Curbing the browsers hunger of RAM

Firefox often occupies some 100 MB of working space, thus slowing down- depending on the amount of RAM you have-the entire system.

As an avid fan of Mozilla Firefox I always advice old nothing special IE users to shift to Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is a smooth-running browser as long as it does not rip over it's own feet. You can help it get back up by carrying out a few maintenance tasks, namely verifying the add-ons, optimizing the configuration, and deleting redundant data.

Check ADD-ONS:- However if add-ons were programmed poorly, they can be the reason that Firefox uses so much RAM.

Update:- To update Firefox, open 'Tools--->Add-ons', click on 'Extensions', select the ones you want to update in the following dialog box and then click on 'Update'.
For automatic updation, open 'Tools--->Options' and click on 'Advanced'. Then, switch to the 'Update' tab. In the 'Check for updates automatically' tab, select the
options 'Firefox' and 'Installed Add-ons' and confirm by clicking 'OK'.

Trace the memory glutton:- Open Firefox in safe mode and test whether the add-ons are the actual reason that excess memory is being occupied. Right-click on the program icon, select 'Properties' and type '-safe-mode' at the end of the link in the Target field. Confirm it and open the browser. In the startup dialog box, select 'Deactivate all add-ons' and click on 'Continue working in safe mode'.
Check the Task Manager to find out to what extent the memory usage has reduced. A difference of a few megabytes is normal because the add-ons take up space and must reserve some space for additional functions. In the difference is considerably large, then it implies that an add-on was the cause of the problem.
Restart Firefox in the normal mode. Open 'Tools-->Add-ons-->Extensions', select an add-on, click on the 'Disable' button and restart Firefox. Check whether the memory situation has improved. Then 'Activate' the add-on again and repeat the process with the next one. In this manner, you can find out the add-on that is causing the problem and deactivate it. Likely candidates for memory-related errors are those add-ons that are known memory guzzlers, including Adblock, Fasterfox, Forecastfox, and Tab browser extensions.

Optimize the configuration:- The cache accelerates the browser. But if it shifts to the swap file due to lack of free memory, the effect is reversed. Therefore, you must adjust the cache according to the amount of RAM you have.

Adjusting the cache:- Type 'about:config' in the address bar and hit [Enter]. In the 'Filter' field, enter 'browser.cache.memory.enable' has been set to the value 'true' and if not, reset it with a double-click. Now double-click on the 'browser.cache.memory.capacity' setting to customize it. If you have 4 GB RAM, leave the value proportionally, ie ; to 16384 for 1 GB RAM. For that, double-click on the setting, enter the new numerical value in dialog box and click on 'OK' to confirm the change.

Free some RAM:- Another configuration setting ensures that Firefox releases a large amount of memory when minimized. Right-click on any blank space in the Firefox window and select 'New-->Boolean'. Then, enter 'config.trim_on_minimize' and confirm with 'OK'. In the next dialog box, select 'true' and 'OK'. The setting will take effect after restarting Firefox.

Delete redundant data:- Firefox saves downloads and retains all visited websites in the history. To delete this data, open 'Tools-->Options' and click on 'Privacy'. Under 'History' , set the value of 'Remember pages last visited for the past__days' to '1' so that Firefox retains the data only for one day. Additionally, you can deactivate the option 'Remember what I've downloaded'. Click 'OK' to confirm the changes. Now click on 'Tools---Downloads'. In the list, each downloaded can be deleted individually by clicking on 'Remove' on each entry. By simply clicking on 'Clean up' , you can clear the entire list.

Upload articles on forums and websites

Being an Internet Fan, you often communicate through web mail and post many contributions on forums. Since you often use similar text to identify yourself to identify on a lot of website, you would prefer to work with auto-complete in Mozilla Firefox.


Equip Firefox with an auto text function with free extension 'Clippings'. This saves, for instance, the effort of typing in forums or complicated copying.
Installation:- The XPI file for installing this update is available on 'http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1347'. Click in the website on the 'Install' link or open the XPI file with Firefox if you have downloaded it. Start the integration by clicking on 'Install now'. Also select the 'Restart Firefox' command to complete the installation process.

Create Clippings:- You need to first create the text before using it. Select a desired text in the browser and right-click on it. The context menu displays the update. You can either set the selected text as a clipping with 'Clippings-->New entry with selected text' or start the main dialouge with 'Clippings--->Open Clippings manager'. Further possibilities: double-click on the new text symbol on the right side of the status bar or pull the selected text to this position by drag and drop.

Managing Fragments:- After you have created the text fragments , organize them in folders in the Clippings Manager. Each folder later represents a sub menu--this gives you a quick overview. Use the 'Options-->New entry from clipboard' command to use copied texts in the quickest possible way. At this point, you can also save your data in an RDF file with 'Options-->Export'. Now close the dialog.

Using the Auto Texts:- To use these texts, right-click on the entry field of the the opened website. You can now access the hierarchy arranged folders with the sorted texts through 'Clippings' and insert them with a click.

Disabling help text

As soon as you move the cursor over a control element in Firefox, it displays help text as a tool tip. What can be useful in the initial days of working with th browser becomes annoying in the long run. For instance, the tool tip blocks access to bookmarks tool bar when you want to drag a new address from the address bar to the bookmarks tool bar using drag and drop.

The help function of the tool tip can be disabled by making a change in the settings in the advanced configuration of the browser. To do this, type 'about:config' in the address bar and hit [Enter]. The next step is to search for the 'browser.chrome.toolbar_tips' entry in the displayed list, by entering the initial letters of the entry in the 'Filter' domain. After that, right-click on the true value and select the 'Change' context command. Once you set this value to 'false', Firefox no longer displays any help text.

Configuring automatic image resizing

Previous versions of Firefox could be set to automatically resize big images on websites to fit within your program window. But the newer version(2.0) doesn't seem to offer this capability at all.

For this capability to be enabled type 'about:config' in the address bar and hit [Enter]. Search for the following entry in the displayed list: 'browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing'. In the next step, right-click on the entry and select the 'Toggle' context command to change this true value from 'true' to 'false'. With this setting, the browser always displays the images in the original size.

Adjusting memory location of the browser cache

Usually, the cache memory of the browser is in the profile data of the user. To increase the available space or speed or both, you might want to shift the cache memory to a faster drive.

The browser offers no direct path setting for the cache.Here comes the help of firefox users help blog 'http://firefoxstuffs.blogspot.com'. Any way, an entry in the advanced configuration can make it possible. First delete the data that is already stored in the cache. Open the 'Tools---> Options' for this and click on the 'Advanced' icon. Activate the 'Network' tab under it. Then in the 'Cache' area, click on 'Clear now' and then click 'OK'.
Now type 'about:config' in th address bar of the browser and press Enter key. Then, right-click on an empty space in the displayed list and select the 'New-->String' context command. Enter 'browser.cache.disk.parent_directory' as the preference name and click 'OK'. In the next dialouge box enter the complete path to the desired new memory location of the cache(eg;-C:\Program Files\firefox_ cache) and click 'OK'.

Configuring an FTP client

Mozilla Firefox and many other browsers have always had the facility to access FTP websites. However, Firefox's authentication methods are not familiar to many of the users. Here's how.

Firefox have a working FTP client. However, there is a tool that'll make it's FTP management even more productive. Go to 'http://fireftp.mozedev.org' and download the Firefox plugin called FireFTP. It is a tiny download and has a simple installation procedure. The installation is completed after you restarted the browser window.
To start the plugin, go to Tools menu and find the FireFTP menu item. First, we have to setup account setails for our FTP server. For this, click on the 'Manage Accounts' button on the top-right of the plugin window. Click the new button and start entering the required deatails into their specific fields. The 'Account name' is the name the account is to be reffered as. The 'Hostname' is the FTP address of the server you are trying to access.
There are Username and Password fiels that are needed when not using the 'Anonymous' access mode. The plugin can be easily set up with some advanced options. In the connection tab, there are options to setup encyption methods and start folders.
After setting up all the options, go to the Accounts drop down menu and choose the account that you want to open and click 'Connect'. You will find a proper two-pane file browser that will help you upload and download files from complex multi level folder structers whose appearence exactly matches that of Windows Exlporer.

Removing GO button

Besides the address bar, there is an additional button to load the entered address which we never use. After entering a URL, we can ENTER rather than hitting button which is much faster to call the page. Here's how to hide this 'GO' button to see longer URL's more clearly.

The 'GO' button can be hidden using the Firefox configuration file which creates more space to display longer URL's. To do this, enter 'about:config' in the address bar and press enter. In the list, search for the 'browser.urlbar.hideGoButton' setting. Double-click on it to change the logical value to 'true'. The 'GO' symbol will disappear immediately.

Closing tabs using a single button as done in earlier versions

Mozilla Firefox shows the cross symbol to close a window seperately for each tab. But we prefer closing each active tab with one single button on the top right.Read on to find out how this can be activated.

We can change the behaviour in the advanced configuration settings to the good operation concept described above.
Address 'about:config' and press Enter key. To search the setting, enter the value 'browser.tabs.closeButtons' in the 'Filter' field. Double click on this integer value for editing. The standard setting '1' delivers the Close symbol on each tab. With value '2' you can completely hide the symbols. Finally, the value '3' will take you back to your old setting, in which, one single symbol serves the purpose of closing any active tab.