Firefox 4 Startup Gets Faster

[Night Owl]

Firefox 4 shutdown is already almost instant, but Mozilla has had their sights set on faster start-up times for quite a while. Over the summer, a pair of Mozilla interns looked at simple tweaks which would make Firefox appear faster. It now looks as if at least one of the suggested changes will make its way in to Firefox 4.

Thanks to what Mozilla is calling Cascaded Session Restore, the Firefox startup process has been altered so that tabs don't try to load all at once. While three or four tabs might not make the 'fox sluggish, opening larger numbers of tabs can make it seem very slow out of the blocks.

Now, with CSR, Firefox will only load a specified number of tabs at once -- three by default, though you can customize the number in about:config. As Mozilla Links points out, Firefox will do its best to load the tabs you're likely to use first (your last focused tab from a previous session or most frequently viewed pages). CSR also works with Panorama: you can change a page's load priority by moving it to a different group.

Mozilla has also taken inspiration from the BarTab add-on: set browser.sessionrestore.mx_concurrent_tabs to 0 and tabs won't begin loading until you give them focus.

Intrepid testers, download the new nightly build and give it a try! Does Firefox 4 seem to start up faster when processing your tabs in bite-sized chunks?

[via Mozilla Links]

Source

[DreamHaters]

Great news :dance2:

[virtu]

Didn't seems to start faster in my PC then previous version.

[mara-]

Didn't seems to start faster in my PC then previous version.

Subjective opinion or you measured it?

Here is the tool for everyone to test startup:

http://www.passmark.com/products/apptimer.htm

Cheers ;)

[R0H1T]

FALSE POSITIVE ! You'll still need to compact the SQLite databases of firefox overtime.

mara-

Been using Minefield (comm central trunk nightly build) for the last week or so & I can tell you that the startup time has gone from under a sec to over 5 sec, the difference is quite apparent.

NOTE

The 5 sec startup time is with all the addons/plugins loaded while firefox in safe mode(which is comparable to a fresh installation since no addons/plugins are loaded) still takes over 2 sec btw Chrome even after a period of time starts up pretty quickly with all of its extensions.

[bashar]

Thanks ...

I did some tests with Mara's Tool

and these are the results :

Google Chrome 6.0.495.0 : 0.0486

Firefox 4.0 Beta 6 : 0.0500

Firefox 4.0 Be7Pre : 0.0222 and on other tries it gave me : 0.9511

:pope:

[DKT27]

I don't test nighty(s).

Nice to see Firefox taking on things one after another. :)

[oZ.]

Thanks ...

I did some tests with Mara's Tool

and these are the results :

Google Chrome 6.0.495.0 : 0.0486

Firefox 4.0 Beta 6 : 0.0500

Firefox 4.0 Be7Pre : 0.0222 and on other tries it gave me : 0.9511

:pope:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Beta 4\firefox.exe - 1 executions

3.9301

(it is firefox 4 beta 6)

[oZ.]

@DKT27 can't wait for FF 4.0 beta 7 then ;) -peace

=\ oct 1st longgg way =(

[DKT27]

I get a feeling that it'll be released suddenly like Firefox 4.0 B6 did. They may not stretch it till 1st Oct. Actually, Beta 7 was scheduled for 17th September but a bug fixing release came in middle and Beta 8 is scheduled for 1st Oct. So the B7 should be out sooner or later.

[mara-]

@bashar

It's not mine tool, I just found it using Google. :)

Cheers ;)

[Drolz]

tested in multitabs sessionrestore, works fine and faster

[sanjoa]

Somebody should tell Mozilla's guys to fix memory consumption problem too

[HX1]

You know I always pictured that somehow there would be another way of handling program startup for FF.. Like removing the update check on startup.. and possibly creating/reworking the extensions engine or method of integration.. It would seem in some way that it could help improve it..

[virtu]

Didn't seems to start faster in my PC then previous version.

Subjective opinion or you measured it?

Here is the tool for everyone to test startup:

http://www.passmark.com/products/apptimer.htm

Cheers ;)

Sorry but i'm not a day dreamer. :s All Firefox betas (in my laptop) have a delay before it opens my first window, after that everything is ok. For giving you my "tested" answer :

Firefox 3.6.10 -0.0211

Firefox 4.0 beta 6 -0.0220 and after PC restart 0.0216

[Cattleya]

Firefox 4.0 Be7Pre : 0.0222 and on other tries it gave me : 0.9511

Oh, Firefox is getting better and better : D

[R0H1T]

Is it just me or there's something wrong with the frontpage(comments) ?

Been getting this with Chrome(canary build), IE9, Minefield, Opera 10.7 & even Safari5 !

[SacredCultivator]

^Weird as I don't see that with latest hourly of Minefield.

[DKT27]

@R0H1T: Is it still a problem or it's solved? Don't have any problems here. Try CTRL + F5 (clear cache + refresh).

[R0H1T]

Nope the problem's still there, the image below is of Chrome(7.0.524.0 canary build)

As you can see that particular part of the webpage couldn't be rendered as it should've been & the problem persists across different browsers, don't know why though since its the first time I've seen something like this !

[DKT27]

@R0H1T: Fixed. There was some sort of problem in that post. I edited it and removed all the formatting in that post. Blame IPB. :whistle:

[alexusbas]

WOw...

gonna try this out