Major speed problems with TFF 38
I'm having major speed problems with TFF 38 (as with prior versions, though there are differences). Even from a clean start, TFF is slow, and just gets slower as the session progresses.
NoScript and Adblock extensions have always helped a great deal, and I couldn't have gotten by without them in recent years. But the web at large, and even Firefox itself, just keep getting more & more gluttonous, and there seems to be no end to their appetite for wasting our bandwidth & system resources.
Like others, I've long had serious problems surfing Facebook, including their low-bandwidth mobile platform. On the latter, I had periodic logjams lasting up to five minutes (during which TFF was completely unresponsive). I haven't encountered this with 38 (yet), but on many other sites, I'm having the same eventual grinding-to-a-halt slowdowns as I did before upgrading. I rarely have more than four or five tabs open, so that's not it.
Even the Add-ons Manager is sluggish, as it was with prior versions.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm glad to have had TFF for these recent years, as all other browsers that still work with my system are now almost completely useless for most websites. Unfortunately, it seems the same is gradually becoming true of TFF, and I'm now having to do almost all of my web surfing on craptastic winboxes. I'd much rather stay with my beloved MDD. But unless there are some hugely speed-enhancing workarounds I'm missing, I'm almost ready to give up.
I spotted earlier the advice from Chris (chtrusch), saying, "try a fresh Firefox user profile." How do I do that? Especially without totally dumping all my extensions & tweaks? This, and any other help, would be greatly appreciated.
Machine: Dual-867 "MDD" G4 Power Mac w/ 1.5G RAM
Current browser: TFF v. 38.4.0
FF extensions:
Active Stop Button 1.5.1.1
Adblock Plus 2.6.11
BetterPrivacy 1.68.1
Big New Tab Button 29.1
Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus 1.3.4
F.B. Purity - Cleans Up Facebook 12.8.0
HTTPS-Everywhere 5.1.1
MacTubes Enabler 1 (never worked)
NoScript 2.6.9.39
Privacy Badger 1.0.3
QuickTime Enabler 116 (never worked)
ShareMeNot 2.3.3.1
Stylish 2.0.2.1
- user style: Firefox Bookmarks Bar Deiconizer Tabs on Bottom 0.5.1
(whythefvck is FF so hell-bent on forcing everybody to have their
tabs on top?)
Video DownloadHelper 5.4.2 (necessary, as I could never get any of
TFF's video workarounds to work)
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 07 Nov, 2015 06:37 AM
Although the browser does accumulate garbage which needs to be cleaned periodically, which does require more effort on the browser's part to reclaim that memory, I can't confirm pretty much any of what you mention -- certainly not five minute pauses. I'm typing this reply to you in 38.4, after all.
A fresh user profile would, indeed, dump pretty much everything except your bookmarks -- in fact, that's the whole point, to start from a known state. You do have a lot loaded into the browser, and if you have settings altered in about:config, you may have put the browser into an unsupported or untested state. If you want to try as a last-ditch effort, the instructions are to the bottom right under "How to reset your profile." If that fixes the problem, either your addons or custom tweaks were to blame. At that point, since you know exactly what addons you're running, you can try reintroducing them one by one.
If that doesn't fix it, unfortunately I don't really have any other suggestions for you based on your description. Generally "the browser is slow everywhere" isn't something I can offer much assistance with because the symptom could have any number of causes, a substantial amount of which are specific to the local machine. If you're running Leopard, you could try Leopard Webkit and see if that serves you better.
2 Posted by dkmnow on 07 Nov, 2015 12:44 PM
Okay, I had forgotten about the reset procedure, as I had never found it necessary. Also, I neglected to specify that I'm running OS X 10.4.11 (hence the "TenFour," yes?).
So, I did a complete wipe, and re-installed a bare minimum of privacy add-ons. I'm seeing marginal improvement, but it's still dead-slow when compared side-by-side with an ancient winbox running Firefox 42 on Windows XP final. Contextual menus are working much better, but the longer my session runs, the slower TFF is at page rendering and recovering from tab switching & closing.
Bottom line: I think the web and modern browsers -- and any reworked version thereof, such as TFF -- are simply becoming too bloated and script-dependent for our poor old PPC machines to handle with any reliable fluency. Unless there's a way to make it less bloated...make it work...ON PPC. After all, we are kind of counting on that, or we wouldn't be here.
If you're running TFF on an Intel machine and/or a newer version of OS X, well, goody for you -- but that's kind of beside the point & original stated purpose of TEN-FOUR-Fox, isn't it?
Just an observation. I don't think anyone here is threatening to sue just because their free download doesn't fetch their slippers and serve them frappuccinos every morning. Right?
Support Staff 3 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 07 Nov, 2015 04:18 PM
I'm not sure what you're implying, but for the record, this reply and the previous one were typed into a 1GHz iMac G4, running 10.4.11.
Based on your reply, I don't have any additional suggestions for you. I'm sorry the browser doesn't meet your needs. Good luck.