You are here:Home»KB»Applications»Firefox»My Firefox Performance Notes
Sunday, 11 October 2015 11:13

My Firefox Performance Notes

Written by

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

Read 1284 times Last modified on Saturday, 05 December 2015 12:38
Published in Firefox
back to top