This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Firefox

Firefox has long been playing defense against the unstoppable juggernaut of Google Chrome (to exist off-white, Microsoft isn't in much better shape). Over the by twelvemonth, nosotros've reported on Mozilla's attempts to add multi-threading support to its existing browser, and yep, the rather silly new logo that the system came upwardly with for itself: "Moz://a," if you've been trying to forget information technology.

Now the organisation apparently has a new programme to create a browser with more fine-grained controls to reduce how much load information technology places on a system. The idea behind the project is to give end-users much more visibility into various settings, and so they can brand their own decisions nearly where to prioritize performance and where it makes sense not to. BleepingComputer broke the story, which took its cues from an ongoing word at Mozilla.

PerformanceOption

If you take an older dual-cadre organization (particularly if it's dual-cadre without HT), you might want to limit the number of processes Firefox can utilise simultaneously, peculiarly if yous don't have much RAM. Page prefetching can be cracking if you accept a slow organisation and fast pipage, simply in the reverse situation multiple pages prefetching in the background could slow your system down. Little touches, like turning off animations, won't make a huge difference on anyone'due south computer. But if you've e'er been slogging your manner towards getting a project done on an underpowered auto (or if you've basically used a reckoner at a college or loftier school, ever), these types of features could make the browser a piffling easier to utilize.

There are a few other touches being considered equally well. There would exist an selection to plow off all add-ons and restart the browser without having to manually kickoff Safe Mode. Mozilla has long maintained that certain extensions are responsible for dull performance or bug-related problems and this option allows users to chop-chop and easily check to see if that's the instance.

As for controlling the amount of memory the browser uses, information technology looks like this is tied to the number of content processes you lot allow the browser to launch simultaneously. More than processes = faster performance, but it also means more system memory in-utilize at once.

Personally, I'd love to see Firefox render to the days when it was the snappy, responsive, and altogether-improve option compared with anything else on the market place, but I'm not certain that'due south even possible. Mozilla has emphasized the improvements and strengths of its browser family at each release, but I can't recall the last fourth dimension Firefox actually felt fast. I believe the organization that sure operations have improved, but information technology hasn't seemed to make much departure for quite some fourth dimension. Still, hope springs eternal. Hopefully by the terminate of the year nosotros'll see some of these ideas shipping (Mozilla is targeting v55, we're currently on v52).