Firefox users who are used to having fifteen or more tabs open while
surfing the web, or perhaps tend to load up their browser with a bunch
of open pages from their last session, will surely know the impact this
can have in terms of performance. It may not be a major issue on
powerful desktop PCs with processing muscle and memory to spare, but you
can bet more modest rigs and most laptops will struggle trying to pull
up a huge list of pages at the same time.
Luckily, there are ways heavy tab users can ease the memory-guzzling
effect that their browsing habits can have on their systems – and today
we’ll specifically mention two: using the
BarTab extension or making a quick about:config tweak.
The aforementioned BarTab extension lightens Firefox’s memory load and
prevents crashes by unloading tabs that you are currently not using but
want to keep accessible. It can intercept when tabs are opened in the
background or restored after a browser restart and will only load the
content when the tab is actually visited. It also allows you to free
memory by unloading already loaded tabs, either manually or
automatically when they haven’t been used for a specified time.
It’s a pretty straightforward tool. After
downloading the extension here,
go to the add-on preferences window and you’ll see a handful of options
where you can basically choose when to load or unload tabs, and you can
also create rules for sites that you always want to keep loaded when
their corresponding tabs are open.
If you are using
Firefox 4 Beta 7 you can enable the core function of BarTab without having to install the add-on. Simply access the
about:config menu (type it in the address bar and click through the warning message) and look for the key
'browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs'.
Double click on it, change the value to 0 in the prompt window, and
restart. Note that this only applies to session restores, not opening
tabs in the background, but it can make launching Firefox considerably
faster when multiple tabs are open, as only the one that is visible will
actually load up.
The feature was just introduced in
the latest Firefox 4 beta
and by default it’s set to load 3 concurrent tabs at a time. So even if
you don’t tweak this option you’ll notice faster session restores when
multiple tabs are open, but instead of loading just the one you are
viewing, it will simultaneously load three and move on to the next batch
afterwards.
Firefox users who are used to having fifteen or more tabs open while
surfing the web, or perhaps tend to load up their browser with a bunch
of open pages from their last session, will surely know the impact this
can have in terms of performance. It may not be a major issue on
powerful desktop PCs with processing muscle and memory to spare, but you
can bet more modest rigs and most laptops will struggle trying to pull
up a huge list of pages at the same time.
Luckily, there are ways heavy tab users can ease the memory-guzzling
effect that their browsing habits can have on their systems – and today
we’ll specifically mention two: using the
BarTab extension or making a quick about:config tweak.
The aforementioned BarTab extension lightens Firefox’s memory load and
prevents crashes by unloading tabs that you are currently not using but
want to keep accessible. It can intercept when tabs are opened in the
background or restored after a browser restart and will only load the
content when the tab is actually visited. It also allows you to free
memory by unloading already loaded tabs, either manually or
automatically when they haven’t been used for a specified time.
It’s a pretty straightforward tool. After
downloading the extension here,
go to the add-on preferences window and you’ll see a handful of options
where you can basically choose when to load or unload tabs, and you can
also create rules for sites that you always want to keep loaded when
their corresponding tabs are open.
If you are using
Firefox 4 Beta 7 you can enable the core function of BarTab without having to install the add-on. Simply access the
about:config menu (type it in the address bar and click through the warning message) and look for the key
'browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs'.
Double click on it, change the value to 0 in the prompt window, and
restart. Note that this only applies to session restores, not opening
tabs in the background, but it can make launching Firefox considerably
faster when multiple tabs are open, as only the one that is visible will
actually load up.
The feature was just introduced in
the latest Firefox 4 beta
and by default it’s set to load 3 concurrent tabs at a time. So even if
you don’t tweak this option you’ll notice faster session restores when
multiple tabs are open, but instead of loading just the one you are
viewing, it will simultaneously load three and move on to the next batch
afterwards.
By Vivek Bhardwaj
