Firefox Preloader helps Firefox launch faster

Filed under: Windows, Open Source, Browser Tips

Firefox Preloader helps Firefox launch faster

by Brad Linder Feb 7th 2008

Tired of waiting 15 to 20 seconds for Firefox to launch? Get a faster computer. We're just kidding (but seriously, that would probably help). If you want to speed up your Firefox startup times without spending a dime, you might want to check out Firefox Preloader.

This little open source Windows utility can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to start your web browser. That's because it essentially preloads some Firefox components so that when you click the browser icon to actually launch the program, it takes just a second or two to begin your browsing session.

Of course, this speed bump comes at a cost. Firefox Preloader eats a few MB of RAM, and you'll find that Firefox.exe is also eating up to 30MB of RAM even when you're not running it. But if you spend most of your day sitting in front a web browser, this might be a small price to pay.

You can configure Firefox Preloader to run when Windows starts up. But if the first thing you do every day is open up Firefox, you might as well just add the web browser to your startup programs. Firefox Preloader hasn't been updated in two years, but it works fine on Firefox 2 and 3.

[via CyberNet]

Tags: firefox, firefox-preloader, preloader

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jason said 8:20PM on 2-07-2008

I think, overall, you'd be better off with:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/how_to_make_firefox_faster.htm

RP said 7:06AM on 2-08-2008

That trick seems to make it launch faster, but it also seems to break Firefox's self-update mechanism. (It compresses Firefox.exe and all DLLs with UFX.)

Big John said 7:07AM on 2-08-2008

I've never seen a better case for switching browsers away from Firefox. When someone needs to write a preloader for your program, you have some serious issues as a developer to consider.

Disclaimer: I'm a Firefox user.

Stuart said 7:07AM on 2-08-2008

uh, Firefox startup speed is pretty fast and is certainly not limited by exe or dll loading speed.

Paulmichael said 7:07AM on 2-08-2008

Firefox isn't the problem. Freshly installed, it only takes a second or two to startup. The problems begin when you have so many extensions installed. Sounds an awful lot like an Operating System...I'm a Firefox user as well, and just recently uninstalled quite a few addons that I don't really use a lot. It helped a lot more than any preloader application ever could.

DagMX said 7:09AM on 2-08-2008

I don't agree with that. I'm using firefox 3b2 and firefox 2 withou any extensions and both take an age to open up to a blank page.
In comparison opera opens up quickly(wit all the functionality those ff extensions you mention would give) and internet explorer opens speedy too.

Firefox 2 was just shameful in the memory management and speed. FF3 is better but still too slow.

James said 9:30AM on 2-08-2008

I can appreciate peoples' problems with waiting for long startup times, but come on -- your life is so important that ~5-10 seconds waiting for a web browser is going to hurt you? I've been using whatever the latest flavor of Firefox 2 is for ages now, and I basically never have problems. *IF* there's a lot of other stuff going on in my systems (say, downloading torrents and recompressing video at the same time), it might take up to half a minute to start, but at that point, it takes ~15 seconds to open an Explorer window, so I really can't complain.

Anyway, this sounds a lot like just leaving Firefox running in the background with no windows open. You could accomplish the same thing by having Firefox open on startup with a single blank tab....

Robert Barbieri said 2:21PM on 2-08-2008

I have no idea what you guys are doing to firefox, but my install of it opens up in under 4 seconds...

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