rant off - thanks for listening
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...I now can't uninstall the dysfunctional Real plugin.
So I have a piece of Real crap hanging around that I can't get rid of nor can I update. Really burns my biscuits.
/rant off - thanks for listening-Daleus
If you have FEBE or Mozbackup, it's a sync to setup a new profile without your Real extension.
Personally, since i've recently had issues with extensions, i've been basically setting them up almost one by one. Although i like FEBE (which i haven't re-installed it yet) MozBackup (less options) has been pretty good.
FF3 has been loading under10 seconds lately.
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You know, sometimes i wonder what the impact can be between extensions themselves?
I mean, perhaps you only have 7 extensions but maybe one of those doesn't like the face of only one other in the group.
Could this happen if there were even more like 30?
-dantheman
dantheman, you probably have a point about some extensions not playing nice with others. I review mine periodically for reconsideration. Currently, those are Adblock Plus (a little problematical in some configurations, I'm told), Customize Google, Flashblock, Secure Login, Session Manager, Stumbleupon, and Tab mix Plus. Java installed Java Quick Starter with JRE runtimes 6 v. 10 or 11. Stumbleupon's hanging by a thread because I just never use it. Been keeping it out of sentiment, maybe. Recently, I dumped Bookmarks Duplicate Manager because I rarely have more than 60-70 bookmarks. Gone are the days of 700+ bookmarks!(ISTM finding what you need is so easy, that bookmarking is rarely useful. YMMV) This is my basic FF3 setup on all my machines. They all run XP Pro SP2 and the slowest is a 2.53GHz P4 with 2GB ram. Loading isn't much of a problem, but the server and one of the main desktops run 24/7. 8-))
Themes? FF default and CrystalFox Qute (easy on the eyes for me)
hth
OEF aka 2 penny Ron
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Btw: putting %TEMP%, firefox internet file cache and profiles dir on a ramdisk is pretty darn nice for reduced disk access - FF starts & operates noticably faster. Downside is of course that you need a ramdisk product that supports persisting the memory contents, and you need a stable backup scheme to avoid dataloss because of crashes or powerloss.
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Getting some good tips here.
"À tout malheur quelque chose de bon!"
Anyway, i was up to 1,700 bookmarks!
This was due in good part to using Diigo which allows you to save to Firefox as well.
Disabled that option and did some early Spring cleaning, now i'm down to about 1,250.
Already, i've noticed that FF has a preppier startup but boy! Is page rendering ever fast in latest 3.0.6 build! :Thmbsup:
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Don't need minimize to tray anymore! ;D
-dantheman
I tried FF Minimize to tray but it acted a bit funny. Now I use a general purpose AutoIt3 freebie called WinTray. If you hold down Shift while clicking the minimize button it minimizes just about any app main window to tray.
http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=85841&hl=WinTray
I'm still using v 1.0. I guess he's up to 1.6 now but you can also download source for it somewhere it that thread.
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I'm really interested in the claims made by stoobee, AndyM, dantheman, and others about Firefox 3 loading in under 10 seconds. Are you talking about the first time you start FF after you've booted up your computer? It takes more than a minute on my computer (which admittedly is almost three years old. The computer is running WinXP Pro, has a 3.20 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 1 GB RAM, and plenty of free space on the hard drive.) Currently, I've got FF 3.0.8 with about 20 add-ons. After the first time, FF tends to start up pretty quickly, but the first time is absurdly long, especially in comparison to Opera 9.64, which starts up in about 5 seconds even the first time I run it. At times, Firefox is also pretty sluggish if I close it down and don't use it for an hour or so. I've gotten so frustrated with it that I've thought about going back to Opera as my default browser, and just using Firefox when I can't use Opera (e.g., when using WebResearch). I probably won't do that, since I'm loathe to give up AdBlock, FlashBlock, CookieCuller, and RoboForm (LastPass isn't nearly as good), but I'd love to find a way to make Firefox as responsive as Opera.
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Just for the record my experience is close to cyberdiva, 12 add-ons and a similar computer. And FF is easily the most sluggish program on it and I have lots of programs that I download to play around with and test. Keep my pc as tuned as I can turning off unneeded stuff and deleting startups, etc. so other things while not great considering the age of my system are still good.
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Cyberdiva,
Just do a search to find .urlfilter for opera and you'll find a way to block most ads in Opera.
Firefox always takes a long time to load when computer is booted up or restarted.
After that, it usually doesn't take mine much more than 8 seconds.
I've read elsewhere that this is the way the Mozilla browser behaves.
I can't do away with qtl, SlimSearch (SimilarWeb recently discovered) extensions for Firefox.
Adblock Plus of course is standard installation but i'm also an avid Diigo user (which recently acquired Furl bookmarking services). Too many bookmarks will slow down your startup process and i'm trying real hard to keep them low in FF. That's why i'm using Diigo as complimentary/backup to my bookmarks.
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Thanks, dantheman, for your response. I'll definitely look for .urlfilter. Even if I don't make Opera the default browser, I still use it enough to make me want to do what I can to get rid of the ads.
From what you say, I guess your statement about Firefox taking <10 seconds to load referred to subsequent loading, not the first time. I can understand Firefox being a little slower than Opera on first load, but Opera loads about ten times as fast. Sigh.
As for bookmarks, they're not an issue for me. I have NO Firefox bookmarks. I keep all my bookmarks in Linkman (http://linkman.outertech.com/index.php?_charisma_page=product&id=5), a terrific bookmark manager that works with Firefox, Opera, IE, and a bunch of other browsers.
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I'm really interested in the claims made by stoobee, AndyM, dantheman, and others about Firefox 3 loading in under 10 seconds. Are you talking about the first time you start FF after you've booted up your computer? -cyberdiva
I was about to say yes, but I did some re-testing and I learned that starting Firefox for the first time after booting is not the same as starting Firefox for the first time after logging off and logging back on. I was quite surprised. I made sure there was no running Firefox process before I started it.
After rebooting: around 20 seconds. After closing Firefox, logging off, logging back on: 7-9 seconds. Any subsequent restart: 5-6 seconds.
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I'm really interested in the claims made by stoobee, AndyM, dantheman, and others about Firefox 3 loading in under 10 seconds. Are you talking about the first time you start FF after you've booted up your computer? It takes more than a minute on my computer (which admittedly is almost three years old. The computer is running WinXP Pro, has a 3.20 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 1 GB RAM, and plenty of free space on the hard drive.) Currently, I've got FF 3.0.8 with about 20 add-ons. After the first time, FF tends to start up pretty quickly, but the first time is absurdly long, especially in comparison to Opera 9.64, which starts up in about 5 seconds even the first time I run it. At times, Firefox is also pretty sluggish if I close it down and don't use it for an hour or so. I've gotten so frustrated with it that I've thought about going back to Opera as my default browser, and just using Firefox when I can't use Opera (e.g., when using WebResearch). I probably won't do that, since I'm loathe to give up AdBlock, FlashBlock, CookieCuller, and RoboForm (LastPass isn't nearly as good), but I'd love to find a way to make Firefox as responsive as Opera.
-cyberdiva
In the end you might have to resort to that. I actually found that Firefox's slow start up doesn't bother me if I'm in a more lightweight browser. Of course there's the problem of Firefox hogging the memory but ironically enough, I found since Opera with more tabs and Google with some tabs still being much less sluggier than FF with those links inside it, I just treat FF like Adobe PDF Reader or some Java App.
Also, the more you deviate from Firefox the more you can trim down on add-ons and the like. Hell, I would even go overboard if it doesn't overwhelm you. Move some add-ons to Flock, some add-ons to Firefox, use Opera as your main browser, use Google as your 2nd lightweight browser (for AJAX sites) and use Maxthon for the third and K-meleon for the 4th. Then just use Flock and Firefox for heavy duty stuff.
I don't do this myself though but because I don't, my taboo firefox extension is so loaded, I can't open the full taboo view or else my 1gb ram system completely slows down beyond minutes.
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I find firefox startup to be relatively sluggish too, especially once you have a good amount of addons, and after you've used it for a while.
Part of the sluggishness seems to be related to the sqlite database files FF uses for various purposes, like your browsing history - getting those files defragmented can help. I went to the extremes of moving my entire firefox profile and browse cache to a ramdisk :) (one that saves it's content to an imagefile when the computer it shutdown/rebooted, and with regular automated backups in the unlikely case I should have a windows crash or power glitch). Helps a lot.
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If there's one thing i can't complain about in FF3, it's the non-existence of CPU overload and ressource usage.
Albeit, i rarely have more than 5 tabs open.
Nevertheless, it's an issue that happens often with Maxthon2 and occasionally with Opera.
I like to keep a "minimum" of bookmarks in Firefox as i do appreciate the url box features (like the "ahsome bar") that i've enhanced with other extensions.
Basically, keeping FF minimized not only helps for quick starts (obviously) but also keeps ressource usage to a minimum.
-XP Home SP2
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I've found a way to make Firefox 3 or 2 lightning fast without compromising security or tweaking it in any way. It loads in under 15 seconds everytime. I've christened it Shaolin RAMming. It takes RAM disking, which fodder uses, a step further. I create a RAM disk big enough to load the entire portable app edition of Firefox 3 and have it load up automatically at start up, where it stays for the duration of my session.
I've tried all the RAMdisk apps I could find out there, and settled on this very easy to use little number: Virtual Hard Drive Pro 2 from FarStone ($29.95 (US)). After installing it, I followed the directions for creating a RAM disk. In my case, I chose 200 MB (out of 1.5 GB RAM). Next, I downloaded and installed the portable app edition of Firefox 3 into my RAMdisk. Why portable? Because it's self-contained, and therefore won't be dragged down by having its cache, profiles, add-ons, etc, placed in various other locations on my hard drive. With Firefox 3 portable installed and configured with a 85 MB cache, it takes up about 170 MB of my 200 MB RAMdisk (leaving me a generous 25 to 30 MB of breathing room).
This RAMdisk application saves a disk image of your RAMdisk to any location you specify on whatever persistent storage medium you choose...automatically. Using the same disk imaging technology which apps like Acronis and ShadowProtect use, Virtual Hard Drive Pro 2 can be configured to take disk images of the contents of your RAMdrive either at regular user-specified intervals or just once upon shutdown. I chose the once upon shutdown option because I reboot my computer on a daily basis and don't mind losing a new bookmark or two if something goes wrong.
Since Virtual Hard Drive Pro 2 allows me to specify where to save this disk image, I chose my USB drive. In essence, I've completely bypassed my hard drive altogether. The disk image of my RAMdisk is saved to my USB drive upon shutdown (automatically). When I reboot, it is taken from my USB drive and reloaded into my RAMdisk (again, automatically). This cycle repeats itself without user intervention every time I start up or shut down my computer. I've been using this technique for about a year now without a single major disaster. Once or twice, when my machine locked up, I lost the contents of my RAMdisk, but then I simply reloaded yesterday's image file (saved to my USB drive). I lost a new bookmark or two, maybe one new add-on.
My results: Firefox 3 loads in under 15 seconds, runs eerily silent (no hard drive access noise or slowdown), and since it bypasses my hard drive completely, it saves that much wear and tear. All automatically. If an outage occurs, I simply recreate the RAMdisk and reload the image file from my USB drive (I also make a backup copy of it elsewhere on my hard drive). This technique works for any portable app, btw. The amount of available system RAM on your machine is the only limit.
(My system: Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (HT), 1.5 GB RAM, Windows XP Home, 180 GB SATA HD. Virtual Hard Drive 2 Pro (presently discounted down to $20 US): http://www.farstone.com/software/virtual-hard-drive.htm)
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I've found a way to make Firefox 3 or 2 lightning fast without compromising security or tweaking it in any way. It loads in under 15 seconds everytime. I've christened it Shaolin RAMming. It takes RAM disking, which fodder uses, a step further. I create a RAM disk big enough to load the entire portable app edition of Firefox 3 and have it load up automatically at start up, where it stays for the duration of my session.
I've tried all the RAMdisk apps I could find out there, and settled on this very easy to use little number: Virtual Hard Drive Pro 2 from FarStone ($29.95 (US)). After installing it, I followed the directions for creating a RAM disk. In my case, I chose 200 MB (out of 1.5 GB RAM). Next, I downloaded and installed the portable app edition of Firefox 3 into my RAMdisk. Why portable? Because it's self-contained, and therefore won't be dragged down by having its cache, profiles, add-ons, etc, placed in various other locations on my hard drive. With Firefox 3 portable installed and configured with a 85 MB cache, it takes up about 170 MB of my 200 MB RAMdisk (leaving me a generous 25 to 30 MB of breathing room).
This RAMdisk application saves a disk image of your RAMdisk to any location you specify on whatever persistent storage medium you choose...automatically. Using the same disk imaging technology which apps like Acronis and ShadowProtect use, Virtual Hard Drive Pro 2 can be configured to take disk images of the contents of your RAMdrive either at regular user-specified intervals or just once upon shutdown. I chose the once upon shutdown option because I reboot my computer on a daily basis and don't mind losing a new bookmark or two if something goes wrong.
Since Virtual Hard Drive Pro 2 allows me to specify where to save this disk image, I chose my USB drive. In essence, I've completely bypassed my hard drive altogether. The disk image of my RAMdisk is saved to my USB drive upon shutdown (automatically). When I reboot, it is taken from my USB drive and reloaded into my RAMdisk (again, automatically). This cycle repeats itself without user intervention every time I start up or shut down my computer. I've been using this technique for about a year now without a single major disaster. Once or twice, when my machine locked up, I lost the contents of my RAMdisk, but then I simply reloaded yesterday's image file (saved to my USB drive). I lost a new bookmark or two, maybe one new add-on.
My results: Firefox 3 loads in under 15 seconds, runs eerily silent (no hard drive access noise or slowdown), and since it bypasses my hard drive completely, it saves that much wear and tear. All automatically. If an outage occurs, I simply recreate the RAMdisk and reload the image file from my USB drive (I also make a backup copy of it elsewhere on my hard drive). This technique works for any portable app, btw. The amount of available system RAM on your machine is the only limit.
(My system: Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (HT), 1.5 GB RAM, Windows XP Home, 180 GB SATA HD. Virtual Hard Drive 2 Pro (presently discounted down to $20 US): http://www.farstone.com/software/virtual-hard-drive.htm)-gpetrant
Out of curiosity how many tabs do you usually have open when you open Firefox?
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I dunno if you gain that much from also moving the FF application files to the ramdrive - moving your profile includes addons and such, but I do find that this (and the internet cache) on ramdisk speeds up things wonderfully :)
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Does it make page rendering faster too?
(I'm content with loading time).
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Does it make page rendering faster too?
(I'm content with loading time).
-dantheman
I don't use a ram disk (yet) but I would think that initial page loads would not be affected. Subsequent page loads that use the cache would be able to access that cache faster, thus a faster page load.
I don't see the advantage of using Portable Firefox. I plan to implement this idea but I will put the FF profile in ram to see if it helps much.
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Does it make page rendering faster too?
(I'm content with loading time).
-dantheman
Nope, it doesn't - except if your page rendering time, for some reason, would be dependent on disk I/O :). This could happen if you have the habit of opening a lot of tabs at the same time. But that wouldn't really be rendering time that's improved, but simply firefox not stalling, waiting for disk I/O for the internet cache.
I find that actual rendering speed in FF is just fine, some people like reducing the "initial paint delay" but I'm not a fan of that.
As for using portable FF, it might give some (small?) amount of additional loading speed, since there's a whole bunch of stuff in the firefox program files folder. I find that with internet cache and profile on the ramdisk, a "cache-hot" startup of FF (ie., not the first start after a computer reboot, but shutting down firefox and re-opening) takes a bit less than a second.
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I went to the extremes of moving my entire firefox profile and browse cache to a ramdisk :) (one that saves it's content to an imagefile when the computer it shutdown/rebooted, and with regular automated backups in the unlikely case I should have a windows crash or power glitch). -f0dder
f0dder, which ram disk app do you use? I plan on testing the Farstone product recommended by gpetrant but I'd like to know about others that do automatic saves.
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Hmmmmm don't know about load time since I haven't booted since install, but this Minefield seems to surf in snappy fashion! AddOns seem to work thanks to Mr Tech. I'm using March 31 daily build. So far it seems pretty stable. Seems to be a bit less lag time when loading a page than FF 3.1 beta 3. Just started using it but so far I see no reason to stop. :)
Edit: did a reboot. First thing after I got desktop I ran Minefield. Subjective time I'd say it came up in about 10 seconds!! I think I'm gonna' like v. 3.6! :)
Edit: guess I see why it's called Minefield. Just wasted 3 hours trying to get favicons to work. Somehow I got into this thing where I could not put FF 2.x back on the machine. It just wouldn't let me install any addons. Had to put 3.1 beta 3 on as the only FF browser. Really weirdy. Prolly shoulda' stuck with 2 as per my original plan!! Sheesh!
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Out of curiosity how many tabs do you usually have open when you open Firefox?
-Paul Keith
Normally one (I built my own start page from which I navigate to my fav sites), occasionally three to four (during the Add-ons update process), rarely eight to ten (when I need to invoke session restore).
I don't use a ram disk (yet) but I would think that initial page loads would not be affected. Subsequent page loads that use the cache would be able to access that cache faster, thus a faster page load.
I don't see the advantage of using Portable Firefox. I plan to implement this idea but I will put the FF profile in ram to see if it helps much.
-edbro
Yes, page loads do get faster for the very reason edbro points out.
I use the portable version of Firefox because it's completely self-contained and hence easier to load the whole thing into my RAM disk. Also, someday, I'd like to sandbox it within my RAM disk for security purposes (I haven't come across a way which would block it from accessing my system files (theoretically, speaking). There are unidirectional USB firewalls which block traffic to a USB drive, but I haven't found any bi-directional ones yet.)
Suggestion: Give the portable a try with your RAM disk. You'll still have your original browser(s) of choice (I do). If it doesn't live up to your expectations, simply nuke the RAM disk (including the .img file) and everything will be gone completely.
Portable Apps: http://portableapps.com/
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Also, someday, I'd like to sandbox it within my RAM disk for security purposes (I haven't come across a way which would block it from accessing my system files (theoretically, speaking). There are unidirectional USB firewalls which block traffic to a USB drive, but I haven't found any bi-directional ones yet.)-gpetrant
You can place a Sandboxie container on the ramdisk that will allow you to run FF in a sandox.
Personally, I take a different route. I use Returnil so that my entire system drive is effectively sandboxed. Same concept as the ramdisk - turn the machine off and you are right back to where you started from.
You have convinced me. I think I will try the portable FF on the ramdisk instead of just the profile. I just need to manually turn on the cache that the Portable FF turns off by default.
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This ram disk (http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/) looks kind of good. Any opinions favourable or not?
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This ram disk (http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/) looks kind of good. Any opinions favourable or not?
-dantheman
I saw that one earlier when I Googled for a freeware ramdisk. But, it doesn't look like it will automatically save the image like Farsoft. If I'm going to run Firefox in ram then I will want to save the image every so often. If I save a bookmark, I want it to be there tomorrow.
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Out of curiosity how many tabs do you usually have open when you open Firefox?
-Paul Keith
Normally one (I built my own start page from which I navigate to my fav sites), occasionally three to four (during the Add-ons update process), rarely eight to ten (when I need to invoke session restore).-gpetrant
I guess this tweak isn't for me. I normally open FirefoxPortable with 25+ tabs minimum.
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Well, I installed Farsoft Ramdisk and put Portable FF on it. I compared it to my normal FF on hard disk.
5.5 seconds for Portable FF to load from ram
6.5 seconds for FF to load from HD.
Not enough of an improvement for me to buy the ramdisk software and to give up that memory. Has anybody else done a comparison?
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edbro: loading FF is only part of the story - what you really need to compare is browsing around, having lots of tabs open (and stuff like opening all the links from "view unread posts" in background tabs, then surfing the main tab while the background tabs are loading.
Putting portable FF on the ramdisk probably also meant you put a pretty clean install on the ramdisk? That means no huge & fragmented *.sqlite files, and not a lot of internet cache files?
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No, I installed Portable FF but replaced the generic profile with my current profile. So, it was an apples to apples comparison.
I ran with it for a while but honestly, I couldn't notice much of a difference.
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OK.
Can't say I get a huge improvement here, but it's noticeable - YMMV. urlclassifier3.sqlite and places.sqlite are both ~23MB, and I used the SQLite VACUUM on both a couple of weeks ago.
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You can place a Sandboxie container on the ramdisk that will allow you to run FF in a sandox.
Personally, I take a different route. I use Returnil so that my entire system drive is effectively sandboxed. Same concept as the ramdisk - turn the machine off and you are right back to where you started from.
You have convinced me. I think I will try the portable FF on the ramdisk instead of just the profile. I just need to manually turn on the cache that the Portable FF turns off by default.
-edbro
Thanks for the suggestions, edbro. I've read very positive reviews of both products, but never thought of trying sandboxie in a ramdisk.
Also didn't know portable FF turns off caching by default. I think mine is caching (it has a cache folder which grows and shrinks over time). How do you enable it, if it isn't?
This ram disk (http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/) looks kind of good. Any opinions favourable or not?
-dantheman
I did try the freebie from QSoft. It's a basic ramdisk driver with a GUI. You install it as you would any driver. It does have an imaging component, but I couldn't get to work for me. Although free, I prefer the commercial products for their flexibility, ease of use, and overall polish.
If money were no object, I'd probably either go for the RamDisk or RamDisk Plus from SuperSpeed, or DiskBoost from Everstrike.
The difference? RamDisk Plus and DiskBoost are much more flexible and have more features (i.e. you can create more than one ramdisk at a time, encrypt ramdisk content, password protect image files, etc.)
For a simple single ramdisk, FarStone is my choice.
RamDisk and RamDisk Plus: http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php
DiskBoost: http://www.everstrike.com/ramdisk/
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From the Portable Apps site:
Disable Cache - Cache is disabled by default because on most drives, cache will actually slow Firefox Portable down. If you've copied in a local profile or enabled it, you can disable it within the Options window.
They disable it to prevent the constant read/writes on a USB drive. USB drives have a limited number of r/w's.
I think I remember being able to set the cache during the install. In any case, it appears that if you copy in your own profile like I did, then the caching setting will go with it.
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Thanks. :up:
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I guess this tweak isn't for me. I normally open FirefoxPortable with 25+ tabs minimum.
-Paul Keith
Whoa!! That's some heavy tabbing. What I'm still trying to find out is why it's written in stone that the back button has to reload the page. I don't fathom what the cache is there for if you can't reload stuff you just downloaded 3 seconds ago when you hit the back button. Very strange design.
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Whoa!! That's some heavy tabbing. What I'm still trying to find out is why it's written in stone that the back button has to reload the page. I don't fathom what the cache is there for if you can't reload stuff you just downloaded 3 seconds ago when you hit the back button. Very strange design.
-MilesAhead
That debate or question has been asked on mozillazine and other related places for years, going back to the mozilla days. Never understood it.
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I guess this tweak isn't for me. I normally open FirefoxPortable with 25+ tabs minimum.
-Paul Keith
Whoa!! That's some heavy tabbing. What I'm still trying to find out is why it's written in stone that the back button has to reload the page. I don't fathom what the cache is there for if you can't reload stuff you just downloaded 3 seconds ago when you hit the back button. Very strange design.-MilesAhead
Nah, that is the minimum tabs I allow FF to have or else my PC isn't powerful enough to not totally slow a Java App when I have it alongside me. The larger tab collections I move towards Opera and Chrome.
On the plus side for having more tabs, I'm not irked by the back button as much because I rarely have a page I need to constantly sift back and forth to on Firefox. On the downside Firefox still slows down when a new page isn't finished loading especially at startup.
Also Opera is better for this purpose because due to it's speed and keyboard shortcuts, you just press z or x unless the newer versions change it again. In that case you just reset it back to the old settings.
Then they also have linked tabs which is a tab especially set to open a link in a new tab but is directly connected to the old tab.
Combined with the 1 and 2 hotkey for moving through tabs and the multiple ways to reorganize and shift through tabs, the only annoying part is having an Ajax Web 2.0 app like Remember the Milk hijack the hotkeys and needing to right click open in Firefox or just copy paste the url.
(Right clicking requires more configuration if Opera doesn't detect a portable browers like FirefoxPortable but Opera has a context menu for copying the address so you don't need to highlight the address bar)
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Whoa!! That's some heavy tabbing. What I'm still trying to find out is why it's written in stone that the back button has to reload the page. I don't fathom what the cache is there for if you can't reload stuff you just downloaded 3 seconds ago when you hit the back button. Very strange design.
-MilesAhead
That debate or question has been asked on mozillazine and other related places for years, going back to the mozilla days. Never understood it.
-rgdot
It is really weird. If you get into it all you get back is something along the lines that it's so hard-wired into the browser that it will never be undone as it would break too much code or something. Sounds really bizarre to me.
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... about tabs ...
-Paul Keith
Wow!! iirc the most insane(or useful I guess depending on your perspective) plugins for Maxthon were tab related(makes me think of that movie "Gang Related" with Jim Belushi) as people there really get into big time too. Me, the most rambunctious I get is I have a folder with 3 bookmarks and I open all in tabs, first thing on startup. :)