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Make Firefox 3 load faster

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f0dder:
Does it make page rendering faster too?

(I'm content with loading time).
-dantheman (March 31, 2009, 09:47 AM)
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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.

edbro:
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 (March 31, 2009, 12:36 AM)
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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.

MilesAhead:
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!

gpetrant:
Out of curiosity how many tabs do you usually have open when you open Firefox?
-Paul Keith (March 31, 2009, 07:19 AM)
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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 (March 31, 2009, 10:06 AM)
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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/

edbro:
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 (March 31, 2009, 01:33 PM)
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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.

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