One thing that has always left me puzzled is why Firefox takes so long to startup. Both Opera and Internet Explorer take just seconds to get up and running, but on all four of my computers Firefox takes between 10 and 20 seconds to start (even with no extensions installed).
If you find yourself in a similar situation then what you might need is the open source Firefox Preloader. It can be set to startup when you turn your computer on, and with it Firefox will always be at your beck and call. If there are multiple versions of Firefox installed on your computer you can decide which one you would like it to work with.
This feature does come at a cost though. When the preloader first started up on my computer it used about 4MB of memory itself, and Firefox was using about 10MB. Those aren’t drastic numbers, but for those of you conscious about the memory usage you might want to think twice before using the preloader. Also, when you close Firefox it doesn’t actually close all the way, instead it’s just tucked away so that it will still start quickly the next time you go to use it.
Firefox Preloader (for Windows only)
Thanks to “S” for the tip!
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Tags: Firefox, Freeware, Software, Performance
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This program hasn’t been updated since 2005.
Will it work with 2.0 or 3 ?
Dat is the question.
@Ryan:
That’s right. In my computer Firefox launches in just about 10.10 seconds. Don’t you think that’s pretty fast. With Firefox Preloader, how long does it take? Does it makes sense to install this utility to enhance productivity?
Regards,
Omar.-
Yup, worked great with Firefox 2 and 3 when I tried it.
On my computer Opera takes about 2 seconds to start up, so I like to see Firefox do the same thing. With the preloader it takes about 2 or 3 seconds to startup, which is a lot better in my opinion.
Grammar police. Should be “Beck and call”, not “beckon call”.
Also, on Vista with the prefetch stuff it has, Firefox takes virtually no time at all to start up.
Just a thought.
Huh? On Vista (Superfetch naturally enabled), T5500 processor, Firefox+several extensions starts in about 3 seconds.
But there are always some guys that wants to kill Superfetch… strange.
I’m surprised that Firefox starts to fast for so many of you. For me, Firefox takes at least a minute to start. However, I’ve probably downloaded every addon known to man, which might explain the lag…
I hope this speeds things up quite a bit.
Two things…Firefox will still have to load. The preloader loads it when Windows starts up. When restarting you computer, now you have to wait for both the preloader and Firefox to load.
Also, using Vista with SuperFetch enabled I didn’t notice any difference loading Firefox with or without the preloader loaded.
It works fine on my computer [Win XP SP2] and Firefox 2.0.0.11 and got some improvement but not this remarkable difference. One of the major problem Firefox has it that it uses a whole bunch of RAM memory…. and of course all the extensions don’t help it.
My add ons I think are crapping my firefox start times.
Instead of closing and opening Firefox multiple times a day, I use the extension “minimize to tray” to minimize Firefox to the system notification area. I have configured it so that it will minimize to tray instead of closing when I use the “X” button of the window, and that it will restore with a single click on the tray icon. This way, opening Firefox is as fast as restoring a window.
I know that it takes a lot of memory, but since Firefox is pretty much THE app I use the most on my PC, I don’t mind. And of course, I can still exit Firefox for good by using the “File > Exit” command. Also, I’ve set Windows to launch Firefox automatically every time I start my computer.
I have Thunderbird working the same way (with the same extension).
I always find it interesting how it’s perfectly acceptable in Firefox land to “fix it with an add-on”. That makes me think of how Microsoft is now selling anti-virus software for its own system(!). I mean, in both cases, shouldn’t they just be fixing the basic problem? Any other product manufacturer is obliged to do that.
Well, at least Firefox isn’t making you pay for the repair…
In any case, voilà another good reason to use Opera.
Huh, learn something new everyday.
SuperFetch will only work provided that you have enough free RAM available. So if you’re running Vista on a system with 1GB of memory the odds are pretty good that SuperFetch won’t do too much caching.
The system I tried it out on only had 1GB of RAM, and so there isn’t enough free for Vista to use SuperFetch. That’s where the preloader really shines.
Extensions are definitely a sore spot for the performance of many Firefox installations.
That’s almost what this app does, too. It’s just like minimizing it to the tray.
like always no version exists for linux. so sad.
Not that I know much about Vista at this point, but would ReadyBoost help speed up Firefox on Vista? For those unfamiliar with ReadyBoost look at this article http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarche.....15199.aspx
I came across this last year when buying a nice 4GB flash drive. If you have a fast drive it is supposed to cache things to speed up Vista. Ryan, have you tried this? Anyone else?
I’ve run into problems with this app when I it came to updates. Since Firefox would not close fully I was getting errors when trying to apply nightly build updates. Also for some odd reason it made so I was getting updates from both the release and nightly build channels, which caused even more issues. I have since removed the app.
I have used ReadyBoost before, but on my system I already have 2GB of RAM so I hardly see any benefit from having a USB drive attached. If a computer had just 512MB of RAM (the minimum) then there are supposed to be significant performance increases.
I guess when updating you would need to make sure to manually unload Firefox.
I would like to point you all to an article about the Firefox Preloader. http://www.sixxgate.com/?p=35
I really like Minimize To Tray. It’s not compatible with FF3 yet but that’s okay. I’m sure it will be soon.