CyberNet News » Firefox

How to Reduce Firefox’s Memory Usage

Pieter — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:47:15 +0000

It’s a common problem among Firefox power users: you’ve been surfing the web for some time and all of a sudden Firefox’s memory footprint goes through the roof. And although Mozilla’s developers do their best to ensure that Firefox is stable, many people play a part in the browser’s memory leaks without knowing it. So how do you get Firefox to run smoothly again?

Do you really need that Firefox extension?
In my opinion, Firefox’s support for add-ons is one of its most valuable features, but there’s a catch: the longer Firefox has been installed on your hard drive, the more extensions you install and the slower Firefox becomes. That’s why it’s not a bad idea to uninstall extensions you don’t use. If you want to keep a certain extension around just in case, disable it to prevent it from being loaded on startup.

Disable all unnecessary plugins
Aside from your extensions, there are some hidden memory eaters in Firefox that you may want to get rid off: plug-ins you didn’t even ask for. Common plug-ins you might want to disable of include Microsoft Silverlight, Java, Google Update, QuickTime, RealPlayer and Adobe Reader. If you disable the latter, you won’t be able to view PDFs in your browser. Instead, you’ll be prompted with the standard download dialog. Unlike extensions, plugins can be disabled/enabled without restarting your browser.

Reboot Firefox with a hotkey while saving your tabs
Rebooting Firefox is one of the most effective ways to lower its memory footprint. Originally intended for use by extension developers, QuickRestart does just that. Just press Ctrl+Alt+R to reboot Firefox while conserving your currently opened tabs.

Use Safe mode
Vista Rewired suggests using Firefox’s Safe mode in situations where you just need the basic browser. In Safe mode, all your extensions are disabled. You can find a shortcut to Firefox’s Safe mode in its Start Menu folder. Alternatively, you can launch it with the -safe-mode parameter. Visit Vista Rewired here for more details.

Hack: save Firefox’s state on your hard drive when minimized
In 2006, Ryan wrote about a way to have Firefox save its state on your hard drive when it’s minimized. This involves creating a setting of the boolean type in Firefox named config.trim_on_minimize with value true. Although this might free up some memory when Firefox is minimized, it may cause a slight delay when you restore Firefox’s main window. If you want to activate this hack, check out the how-to here.

Start with a clean slate
For that extra speed boost, you should consider starting out with a clean Firefox install. To do this, you’ll need to delete your entire profile folder. If you’re not sure where to find this folder, you might want to read Mozilla’s explanation here. Unless you don’t mind your bookmarks being wiped, ensure that they are backed up. Also note that this will not only delete your bookmarks, but also your extensions, your settings, your saved passwords, your history and so on. That’s a lot of data you’re throwing away, but obviously that’s the reason why wiping your profile is so effective.

Related Posts:

Firefox 3 Memory Leaks Status Update

CyberNotes: Windows Memory Usage Explained

Must-Have Firefox Extension: StatusbarEx

New Tab Mix Plus Uses Firefox’s Built-In Session Restore

Keeping Track Of Firefox Extensions That Leak Memory

CyberSearch 2.0.2 Released

Ryan — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:23:47 +0000

For those of you using CyberSearch I thought I’d let you know that I just released version 2.0.2 that resolves almost all of the issues users were reporting with Firefox 3.6 Beta 1. The main reason I wanted to let everyone know is that Mozilla hasn’t approved CyberSearch 2.0 yet, which means you won’t receive an update notification in the browser. If you want to update to the latest version you’ll need to head on over to the CyberSearch homepage and install it from there.

I’ve also rolled up several bug fixes in this release, and one simple feature that I meant to include with the original release but never got around to fully implementing it. It’s so simple that I wouldn’t be surprised if you used it without even realizing it. What is it? Pressing the Escape key when you have a result selected should repopulate the address bar with your search phrase. This should be natural for most people… you use the keyboard to highlight a few results, decide they aren’t want you want, and press the Escape key to “cancel” the selection.

I’m trying to make this as user-friendly as possible, and since the release I’ve received over 300 emails that include feature requests, bugs (mostly reports from Firefox 3.6 Beta users… thanks everyone!), and a lot of “thank you” messages. A majority of the feature requests I’ve gotten are great ideas, but won’t be implemented because they stray from my original vision. For example, I’ve received numerous requests to offer the same search functionality in the search box instead of the address bar. The whole goal of CyberSearch is giving you the tools you need to drop the search box all together. So don’t be offended if I don’t agree with your ideas… right now I feel as though I’m teetering on the edge of having something so complicated that no one will want to use it. For that reason I’m very selective with what gets added, and also because CyberSearch currently has over 100,000 users (123,000 at its peak) that I have to take into consideration.

I think I’ve been able to personally respond to every email, but if I haven’t by now feel free to shoot me another one.

CyberSearch Homepage

Related Posts:

CyberSearch Tops 25,000 Downloads

CyberSearch Publicly Available on Mozilla Add-ons

CyberSearch Supports Firefox 3.1 Beta

CyberSearch 1.0.1: Background Colors are Back

CyberSearch 1.0.2: Pull Up Google Results Page Faster

CyberSearch 2.0: Bing Support, Search Details, and More

Ryan — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:48:08 +0000

I’ve been working on a new version of CyberSearch for a little while now, and I’ve been trying to come up with ways to add all of the most requested features. It wasn’t until about August 2009 that I started to get inspired to work on the extension again, which is when we all of a sudden saw a huge surge in downloads that has remained constant ever since. In the last 3 months we went from getting about 300 downloads a day and 10,000 active users to an astounding 3,000-7,000 downloads a day and almost 90,000 active users. I believe the rapid increase has been coming from the fact that we’re now a Mozilla “recommended” add-on, and as some users have pointed out to me our add-on sometimes shows up in the add-on management window within Firefox. So a big thanks to Mozilla for giving me the motivation to push out a new version, because without them the CyberSearch growth graph probably wouldn’t look like this:

CyberSearch 2.0 is almost a complete rewrite of the previous version, and I did that for performance concerns. Since I wanted to add more features I knew I had to squeeze every last ounce of juice out before I could move on, otherwise I could have ended up with something sluggish enough that people wouldn’t even want to use it. To put it in perspective… CyberSearch 2.0 actually does about half the number of computations that CyberSearch 1.0 did for each search that is performed.

As far as new features go we’ve got quite a few! The first thing is Bing support. You can now create keywords that use either Bing or Google, which is pretty cool if you think about it. That means you can make one keyword that searches Bing, and another that searches Google. If you don’t like the results that one search engine shows just try using the other… and all you have to do is change the keyword. The real reason I wanted to add Bing support, however, is because they have some API functionality that Google doesn’t offer. Thanks to Bing you can actually create keywords that will do conversions/calculations using their Instant Answer technology, or lookup the spelling of a word. You can do this all from the comfort of your address bar.

Next up: search descriptions. This is undoubtedly the most requested feature. You wanted some way to view the descriptions of all the search results just as if you were at the search engine page. I struggled with this for awhile because I didn’t want to try and cram the descriptions into the Address Bar menu which is already cramped, and could require a lot of scrolling to see all the results. That’s when I came up with the idea to use the area behind the menu for this! That way I have a large amount of space to work with, and am able to display way more details than I originally anticipated. For example, if you’re using a keyword with the Google Local service just press the arrows on your keyboard to highlight one of the results. You should see the background behind the menu dim down, and location details will appear… including a thumbnail of a map for where that place is located (as seen in the screenshot above)! All of the different types of searches provide you with customized details (video searches show the duration, book searches provide the ISBN number, blog searches show the publication date, etc…), and screenshots of them all can be found on the CyberSearch homepage.

Those are the two main highlights of the extension, but that doesn’t mean that’s all that changed. You’ll also find little things throughout CyberSearch 2.0 that should make your life a little easier. Things like a “snapback” button in the address for pulling up the last search phrase you used, or the ability to import/export your configuration and keywords so that setting up multiple machines with CyberSearch is a breeze! These were all your ideas, and hopefully they are exactly what you wanted.

When I describe my extension to people they often ask if it’s similar to Google Chrome’s “omnibar,” which is the name for their browser’s address bar. It eliminates the need for a search box just like CyberSearch does, but it isn’t nearly as powerful. Just watch this 3-minute video I put together and tell me if Chrome can do this:

The next thing I want to try and work on is localization so that CyberSearch supports other languages/countries, but it will probably be a little while before I can get to adding any big features like this again. If you find any bugs please report them so that I can try to get them fixed right away. Thanks again for all of your support and feedback!

CyberSearch Homepage

CyberSearch Passes 50,000 Downloads

Safari’s Inquisitor Comes to Firefox

CyberSearch 1.0.2: Pull Up Google Results Page Faster

CyberSearch 2.0.2 Released

Best Firefox 4 Theme

Ryan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:16:32 +0000

There have been a few themes that have been developed using the mockups Mozilla made for Firefox 4.0. What’s funny is that while Firefox 4.0 is over a year away you can already get the same beautiful design without having to wait.

As you can see in the screenshot above the theme is extremely close to this particular mockup from Mozilla. Unfortunately, however, there are a few things that you have to install other than just a theme in order to get the full affect. The good news is that the theme developer outlines all of the different things you’ll want depending on exactly how far you want to go:

Strata40 – This is pretty essential… because it’s the theme itself.
StrataGlass – Needed for Aero glass effects on Windows 7/Vista.
Personal Menu – Needed for tools and bookmarks toolbar buttons. I noticed that if you hide the Menu bar that you’ll want to disable the ability to press the Alt key to quickly display the toolbar. If you don’t there is a small group of text that isn’t properly hidden by the theme.
Omnibar – Not essential but great for using the address bar for searching instead of the search box. You’ll probably want this because the theme seems to have a little bit of troubles if you have the search box displayed. Our CyberSearch add-on may also be handy in this respect.
Fission – Needed for “progress line” feature. Shows the page’s loading progress as a small line below the address bar.
The mockups also include a tabs on top version. If you would like a tabs on top version install an addon called Stylish, and then install this style.

It may sound like a lot of work, but I was actually able to get it all setup in less than 5-minutes. And there’s no need to say that I’ve had several people ask what browser I’m using when they’ve seen me running this.

Strata40 Firefox Theme [via ghacks]

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Integrated Gmail Transforms Your Inbox into a Website Hub

Ryan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:49:44 +0000

For the longest time I’ve been wanting Google to bring all of their services together into some sort of unified interface. A place where I could read my email, manage my calendar, catch up on news in my RSS feeds, search for a place on a map, and so on. Just one central page that does it all so that I only need one tab open to have access to all that information.

Even though Google hasn’t brought everything together themselves it’s still possible to do on your own, but only if you’re a Firefox user. Thanks to an extension called Integrated Gmail you can bring all of your Google services plus any third-party sites right into your Inbox. As seen in the screenshot to the right I’ve got everything I want fast access to in a series of expandable boxes. I can pick and choose the order that I want them in, add whatever sites I want (such as Pandora for streaming music), and I can also add Google gadgets.

There are a few nice interface designs that demonstrated to me the detail the designer put into this. For one the Gmail and Google Reader icons both show the unread counts on them so that even if they aren’t expanded you’ll still know when you have new items.

You might be thinking to yourself that having the unread count on the Gmail icon doesn’t really matter because you can always see it in the sidebar. Well, that’s where the other nice touch comes in. In the bottom-left corner of the screen you’ll see the green arrow that can be used to collapse the sidebar. This is awesome for anyone working on a small netbook screen so that you can maximize your precious viewing area. The cherry on top is that you can also collapse the header thereby maximizing your vertical space as well. It’s a minimalist’s dream.

I’d like to see something like this come out of Gmail Labs, but I’m doubtful anything they’d release would match some of the features this has. They surely wouldn’t let you add third-party sites, because that could mean you’d add another email service like Yahoo! Mail to your Gmail Inbox. At any rate this Firefox extension will serve me well until Google figures out some sort of plan.

Integrated Gmail Homepage (Firefox only; freeware)

New Google Reader Greasemonkey Script

Google Works On Integrating Their Services Together

Greasemonkey Script To Put Google Reader In GMail

Get Ready To See A Google Calendar And Links Bar In GMail

Firefox 3.7 and Firefox 4.0 Interface Mockups

Ryan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:25:22 +0000

Mozilla just wrapped up the Firefox 3.5 release a few weeks ago, but they are already going to town on what they can do for future improvements. When they redesigned Firefox 3.0 I thought the new designs were okay, but they weren’t anything that seemed to be revolutionary.

What’s neat about Mozilla, however, is that they’re not afraid to show the world what they’re thinking about doing months or even years ahead of time. They aren’t afraid of the competition coming along and outdoing them, and as a result they can get a lot of quality feedback so that they can fine tune the various aspects of the browser before it gets shipped out to the world.

Keeping in that spirit Mozilla has released some rather polished mockups of the route they’re thinking about going for Firefox 3.7. There’s no word on when Firefox 3.7 is planned to be available, but the last I heard Firefox 3.6 is due out in mid-2010. I’m guessing that puts Firefox 3.7 somewhere in 2011. So don’t get too excited quite yet, because by the time that version is released these design styles may already be outdated.

Below you’ll find some of the various mockups for Firefox 3.7 on Windows, and then I also stumbled upon one Firefox 4.0 mockup that is more of the “hand drawn” style. Before I jump into the screenshots I wanted to pull a quote that I found on the MozillaWiki:

This is sometimes a hard area to explore. Windows applications are not known for their visual design savvy.

They then go on to reference Paint (the Windows 7 version), Zune Player software, and Postbox as being three applications that have nice interfaces. They also mention wanting to remove the Menu Bar, and making the entire interface a bit more streamlined. The screenshots show that they are doing just that:

Firefox 3.7 Mockups (click thumbnail to enlarge)

Firefox 4.0 Mockup (click thumbnail to enlarge)

So what do you think? Is Mozilla on the right track? By the time they actually get these out the door will they already be labeled as outdated?

via Mozilla Wiki [here and here]
Thanks Christian!

Mockups of the Firefox 3 Safari Theme

Create Interface Mockups in Firefox

Firefox Mobile Progress Update

Firefox 3 Alpha 8 – Bookmark Tagging, App Preferences, and More

Create Site Shortcuts in Firefox

Ryan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:21:22 +0000

In Firefox you’ve always been able to assign a keyword to any bookmark, which would take you to that particular site if you type the keyword in the address bar and press Enter. That’s nice and all, but once you get a large number of shortcuts it can be tough to remember them all.

That’s where the SiteLauncher extension comes into play. You can setup all of your favorite sites and assign single-letter shortcuts to them. Then with a quick press of a hotkey (such as Ctrl+Space) you’re presented with a visually appealing list of shortcuts that is laid on top of the site you’re viewing. It serves as a good reminder of what letter you assigned to what site.

Want to know more? Here’s a quick rundown on the features:

Create super quick keyboard shortcuts to URLs and bookmarklets you need access to often.
Instant visual feedback from the Launcher panel means no need to actually memorize anything but the one hotkey.
Just about any character key can be associated with a site, you’re not limited to a-z and 0-9.
Highly customizable appearance – change colors, sizes, transparency, etc.
Make use of shortcuts with visual feedback, using the Launcher hotkey; or without, using the Direct-to-Site hotkey.
Arrange and group related shortcuts to have them appear together in a visually meaningful way.
Set the Launcher to open sites in current or new tab
Optionally set the Launcher to appear on startup instead of a regular homepage

If you’re feeling adventurous there’s an Alpha version available that also lets you choose the icon size, and to accommodate the mouse-centric users you no longer have to assign a letter to a shortcut.

SiteLauncher Homepage [Firefox only; free]

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Faster Than Ever Application Launcher

KwiClick: Faster Searching in Firefox

Ryan — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:21:49 +0000

I’m always on the lookout for a good Firefox extension, and I got an email the other day about one I’ve really fallen in love with. It’s called KwiClick, and it does exactly what I look for in an extension… it stays out of my way until I need it, and when I do use it I get the results I want.

So what’s KwiClick do? Basically it displays a nice little floating window that is capable of showing search results from sites like Google, YouTube, FriendFeed, Twitter, Google Maps, Flickr, Wikipedia, Amazon, Technorati, Viddler, Yahoo, del.icio.us, and more. You can even pin the floating window so that it will remain on top while you browse around. The example they give where this could be handy is for browsing the web while wanting to watch a video at the same time. You can open up a YouTube video in KwiClick, and pin the window so that it will remain open even while you browse in the background. Very slick!

Personally I love it for the mapping capabilities. As you can see in the screenshot above you can highlight an address, open KwiClick, and have a map instantly slide out from the side of the screen. I love the fact that it’s extremely unobtrusive since the window will disappear as soon as you click back on the website, well, unless you pin the window.

The developers have definitely gone out of their way to make this as useful as it can be, and I’m impressed with how they were able to stray away from making this more annoying than helpful. It seems like all the other extensions with similar features get in the way more than anything else, but this one is definitely different. Job well done guys!

Get KwiClick for Firefox

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Microsoft Launches Preview of Windows Search 4.0

Desktop Firefox Extension: Another Speed Dial Concept

Ryan — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:11:45 +0000

When Opera introduced Speed Dial into their browser I didn’t realize quite how big of a hit it would become. Now most browsers are shipping with some sort of iteration of this feature that is capable of showing thumbnail previews for the sites you frequently visit. It’s basically a visual way to view your favorite sites.

There have been plenty of Firefox extensions designed to mimic the way Speed Dial works, but there is a new kid on the block. Desktop is an experimental extension that not only shows thumbnail previews of the sites you specify, but you can also arrange them as if they were items on your desktop. It will remember the exact layout that you specify… just drag-and-drop.

To sweeten the deal Desktop also lets you create folders, and then inside of those folders you can put even more bookmarks. When you’ve created a folder the “icon” will be a preview of all the bookmarks you’ve placed inside of it. Pretty slick! The whole system seems pretty smooth, and I hope the developer continues to take this even further.

Get Desktop for Firefox [via Webware]

Related Posts:

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CyberSearch Passes 50,000 Downloads

Ryan — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:28:25 +0000

Our homegrown CyberSearch Firefox extension has hit a big milestone last week as it passed the 50,000 download mark! I never expected the extension to be that well received, but I’m happy to see that so many users are finding it to be useful.

On average it looks like there are about 10,000 users running our extension each day, and at its peak there were about 13,200 users. If you’re interested in more stats they are all publicly available here.

So what’s next with CyberSearch? As of right now I don’t have any plans on adding new functionality, but one of the most requested features is to add support for other search engines like Yahoo. I would really like to do that, but the last time I looked at Yahoo’s search API it wasn’t quite as elaborate as what Google offers. So it would probably take a significant amount of work to make it work the way I’d want it to.

The main thing I’m focusing on right now is making sure the extension remains compatible with pre-release versions of Firefox 3.5, because as a Beta tester myself I know it can get frustrating when an extension stops working. I’m not using nightly builds right now though, so if you see a bug in a nightly release please shoot me an email so that I can look into whether it’s something I need to resolve.

We’ve updated the extension so that Firefox 3.5 testers should be able to install CyberSearch without needing to force the compatibility, which is something I’ve received several requests for. So if you’re using the extension I hope you’re enjoying it, and as always feel free to submit your feedback.

CyberSearch Tops 25,000 Downloads

Half of Firefox Extensions Not Compatible with 3.1

CyberSearch 0.9.6 Update

CyberSearch 2.0.2 Released