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Tech & VC 29 Aug 2007 07:18 am

My Firefox Extensions

This post has two purposes. 1) it’s an continuation of My Toolkit post in order to increase exposure in how I get my work done, and 2) it’s a call for help.

My Firefox recently turned into molasses. It’s slower than usual in general, but it’s particularly hanging every time I open a new tab. So, I thought I’d list all the Firefox extensions I have currently installed in hopes that someone might recognize a culprit for my slowness. As an added bonus; I thought it would be interesting to to expose all my extensions:

My extensions:

  • Adblock Plus
  • Autocomplete Manager
  • BlogRovR
  • BlueOrganizer
  • ChatZilla
  • del.icio.us
  • DOM Inspector
  • Email This!
  • Firebug
  • FireFTP
  • Google Gears
  • Google Toolbar
  • Greasemonkey
  • LastTab
  • Live HTTP Headers
  • Operator
  • PMOG
  • Shareaholic
  • StumbleUpon
  • TalkBack
  • Twitwin (I believe this is supposed to be “TwitBin” but is misspelled in the extensions list)
  • Web Developer
  • Wesabe Uploader
  • Also, my theme is “Noia 2.0 eXtreme”

Out of all of these, I think my favorite is “LastTab.” It’s SO simple (changes the behavior of “ctrl-tab” to match that of Windows), yet it makes me much more efficient. TwitBin is a close second for the opposite reason: it’s a huge time sink, but it’s very entertaining. TwitBin is my preferred Twitter client. Is there any extension(s) I should try removing to speed up my browser?

Comments (9)

9 Responses to “My Firefox Extensions”

  1. on 29 Aug 2007 at 9:16 am 1.Alex Iskold said …

    Hey Andrew,

    After you installed 2.0.0.6, did you clear the cache?

    Alex

  2. on 29 Aug 2007 at 9:52 am 2.Alex Iskold said …

    I think it maybe a combination of Google Toolbar and BlueOrganizer. Would you please disable to Google Toolbar and see if the issue goes away.

    Thanks!

    Alex

  3. on 29 Aug 2007 at 10:11 am 3.Marc Meyer said …

    Hey Andrew, you can use “binary search” to find which is the problem (if it is one and not an interaction). Disable (don’t uninstall) the addons in the first half of your list. Restart, if you find this is fast, then the problem is in one of the extensions in the first half. If not, the second.
    Now turn on the extension set in which you think the problem is and turn off half of those. repeat this till you isolate the one extension which is slowing you down.

    Luck!

  4. on 29 Aug 2007 at 3:02 pm 4.Ken Berger said …

    I think you’re implying that this is a Mac??

    Same sitch happened to me on Windows. I did a complete uninstall of ffox, including removing C:\Docs & Sett\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox (this was key). Then dloaded and reinstalled the list of plugins (sounds harsh but was actually quite quick if you’re organized). Presto- much better performance. It could be that I reset a param for a performance tweak, don’t know, but the total uninstall/reinstall solved the problem.

  5. on 30 Aug 2007 at 7:53 am 5.Blues Musings said …

    Agree with Ken Berger – sounds like you need a complete overhaul – clean the slate and start fresh. You didn’t mention whether this is Mac or Windoze. I’ll assume your OS is Windoze. Here is the correct way to remove Firefox.

    Uninstalling and cleaning out all the Firefox files including your profile(s) is an excellent way of resolving any extremely strange behavior or annoying problems you may get with Firefox. To completely remove all traces of Firefox from your system follow these steps:

    1. Go to Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs in XP or Control Panel>Programs & Features in Vista, and if a ‘Mozilla Firefox’ entry (or similar) exists, select it and click Change/Remove and uninstall it. Reboot if required.

    2. Go to your Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla directory in XP, or the \Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Mozilla and \Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\ directories in Vista and delete the entire \Firefox subdirectory and all of its contents. Note that this will delete all of your bookmarks. Backup your bookmarks – I recommend using extension { Bookmark Backup 0.4.3 } download from FF add-ons.

    3. Go to your \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\ directory and delete it and all of its contents.

    4. Using a registry cleaner like RegCleaner 4.3, find and remove all Firefox/Mozilla-related entries (usually there are several Mozilla entries to be found) and remove them. Alternatively you can use the Registry Editor (Start>Run>Regedit) and delete the following keys – that is, right click on their name in the left pane of Registry Editor and select Delete:

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML]

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\firefox.exe]

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla]

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MozillaPlugins]

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla]

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\mozilla.org]

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins]

    That will remove the bulk of the Firefox-related settings which can cause problems with newer installations if they have become corrupted (through overclocking for example). Note: If you also have Mozilla Thunderbird or any other Mozilla products installed, make sure to only uninstall entries under the keys above which relate directly to Firefox.

    Install the full 2.0.0.6 package. This will prevent a wide range of problems down the track. Once Firefox 2.0.0.6 is installed, you can then use the automatic update feature to keep it up to date quickly and easily. Import your Bookmarks backup. Reinstall your extensions one at a time and observe if there is any slowdown. This will help solve and weed out problems with corrupt extensions. Some of your extensions may not be compatible with version 2.0.0.6 – to get around this problem install this amazing little extension { MR Tech Local Install 5.3.2.5 } Go here for details and D/L : http://www.mrtech.com/extensions/local_install/

    Following these procedures correctly will most definitely solve and enhance Firefox’s performance. Hope this helps. Good luck !

  6. on 30 Aug 2007 at 1:14 pm 6.Jay said …

    If you do a complete overhaul, I hope you re-install Shareaholic :)

  7. on 09 Sep 2007 at 1:03 am 7.Prayogi said …

    Hi i just use Adblock
    nice to know you

  8. on 09 Nov 2007 at 1:29 pm 8.Richard Mitnick said …

    I need to say thanks to whoever posts as Blue Musings.

    I did something to one of my Firefox installations that killed its saving of form data. I got tons of help from some really good people at great forums, but none of them spelled out the registry edits.

    That was the end of what I needed. I followed his script line by line, did the registry edits, got a new download of 2.0.0.9, and I am back in business.

    I would love to see his instructions posted complete at Mozillazine, SillyDog, and WindowsBBS.

  9. on 19 Nov 2007 at 4:12 am 9.Drew said …

    Hey Andrew, i seemed to have a similar prob, crazy ffox was processor hog *all of a sudden*. I believe it was either, upon install of adobe CS3, or perhaps my second account on del.icio.us, changing user names.

    I believe the culprit might have been del.icio.us. After deleting the user profile per above comment, it works, but is completely uninstalled. There was significant pile of del.icio.us files in the …user/applicationdata/…firefox folder, and they were pretty large in size, like 4megs each. That is my suspecion.

    cheers,
    Drew