Firefox speed-up tip from Jost March 6, 2009
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Tech tips.trackback
If you don’t subscribe to Jost Zetzsche’s biweekly Tool Kit newsletter, you probably missed this excellent tip in his latest edition, which just went out last night. If you don’t subscribe to this helpful newsletter written for translators by a translator, you really should. He talks about all kinds of important topics and offers lots of valuable tips. He has introduced me to numerous tools that make life as a translator easier. You can subscribe by clicking on this link. The Standard edition is free (with limited content), but the Premium edition is only $15 a year and so worth it. Go subscribe now!
Firefox Speed-Up
I recently complained about the increasing sluggishness of Firefox with an ever-larger number of plug-ins. Dominik Kreuzer reminded me that this might be due to the “automatic updating of installed add-ons enabled — that slows down the program start a lot.” And he was right on.
I had to look a little, but I eventually found the option to disable the automatic update under Tools> Options> Update. This was a much-appreciated tip and a good recommendation if you have lots of little add-ons in Firefox that make it ever-slower to open your browser.
I immediately changed the setting in Firefox and immediately noticed a difference in speed. Thanks, Jost!
Musings from an overworked translator 
The path should be Tools> Options> Advanced and there you find it on the Update tab.
I am a little torn about this – if you do that, don’t forget to check for plug-in updates on a regular base. If you only update your browser, you may miss security updates for your plug-ins. I find it important since a lot of my plug-ins are “third party updates” and possibly have less quality control at release time and during their PLC.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate the slow FF start up, but to be honest I barely ever close it. Maybe once a day I restart FF to free resources so I’d rather have it start a little slower but I can be sure I got the latest updates.
Hi Susanne, that’s a good point.