There are many people out there complaining about the Firefox RAM Memory Bug. Lets get it straight. It’s not a bug. It’s part of the cache feature. This ‘feature’ is how the pages are cached in a tabbed environment.
To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited less than 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last five session history entries for each tab.
This is a lot of data. If you have a lot of tabs, Firefox’s RAM memory usage can climb dramatically. It’s a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web.
Now a lot of us have found the ’secrets’ on how to manipulate settings in “about:config” to drop the memory usage as long as possible and to increase the speed at which Firefox loads sites. Read on to find out how to do this.
Remember: Firefox (download it here) is the best internet browser available (in my opinion), and these tweaks below will make it even greater and faster. So enjoy!
Reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses for it’s cache feature
Here’s how to do it:
1. Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the adress bar in the browser.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer”
3. Set it’s value to “0“;(Zero)
Increase the Speed in Which Firefox loads pages
1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit Enter.
(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.)
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 10.
This means it will make 10 requests at once.
3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“;.(Zero)
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages faster now.
Optionally (for even faster web browsing) here are some more options for your about:config (you might have to create some of these entries by Right Click –> New– > Interger or String
network.dns.disableIPv6: set “false”
“content.notify.backoffcount”: set “5“; (Five)
“plugin.expose_full_path”: set “true”.
“ui.submenuDelay”: set “0; (zero)
Reduce RAM usage to 10mb when Firefox is minimized:
This little hack will drop Firefox’s RAM usage down to 10 Mb when minimized:
1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.
These simple tweaks will make your web browsing with Mozilla Firefox 2-3 times faster and easier. And I think they are fairly easy to apply. Enjoy!
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Technorati Tags:firefox, tweaks, hack, tweaking, tips, fix, ram memory, software, apps, free, open source, mozilla
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January 23rd, 2009 at 5:17 AM
It annoys me so much when people don’t get this: RAM is a CACHE!
The only time reducing the memory usage of an application is a benefit is if your physical memory is getting so full that applications are spilling over into virtual memory on disk, which is 100x slower. As long as you’re not filling it up completely, the more bits of an application that stay in RAM, the better that application will run.
Using tweaks 1 and 3 to reduce Firefox memory usage means when you attempt to access whatever WAS in memory it has to go fetch it from some slower source (internet, disk cache, etc) = bad.
Tweak 2 is good though.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:48 AM
Does this slow down Youtube video loading? It was much slower after I did this “hack.”
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:02 AM
thanks dude, hope this speeds things up
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:31 AM
thanks for this tips..
i just try it, and it’s true.. now my browser speed faster than before..
:)
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:16 AM
Such a great post. I have dugg and stumbled it. :)
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:36 PM
No, it doesn’t slow down video streaming on YouTube or any other video streaming website. Maybe you did something else that slowed your video loading, or just server was crowded too much…
But these tweaks can only make things faster.
Enjoy!
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:24 PM
I guess no one read my first comment. Only tweak 2 is the only thing that will actually yield any visible performance benefits. Reducing Firefox memory usage can only slow it down.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:41 PM
Well, I have tried all these 3 hacks mentioned above, and it did not slow my speed at all as Brent says. My speed has been douled if not even tripled since these tweaks.
Thanks for sharing these Gennice! I will share this on my blog too. Very useful hack.
January 24th, 2009 at 9:51 AM
amazing that the only one who knows what’s really good is…Brent! cheers!
January 24th, 2009 at 10:52 AM
Did the tweaks, astounded by the speed increase. Great job mate, and thanks for the advice! Well impressed!
January 24th, 2009 at 10:56 AM
Thanks for sharing these tweaks. They did speed up my browser.
Thanks again.
January 24th, 2009 at 3:03 PM
Yes, yes and yes. Remarkable increase in page speed and download time … videos pop right up. Thanks.
January 24th, 2009 at 4:04 PM
Hi,
I have used all these tips! I must say that these are working on my connection! Now, I browse much more faster thanks to these tips! Thank you for sharing Genni ;)
January 25th, 2009 at 7:28 PM
Is this a good idea for dialup users or just for highspeed internet users?
My friend Snow is on dialup.
January 25th, 2009 at 8:34 PM
Well when you’re on Broadband connection, the speed gets noticeably better. But this can be used on dial-up connections too, although the speed will not be dramatically better.
You can compare that to this situation:
One worker has salary of 100.000$ and other worker 10$
If you give them both raise of salary for 10%, the one with 100.000$ will have much more money added to his salary (110.000$) But the one with 10$ will only get 11$ now (which is not so big difference than before but it’s still more).
I hope now this will be clearer to you. :D I gave my best to explain this.
Enjoy!
January 25th, 2009 at 8:51 PM
That does make it clearer. The double and triple part is out the window then. We are talking 10% now. Got it.
The one that worried us was the 2nd one that allows pipelining. That sounded like it might not be good for dialup.
I’ll try it. Thanks!
January 25th, 2009 at 9:08 PM
The double and triple part is not out of window. It IS Double and for someone even triple faster speed, but I just mentioned 10% as an example. That’s all. So double and triple still stay :D
January 25th, 2009 at 10:15 PM
Just so you know. This is the most useful tip that I have found online since ever!
Off I go to try them three tricks……….goodbye for however long. Thanks Gennice!
January 25th, 2009 at 10:25 PM
Working great so far and easy to do. It’s faster no question.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:27 PM
Found pipelinig made page loading slower and caused many pages to never stop loading even when all data had seemingly be loaded. Reverted changes and it all works fine again.
January 27th, 2009 at 5:21 PM
What about the other 2 tweaks? Did you try them?
January 27th, 2009 at 7:08 PM
These are all bad ideas!
You want Firefox to have a cache (50MB is fine) otherwise it will make http requests for all elements on the page
Setting network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 10 is a bad idea; the http 1.1 spec (which Firefox follows) allows 2 simultaneous requests per DNS hostname; you’re overriding it with 10! http requests open sockets and take CPU power. If your internet seems slow, you probably have an older computer, which this is a horrible idea.
Web developers optimize their web sites to work best with the default browser settings, not these odd ones.
January 27th, 2009 at 7:36 PM
But why so many people, after applying these tweaks had their speed doubled. Almost everyone notices speed boost when they apply this. But that what you are talking about could be true for slower computers and for those with dial-up connection maybe…
April 9th, 2009 at 1:14 AM
Hey, cool tips. I’ll buy a bottle of beer to that person from that chat who told me to go to your site :)
April 11th, 2009 at 10:42 PM
I recently wrote an article on this. I guess good minds think a like!
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:02 AM
How to drop the memory usage as long as possible and to increase the speed at which Firefox loads sites. Read on to find out how to do this….
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:30 AM
Great post! This is why I love blogging. Always something interesting to read, watch and enjoy. It keeps the mind active. Thanks, Amy x.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:21 AM
Thanks @gennice, just tried, this really works!
Thanks so much, promise to spread the word.
May 13th, 2009 at 10:52 AM
I’m really glad you like it Nikhil. Yest it works and it’s cool isn’t it? :) And thanks for spreading the word!
Enjoy!
January 19th, 2010 at 3:58 PM
Thanq so much it helped me a bit