GKauten Consultingv1.2

I don’t know about any of you out there, but when I signed on as an avid Firefox supporter I haven’t had any reason to look back for several years now. One thing I have noticed though is that with each new Firefox release the memory (RAM) usage seems to keep increasing. At first I simply assumed it was because I was beating my poor browser to death with all the different tabs and plug-ins I use all at once.

Since my laptop came with 3 GB (yes I know that isn’t much anymore) it never really hurt anything else and I could still run my full Adobe suite, Outlook Express, iTunes, and McAfee AV program (another RAM hog) without much problem. Sure there would be some lag here and there, processor performance would peak for a few seconds when switching windows, but for the most part this little HP laptop has been an unstoppable beast. The problem seemed to come around when I finally upgraded to Firefox 3.6.

The application runs perfectly fine and it has never given me an unexpected shutdown, but the RAM usage almost doubled! It would constantly use between 350 to 450 MB at a time, up from the previous 150-250 MB with its earlier version installed. Vaguely remembering some research I had done for a project a few months ago I remember the wonderful “about:config” trick inside Firefox to access core settings. Now, I really wouldn’t suggest tweaking things that you have no clue what they do, but here are a few tweaks you can use to really knock that RAM usage down.

Reduce the Amount of RAM Firefox Uses for its Cache Feature:

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer” in the filter box.
3. Set the value to “0″.

Increase the Speed in Which Firefox Loads Pages:

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading. This will set Firefox to use twice as many connections as it previously did.

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return.
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 8.

Reduce RAM Usage to 10 MB when Firefox is Minimized

This will reduce Firefox’s RAM usage down to about 10 MB when minimized.

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize” and press enter.
4. Now select “true” and then press enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

After running through the suggestions above, Firefox is running much more smoothly and incredibly faster. It might actually even be able to keep up with my 20 MB internet connection! RAM usage has been clocked around 100 MB now compared to the 360 MB it was hovering at before running through the “about:config” settings. One final note though, please exercise caution.

If you are afraid that your Firefox might quit working after these tweaks then just walk away.

If you are a little unsure about it, make a backup of your favorites and such.

Then for those of you who didn’t even make it all the way through my post before pulling up a new tab and running through these tweaks, bravo! Enjoy your new wonderfully speedy Firefox!

A special thanks goes out to Tux Training for their previous information on the Firefox memory issues and their resolutions.