
Firefox Add-ons with the Slowest Start-up - there
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/
======
ck2
As long as we aren't talking minutes and just seconds, I close my browser once
every 24 hours typically.

I can deal with a 15 second startup time for a super-rich browsing and
debugging environment.

Once loaded, new tabs/windows do not have the startup penalty.

That said, the worst plugins can probably modify themselves to lazy-load the
bulk of their code once the browser is started in the background when idle is
detected?

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random42
Unfortunately, for me its a catch22 situation. I hate firefox because its
slow, and love/depend on firefox, because of firebug (which apparently makes
firefox slow.)

~~~
catshirt
i resisted switching to chrome for months because i thought the chrome
inspector was inferior to firebug, but i got used to it after forcing myself
to switch primarily to chrome. now i find it's actually superior in many ways.

~~~
ramanujan
Indeed. Little things like proper emacs keybindings in the JS terminal (Ctrl-P
for previous line = lifesaver!) make Chrome's inspector preferable. Haven't
needed to go back except for the YSlow/Firebug integration [probably a Chrome
plugin for that as well].

~~~
HaloZero
FireQuery is the only thing in Firebug that I can't seem to get in Chrome.

~~~
masklinn
Firequery, YSlow, or more generally any Firebug extension not built into the
Webkit Developer Tools.

Also, proper stack traces.

~~~
JonnieCache
YSlow was recently released in chrome flavour:

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ninejjcohidippng...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ninejjcohidippngpapiilnmkgllmakh)

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itsnotvalid
I think I have quite a lot of them (Firebug, greasemonkey, NoScript,
Scarpbook, etc.) but the thing is, I don't close my browser every hour or so.
Startup times are nothing if you don't do startups too often.

What would bother is any performance impacts with them running. However we
don't have figures for that.

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user24
This page is responsible for a lot of FUD.

So many people take it to mean, in effect, "Firebug makes Firefox slower".
When in fact it means "Firebug makes Firefox slower to start up".

This page says nothing about the performance impact once firefox has loaded. I
think that would be a more useful metric, and hope to see it in the future.

~~~
maigret
I have nothing to prove it, but I heard many times at least from former
version that Firebug was quite memory hungry, thus slowing Firefox after many
hours of use. I may be wrong.

~~~
ars
It's true, it got a lot better with firefox 3.5.

Not sure if it was firefox or firebug that improved things (or both).

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ffffruit
Would be more interesting and useful to see the overall impact of the addons
on loading pages.

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wladimir
I hardly start up Firefox unless for upgrades. A list of add-ons that reduce
loading / rendering performance would be even more interesting. I know by
experience that the Skype one is very bad (and Firebug also slows down, but
that's expected and luckily you can disable that when not debugging).

~~~
ognyankulev
My Firefox 4 often became unresponsive for 3-4 seconds. Just today I finally
nailed the cause - Mozilla's own Open Web Apps addon. After disabling it
everything flies again :-)

So it's not only about startup time. My desktop computers (and so Firefox)
usually run without restarts. I really hope that Electrolysis (out-of-process
stuff, now implemented only for plugins like Flash) for addons will make
finding bottlenecks far easier.

EDIT: It seems the Mozilla plan is not to have each addon in a separate
process: <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Jetpack_Processes>

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wazoox
The slow startup isn't so much a problem for me, because I normally fire up
firefox only once a day. However the latest 4.0 on Mac OS X suffer from a
terrible memory leak, and I must restart it every two hours or less. else my
mac slows to a crawl and restarting firefox literally takes minutes (swap...).

In fact it's so bad that I'll probably revert to FF3.6 on Mac OS X until
there's a serious update.

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noarchy
Faster start-ups are fine, and all, but I'm much more interested in what
happens after the start-up. For example, I'd be more interested in knowing
what is causing Firefox to consume 500-600 MB of memory, once a few hours have
passed.

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sapper2
Well, complex addons like Firebug or iMacros will always be slower than addons
that are essentially fancy bookmarks.

I do not care about start up time - I do care about page load time and general
responsiveness once Firefox is running.

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tim_iles
Regardless of Add-on start-up speed, I found annoyance with Firefox itself.
Occasionally on launch, I would be asked whether I wanted to install or skip
updates to my Add-ons.

I found this process of having to choose to install or skip to be too much of
a distraction, killing my flow when I was "in the zone" and wanted to look
something up fast.

For this reason I stopped using Firefox and have been happy with Chrome ever
since.

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nickolai
I'm not getting it - why is addon loading a blocking action in the browser
startup process in the first place??

I'm only using Adblock out of those, and i wouldnt mind if adblock was not
loaded until a few seconds after I got control. This would highlight very
effectively that the addon - and not the browser - is slow. And hopefully get
the authors to have something done about it.

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intranation
I'm quite disappointed that they don't seem to provide any feedback or
guidance for developers on how to write well-performing plugins. Without that
to sweeten the post it just seems a bit ungrateful, given that plugins are one
of the major reasons Firefox got so popular in the first place.

Edit: it's there on the right, but my well-honed ad blindness didn't let me
see it. Either way it's not exactly prominent.

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digitalclubb
This could potentially have a bad impact on the usage of Firefox. A heck of a
lot of developers use it specifically for its addons like Firebug..

Will more people now leave Firefox on the bench and pick other inspectors like
Google Chromes?

Maybe Mozilla should have thought about the impact that such an article could
potentially have before releasing it to the big bad world..

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tobylane
While I am personally largely against extensions, I wouldn't be if their
allocation was managed better. I think that the extension should say what
websites it's intended for (Greasemonkey does this) and be in the javascript
process for those pages only. It shouldn't be separate, it shouldn't be in
memory before the page is even open.

~~~
sid0
> While I am personally largely against extensions

... what? _Why in the world?_ If no browser had extensions I'd probably quit
the web altogether.

~~~
tobylane
I've been using Opera for years, if I did need anything I'd use UserJS
(Greasemonkey done properly, built-in). I have no extensions, and only two
userJSs (youtube download, and gawker fix). I have adblocker and firebug as
built in functions of the browser, I have custom searches instead of things
like Tineye extension that I have on Chrome.

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quinndupont
I use two browsers, for very separate purposes. Firefox is for research (good
automatic proxy handling, Zotero), Chrome for general browsing (fast, stable).
It's got the added benefit that it splits my focus--if I'm on Firefox it's for
serious stuff.

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mono
I'm using the web-developer add-on without this impact.
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-
developer...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/)

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kin
Funny how we always want more when we're given something. I'd like to see what
the add-ons do to page loads and also the same for Chrome.

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krat0sprakhar
Ah! This is good. I've been looking for this. Feels good to see that just one
web developer addon (Firebug) features on the top 10.

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reitoei
I'll gladly take that kind of hit if it means I can use Firebug.

Heck, I'd gladly pay a few hundred bucks for it if it was a commercial
product.

~~~
demetris
They accept individual donations and corporate sponsorships, and they also
sell some stuff: <http://getfirebug.com/contribute>

(You probably know that already but I am mentioning it for people who don’t. I
had never thought of Firebug and donations myself until I saw a message during
an upgrade about a month or two ago.)

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yalogin
Ironically the add-on fastest fox slows down firefox by 33%.

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kirchhoff
Mozilla should really get their own house in order (re: Firefox 4 huge memory
leaks) before calling out add-ons on slow performance.

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doctororange
#8: FastestFox - Browse Faster

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GrandMasterBirt
Ironically Fasterfox is one of those problems.

I am annoyed by the slow startup time of FF, but since it mostly stays open
all day long I can deal. I think the adblocking that firefox has is superior
since it can prevent content from being downloaded, that alone is worth it.
Firebug + FireSass + FireQuery are some tools I can't live without. Chrome has
yet to match the features. Sure some keybindings are not as great, but overall
a better tool is a better tool.

