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Items filtered by date: December 2015

Sunday, 11 October 2015 11:13

My Firefox Performance Notes

There are some workaround or options that you can do to improve the perfromance of Firefox. Workarounds can be a personal choice.

Causes

The main culprits for Firefox hanging or running slow are Flash/Add-ons/On-Page Javascripts.

I have listed all possibly issues below:

  • Add-ons / Extensions - (the ones you get from Add-ons for Firefox).
    • NoScript
    • Web Developer Toolbar
    • Firebug
    • LastPass - This does a lookup for each page back to their server (I think!)
    • Extensions that work on a per-tab can in particular cause hanging when loading new tabs because they are starting a new instance of themselves. They also can affect performance.
    • Rapport - A UK banking Security software. Very disk intensive and is always doing stuff.
  • Add-ons / Plugins
    • Flash
  • Javascript - This is not so much a problem with Firefox but can cause massive performance issues by taking a singl page from 3mb to 96mb.
  • Mis-configuration in about:config
  • Corrupt Firefox Application Files
  • Antivirus
    I would not recommend blindly browsing the internet withou antivirus, but you should look at the settings to see if anything can cause issues in Firefox.
    • HIPS in Comodo
  • Virus / Malware - There is a chance you Firefox has been infected
  • Hardware Acceleration - If Firefox does not play nice with your graphics card then this setting could potentially cause issues with page rendering.
  • Proxy / Connection Settings - If firefox spends time looking up a Proxy that either does not exist or runs slow you perfromance will depends on this system.
  • Enable HTTP Piping - This is a new technology so is more an improvement but also depends on servers supporting it.

Solutions

  • Disable Extensions 1 by 1 until Firefox runs better - You might also find a difference by uninstalling the Add-on rather than just disabling it. Start with the list from about as they are the most likely.
  • Disable all Add-ons / Plugins - Start with flash
  • Reset the Firefox back to factory -  you will loose all of your data
  • Use uBlock Origin - this will block most junk Javascript on all pages reducing the amount of RAM they use.
  • Scan for Virus and Malware - Remove any infections that have hooked into Firefox.
  • Wireshark - Scan all outgoing traffic when using Firefox and see if there are any external calls that you dont recognise that potential can be causing hanging.
  • Tab Memory Usage Diagnostics - Use an Add-on to see which Tab is using all of the RAM. It is surprising to see the amount of RAM some pages use. The more RAM the slower you browsing experience will be.
  • Disable Hardware Acceleration - Options --> Advanced --> 'Use hardware acceleration when available'
  • Disable Proxy - Options --> Advanced --> Network Tab --> 'Connection - Settings' - set to 'No Proxy'. It was set to 'Use system proxy settings'

My Recommendations

These are the settings that worked well for me

  • Ublock Origin - Unblock ads for sites that you want to support but this reduces your memory footprint massively.
  • Set the Shockwave Flash Plugin to prompt me to allow it to run - Stops dodgy badly written, CPU intensive Flash from running but gives you the option if you need it for things like video sites withou having to dig into settings. Flash is getting phased out for HTML5.
  • Disabled HIPS in Comodo CIS - when I browse normally i leave this on
  • Disabled the following Add-ons
    • NoScript
    • Web Developer Toolbar
    • Firebug
    • LastPass - I put it back on for normal browsing
    • Rapport - This is not a good thing to do because bank security is better than performance.
  • Disable Hardware Acceleration

Links

Firefox / Tabs Hanging

Ram Disk / RAM as cache

I have not really used this but the main feature of this is that instead of using your swap file for holding pages you can store everything in RAM. If you have a SSD you might not see that much improvement.

Flash

Add-ons

General

Published in Firefox
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Sunday, 11 October 2015 10:22

Fixing Firefox Memory Leaks

Most performance issues are caused by memory leaks and these are usualy caused by extensions or add-ons. I will outline how to try and find out what extensions or plugin is causing the rising memory usage. Once you have read this article you will find this process a lot easier rahter than taking a stab in the dark.  These instructions more than a fix help you idetify the cause of the problem which is fixed by removing (disabling might work) the offending extension or add-on.

Usual culprits

There are a few addons and extensions that are usual causes of slow performance or memory leaks so i will list them here

Add-ons

  • All ad-blocking plugins, uBlock, uBlock Origin, AdBlock, AdBlock Plus etc...
  • No-Script
  • Firebug
  • LastPass
  • Web-Developer Toolbar

Extensions

  • Flash

Others Culprits

Any add-on or extension that does a look-up per page will slow things down especially if the remote server they are querying is slow or un-responsive.

What can I do?

Disable the usual culprits

This is an easy method, just disable all of the usual culprits and see if things improve.

Disable Add-ons 1 by 1

The usual advice is to diable you add-ons 1 by 1 and see which is causing the perfromance hot or massive use of memory. This will work but can take many hours of disabling a single plugin and then using Firefox to see if it runs correctly.

You could conversly disable all add-ons and then enable them 1 by 1, see if Firefox runs correctly and then move on to the next addons.

This method can take forever because you need to make sure that Firefox is running correctly and you need to do this for above 30minutes to make sure there are no issues.

Analyse the Memory usage / Use Addons to find the culprit

This is my prefered method. Use the following methods and tools to analyse what is actually using memory.

Addons

To see what is using the ram you can install add-ons listed below, which will give you data for each tab you are using and/or you can view per add-ons ram usage. After installing these addons use firefox for a while until it slows down and then have alook at the tab information to see if there are any obvious candidates and then you can move on to seeing which addon is using the ram. Once you find a candidate, disable it, restart Firefox and continue using to see if the performance issue is fixed

In-Built to Firefox

Only experts can use the infromation here to identify what is using all of the ram, and those people will know how to use this. I dont know hwo to use this information so anything i say would just be guessing.

  • about:memory - if you go to this page you will see some raw data about memory usage (expert only)

Links

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 19:39

how can i display more "recently bookmarked" entries

When doing research i will see possibly useful sites and bookmark them. However when i start another FF session it seems as though the number of "Recently Bookmarked" entries is limited to 8 entries or so. Is there a way to increase the available "Recently Bookmarked" entries until I have had time (across multiple FF sessions) to determine which bookmarks to keep ?

Answer

  1. Open the Library dialog to the bookmarks section using Ctrl+Shift+B
  2. In the search box at the upper right of the Library dialog, type http - this will match pretty much all your bookmarks
  3. Click the Added column heading to sort by date you created the bookmark (if you do not have this column displayed, right-click Name, Location, or one of the other headings and add it from the drop-down list)

Answer taken from

how can i display more "recently bookmarked" entries | Firefox Support Forum | Mozilla Support

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 19:34

Is there a way to find bookmarks that I haven't used in a long time?

I'd like to delete bookmarks that I haven't used in a long period of time. Is there a way to find out what was the last time I used a bookmark?

Answer

Firefox can cross-reference your history, so if you don't clear history you can sort of figure this out. Here's what I mean.

  1. Open the Library dialog to your bookmarks. E.g., Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks
  2. In the search box at the upper right, type http  (should be virtually all of them)
  3. If you do not have a column labeled Visit Date, right-click any column heading and choose Visit Date. (Or Mac equivalent of right-click.)
  4. Click the Visit Date column heading to sort by date. This should sort from blank to most recently visited. Click again to sort the other way.

Answer taken from

Is there a way to find bookmarks that I haven't used in a long time? | Firefox Support Forum | Mozilla Support

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 19:23

How can I see the total number of bookmarks I have?

Firefox does not have an inbuilt method to tell you statistics about your bookmarks so we have to use a workaround to get the bookmarks total, but tankfully it is very easy to do.

  1. Open the Bookmarks Manager (Library) using Ctrl+Shift+B or go to the menu item (Bookmarks / Show All Bookmarks)
  2. In the search box at the upper right of the Library dialog, type http - This will match pretty much all your bookmarks in a search result which now lists all of your bookmarks
  3. Click on one search result so it is highlighted
  4. Press Ctrl+A which will select all of the results and the number in the bottom bar will tell you how many results there are. The result is the number of bookmarks you have in firefox.
Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 18:20

My Custom Firefox Setup

With the evolution of Firefox I have found that the developers have constantly removed features that i use and i now have to use plugins to replace the missing functions. I also have used plugins to improve Firefox, this article is my collection of notes for these critical improvements.

Restore Status Bar / Bottom Bar / Addon Bar

The status bar has been removed in newer version of Firefox, read this article, What happened to the Status Bar? | Firefox Help

Bookmarking Improvements

These are improvements on the standard bookmarks menu which is to small and the number of items in the recent history (5 items) is not enough.

Security

i will add the rest of my Extensions and options i use at some point.

Web Development

i will add the rest of my Extensions and options i use at some point.

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 17:45

My OpenSearch Notes

OpenSearch is a collection of simple formats for the sharing of search results or adding custom searches to your browser.

This process is instigated by a preformed string of HTML in the webpage which gives the browser the information that it needs to create the custom search. Some of the variables that are supplied are the 'Name' of the search and 'search string' to be passed.

These custom searches can be detected either by looking in the HTMl or much easier on modern browsers there usually is an add button or icon change that will occur near the search boxes.

Example

<link href="http://quantumwarp.com/search?format=opensearch" rel="search" title="QuantumWarp" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" />

Links

Published in Web Design
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 17:07

How do I renew my member certificate at StartSSL?

This article shows you how to renew you User Authentication SSL certificate for your StartSSL account.

I received the following mail:

The Class 1, client certificate for my@email.address and serial number 123456 (123456) is about to expire in about two weeks. Please log into the StartSSL Control Panel at https://www.startssl.com/?app=12 and get a new certificate for this purpose. Failing to update your client certificate might result in the loss of your account.

I logged in, but I cannot figure out how to get a new certificate. Could someone please give me a hint?

Answer

  1. Login -> "Validations Wizard" -> "Email Validation", get the code and validate.
  2. "Certificates Wizard" -> "S/MIME and Authentication Certificate" ->
  3. browser asks if you wanna install........ some more prompts and done.
Published in SSL
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 16:51

Client Certificate Authentication remembers decision when canceling

Firefox remembers the selected certificate for client certificate authentication by default (Remember this decision). However when attempting to authenticate and clicking cancel (for various reasons, for example no certificate exists), Firefox apparently remembers that too.

Reproduce by going to https://www.startssl.com/?app=12 and click on "Authenticate" and hit cancel. Try to authenticate again and the request fails automatically. The only way to get out of this, is by restarting the browser completely.

Firefox should not send ANYTHING to the server when the request is canceled at the client side and certainly should not remember that decision. Users get very confused because they don't regularly restart their browser.

These instructions can be used to clear what SSL certificate is used for logging in to various sites including StartSSL.

IE

Note that IE has an option to forget/clear the remembered state with a button press. No need to restart the browser.

In IE8 : menu Tools / Internet Options / Content / Certificates / Clear SSL state

Firefox

Tools / clear recent history / time range: everything / details:

  • check "Active Logins"
  • uncheck everything else, so you don't lose that information
  • Clear now

Test Scenario

Scenario

I've tested this with www.startssl.com

  1. I have a personal cert
  2. I authenticate
  3. I select "remember"
  4. OK

On the web site, in the upper right, I click that logout icon (go out of the door). If I do, I will briefly see the start page, however, because Firefox has the use of the client cert remembered, it will immediately log in again using the client cert. Next, I use above steps to "clear active logins". Now, if I clock the logout icon on the StartSSL site, I will be really logged out.

Links

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 16:28

Font Awesome Icons not displaying in Firefox

When using Firefox to browse the internet occasionally you come across websites where Font Awesome icons do not display but are fine when viewed in another browser. This seems to be caused by a couple of things.

  • using relative URLs
  • When that website is using a CDN
  • You are running an add blocker
  • possibly other things

The Fix

There are a few solutions and are quite easy. Not all might be suitable.

  • Use absolute URLs - This might be an issue but i would never use absolute URLs so i would recommend other solutions where possible
  • Add the following code to your server's .htaccess file 
    <FilesMatch "\.(ttf|otf|eot|woff)$">
  <IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
  </IfModule>
</FilesMatch>
  • Disable any Adblocker or similiar addons

Links

Published in Firefox
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