Best firefox version? EDIT: and vlc?

Hey there,

I'm installing Windows XP for a friend on an AA1 110 (1 GB ram, 8 GB SSD), and I found the tips here VERY handy I've applied the reccomended speed tweaks and everything is how I like it, but I'm just not sure which version/type of firefox is the most suitable for the AA1. It's a toss-up between the following (I don't want to install Chrome or FF 3.1 beta):
1)FF 3.0.5
2)FF 3.0.5 Portable
3)FF 2.0.20
4)FF 2.0.20 Portable

I've found the portable version of FF3 to be faster than the native local installed version. Probably because it has no disk cache?? ...although I HAVE tried disabling the disk cache in the non-portable version from about:config, and it's a bit quicker. On my PC (bit faster than AA1) and laptop (a bit slower than AA1) I noticed a slowdown in some things when I went from ff2 to ff3 (both natively installed, not portable). The address bar in ff3 is really good, but it takes longer to appear, and the download manager takes a while to pop up once I download a file.
ALso, how do flash, shockwave and java behave in ff portable?

Any ideas to what people have found to be the fastest FF, 2 or 3, portable or not?

PS: my friend uses IE7 anyway, so I don't have to install FF, but IMHO FF is better, so yeah

EDIT: What about VLC Player/ccleaner? are the natively installed versions any slower than the portable versions? are there any downsides (losing settings, etc) or upsides to the portable versions?

 

Re: Best firefox version?

I'm not sure if it is a psychological question, but for me the fastest one is the Regular FF2 with the cache disabled.

I've already tried the FF3 portable and regular, even Chrome, but now I use the FF2 and I am happy. The only claim is that takes lots of memory. Now I have 4 tabs open and it takes 73.900k. Sometimes it reaches 140.000k...

Best wishes

 

Re: Best firefox version?

Ok thanks I thought that might be the case, yes.

maybe flash and java support in portable is quite limited, thus the full install being the best option.

 

Are there any others who have tried the different types of firefox?

Also, does anyone have any experience with ccleaner and vlc player, both the portable and natively installed versions?

 

For me, the best solution was to install FF3 regular but instead of disabling cache etc., just move the *entire* profile to a semi-permanent RAM drive (that is written to disk on every shutdown).

It seems even with Cache disabled, FF3 writes quite a bit to the drive. It writes to several databases (visited sites, site classifications, form data etc. etc.). This isn't an issue for a regular HDD but with the SSD, it causes annoying pauses when typing URLs, filling out forms or just visiting websites. But I do like the smart navigation bar and the other features, and the cache does speed up browsing on slower connections. I'd rather sacrifice 32-64MB of RAM for a smooth online experience.

Haven't used the Portable version, but I guess it doesn't write as much to disk so that might be a better option if you don't want to mess with it too much.

 

FF 3 doeas have the smart bar database and such, which is why I'm probably going for a FF2 native install with disk cache disabled. But your choice sounds alright, although that means that you would lose your bookmarks and installed plugins etc (correct?).

I found this: http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/14/use-a- ... -security/
But then there isn't only the disk cache, there's also the different databases ff uses, like you mentioned above. So would moving just the disk cache to RAM help a lot?

 

The fastest FF yet is 3.1 beta, with Tracemonkey rendering. I tried it and it even beats Google Chrome. It's very stable. Problem is many extensions (add-ons) are not updated for it yet, so its attractiveness will depend on whether you're after pure speed or use certain extensions.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

 

That might be an option....Does it have the cache read/write slowness of FF 3.0.*? Do you have to disable the disk cache and all that funky stuff to get it to cooperate with the SSD? How about the smart nav. bar? Does it hang sometimes when you type there?

 

I don't use the smart bar but didn't notice any hanging of any kind. If I was using an SSD I'd probably set up a RAM disk for the FF cache. I experimented with one on my HDD unit and it worked fine, but I didn't notice any difference in speed from ordinary caching. I imagine it could make a real difference with a slower SSD. If you're not familiar, here's a link re RAMdisks (which I might have gotten from this site somewhere), I installed the Gavotte app with success

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/2 ... 03-server/

If the RAMdisk is labeled "R", you use about:config to access or create a new string called

browser.cache.disk.parent_directory

and set it to

R:\\temp\\

This caches in R and dumps all the temp data whenever the unit is shut down. I set the cache to 100mb without any impact on ordinary use of the netbook (XP seems to idle with about 500mb of RAM on my setup.) Good luck.

 

Oh ok...thanks for the tip. It does seem a bit quicker. But when using the ramdisk, I noticed that pagefile usage went up by the same size that the ramdisk was...eg. if pagefile usage was 181 MB, applying a 256MB ramdrive caused pagefile usage to go up to 437MB (an increase of 256MB). I know this kinda seems right/makes sense, but I don't know why :?

I just noticed that line How do you make the ramdisk write to disk on shutdown?

 

Not an authority, but since the swap file kicks in when RAM isn't sufficient for the tasks at hand, it makes sense that any additional task (the FF cache) will increase that usage. Might be worth looking at various services and processes to see what might be wasting RAM. 250mb might be too much cache for this little Atom chip and not really necessary for FF.

I'm also curious about a way to have the RAMdisk write to C: at shutdown - in the online discussions I found, data loss was considered the downside to using a RAMdisk. To be any use, wouldn't it also have to come back into the RAMdisk on reboot?

BTW, are you aware of the FF speed tweaks like pipelining, etc. under about:config? This "best tips" episode of Tekilla runs through them - they're good on the beta as well as FF3.0 (I noticed a difference, and no bad side effects)

http://revision3.com/tekzilla/bestof2008/

 

Extensions can be very easily 'updated'. Download it (.xpi file) and open it with a zip program. Open install.rdf in a text editor. Look for em:maxVersion and change the value between the tags to 3.1.*. Save, install.

 

Actually, this topic motivated me to take another look at the 3.1 beta. The main extensions I use are supporting it now, including IE Tab, and NoScript, which are the must-haves. I miss Tab Mix Plus, but am going to run the beta as default for the time being. Not so sure about installing extensions that the developers themselves have not arranged for Mozilla to install.

 

TMP works fine, just look for the dev version in the forums on its homepage. I've been using development builds of Firefox for years, with various extensions. Periodically things go wrong, but it's quite a rare occurrence when they do. Usually the extension developers will be right on it within a short space of time. That is, after all, part of the reason why development builds are made available in the first place; so that the extensions work when a release comes out.

 

Probably...or maybe when a program wants to use more memory, it's instead redirected to the pagefile? thus the ramdisk is being copied (to some extent) to the pagefile. And you may be right about 256 MB being too much for FF. I think 64 or 96 MB should do.

For the bookmarks etc, yes. But it doesn't matter if the cache gets erased. However, I still would like to find out how to write ramdisk to the drive on shutdown. That would enable me to copy my whole profile to the ramdisk; but there is the chance that power might be lost suddenly, thus erasing the profile.

Thanks for the link . Yes I've heard of and implemented some of those on my main PC, but I never thought about applying those settings to the AA1. :lol:

Thanks for that! I know that extension checking can be disabled, but I never knew that editing the .xpi file could be done.

IMO, I've narrowed it down to either ff 2.0.20 or 3.1b2, probably the latter with the disk cache in a 96MB ramdisk.

 

Another little about:config tweak found in a PC Mag article:

Rt-Click - "New" - Boolean
enter "config.trim_on_minimize" - set to "true"

(Lowers memory when FF is running with all windows minimized - RAM use went from over 100mb to about 20 on mine.)