Tutorial - Lower the amount of memory used by Firefox!

[Lyte]

Lower the amount of memory used by Firefox!

If your computer starts to slow down after you’ve been using Firefox for a while, you may be able to regain some of your system resources by limiting the amount of memory that Firefox is “allowed” to use for caching, thus improving your system performance. It should be noted that if you have 1GB or more of RAM, you probably don’t need to follow these steps..

1. In your Firefox address bar, enter the following text: about:config



2. Scroll down to the entry titled browser.cache.memory.enable and make sure the Value is set to true. If it’s not, double-click anywhere in the browser.cache.memory.enable line and the status will change to true



3. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu



4. Enter browser.cache.memory.capacity in the New integer value pop-up box



5. You’ll need to enter a number in the Enter integer value, but that number depends on how much memory you have (specifically, how much you want to “give” Firefox). If you have 256MB or less RAM, enter 4096 as the value. If you have 512MB of RAM, enter 6144 or 8192. If you have 128MB or less RAM, you may want to consider upgrading - memory is getting very inexpensive.



6. Confirm that the new entry has been created and the integer value is correct.



7. If for any reason you wish to restore the default settings, change the browser.cache.memory.capacity integer value to -1 (that’s minus one).

Restart Firefox and see if the change helped. You can use the Task Manager (Windows) or the Activity Monitor utility (Mac) to monitor your Firefox memory usage.

Source: SimpleHelp.net

[firestorm]

Will this not slightly slow down your browsing?

[Lyte]

Well... from what I've read....

"These configuration changes are a trade-off between internet browsing speed and memory usage. They are most useful if you are multitasking and need Firefox to be less of a memory hog while using other applications."

You'll find more info about this tweek here.

Lyte

[dr911]

I have "tweeked" FF so much.....it's about 2x as fsat as IE !!!

[Lyte]

Kewl Doc! Share the wealth... what tweeks have you made?

Lyte

[dr911]

Originally Posted by Lyte

Kewl Doc! Share the wealth... what tweeks have you made?

Lyte

I shall..Lyte & Other members:

Increase Firefox Browser Speed

I found a way to boost browser performance in Firefox (and Mozilla) to a level you literally won't believe? The update takes two minutes, requires no add-ins or purchases, and blows your hair back when you surf even the most dog-slow Web sites.

. To boost Firefox, simply do the following after launching your browser.

1. Type "about:config" into the address bar (no spaces) and hit "Enter". Scroll down and look for the following entries:
--network.http.pipelining
--network.http.proxy.pipelining
--network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
First, highlight the address that is in the address and delete it using the "Backspace" then type about:config then, Enter.
Normally the browser will make one request at a time to a Web page. When you enable pipelining, the browser will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. (This tells the browser to make 30 requests at once.)
[To set these 2 items to "true" highlight the item and hit 'Enter" and the item will change from "false" to "true".

3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before acting on received information.(Basically...Right click on the 'line of question'
In the drop down menu, click on 'toggle' to change the setting from 'false' to 'true'

Close Firefox and then restart Firefox to complete the settings .)

[Lyte]

Thanks Doc!

Lyte