How to reduce Firefox memory usage

By now you are probably using Firefox, and if you are staying up to date, you are using Firefox version 3. It is far superior to Internet Explorer in many ways.

One downfall of Firefox is that it uses more than its fair share of memory. I don't know why Mozilla has not taken care of this, but they haven't. But you can solve this little problem on your own, by using the free program called Firefox Ultimate Optimizer, available here (just choose the free download - there is no need to pay for the faster download).

What does it actually do? I will show you by the numbers on my own computer.

With Firefox running, I hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete and open the Windows Task Manager. When you click on the "Processes" tab, it lists everything that is running on your computer and how much memory each process is using. Here is what mine looked like, before I installed the Optimizer:

As you can see, Firefox is hogging 161,116 k of memory.

Then I installed the Firefox Ultimate Optimizer and ran it. Of course, the Optimizer program itself will use some memory. But look at this difference:

Firefox is now using less than 2000k, and the other program is only using about 1000k. Overall, I have reduced Firefox memory usage by a whopping 98%. That's huge!

When you download the program from the link above, it will be in .zip format. Open the zipped folder, and drag the 3 items inside to some other folder (you might want to make an "Optimizer" folder in My Documents, and keep it there).

Once you have them moved, just double click on the file called "Firefox Ultimate Optimizer" and it is now running. When it is running, you will see a tiny orange icon down in your system tray. Right-click on that icon, and choose "Start with Windows" so that it runs all the time.


UPDATE: I have received several emails from readers who have tried to install this program, only to be confronted with an error message. The message tells them that they need to install Microsoft's .NET product. This is a foundation of class libraries and support files that enables programmers to make programs work. I did not realize this was required, because I already had it on my computer.

You can download the .NET framework free from Microsoft, here. Then go back and install the Firefox Optimizer.

This week's video is a typical summer scene - kids having fun swimming in a lake. They are also having some fun "blobbing". This is where one person sits on the end of a large inflatable object, and someone else jumps on the other end, launching the first person into the air. This time, I think she got a little more height than expected.

Secret features of Firefox 3

Firefox 3 has some interesting features that most people are not aware of. This week we will talk about a few of these "secret" functions, and hopefully you will find them useful.


1. You can drag a Firefox tab to a separate Firefox window.
If you have two Firefox browser windows open, and you want to move a tabbed window from one to the other, just drag it. It not only comes with the tab itself, it also brings the history of that tab; so you can click the "Back" button just as if that tab had always been in that window.

2. You can resize your search bar.
As you know, Firefox comes with the Google search bar installed in the top-right corner of the browser window. However, it is a pretty short space, so if you have long search phrases you might not be able to see the whole search phrase at once.

To fix this, just resize the search bar. Put your cursor in between the Google search bar and the Firefox address bar, and the cursor changes to a horizontal line with an arrow at each end. Then just drag it until you have the size you like.

Now, this:

becomes this:

3. You can get Firefox add-ons right from the browser.
As you probably know, Firefox has lots of options for add-on features that customize it and make it do all kinds of great things. It used to be that you had to go searching on the web for these wonderful toys. Not any more - you can browse for them without having to Google.

Click Tools - Add-ons and look for the option called "Get Add-ons". There will be a few there that are recommended, and there will also be a link that says "Browse all Add-ons". That will take you to a seemingly endless supply of bells and whistles that will make your Firefox the coolest one in the neighborhood!

As an aside, one of the Add-ons that is a must-have is Ad-Block Plus. Sometimes I will be working on a computer and access a website or two with Internet Explorer, and suddenly I see all these ads popping up and jumping around and blinking. I'm kind of surprised for a minute, then I think, "Oh yeah - this is Internet Explorer." You don't have the option of blocking out those stupid ads with Explorer, but you sure can with Firefox. For me, that add-on alone makes Firefox the hands-down choice.

A wonderfully simple Firefox trick

This week's tip is probably one of the simplest ones I have ever published, and most people probably don't know about it. But it can make viewing some web pages a whole lot easier.

For me, a fairly good portion of my Firefox window is taken up by menus and toolbars. I only keep the ones that I use, but those are several. I have the Stumbleupon toolbar, the Linkwad toolbar, the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar, the regular address/search bar, and then there's also the Status bar at the bottom of the screen. I need a good size monitor just to see any actual content!

What if there's a website for which you need more screen space to see it all? That's easy.

Just hit the F11 button on your keyboard.

Go ahead, try it (it works with both Firefox 2, Firefox 3, and even Internet Explorer). When you hit F11, all of those toolbars and menus disappear, and all you see is the actual content of the web page. Want your menus and toolbars back? Just hit F11 again.

Sometimes the best things in life aren't just free, they're simple too.


This reporter gets a surprise while she is doing a live report. I guess when the report is about wrestling, anything can happen.

How to have LOTS of home pages

I know that some of you already know how to do this. But for those of you that still only have one website as your home page (the site that comes up each time you open Firefox or Internet Explorer)...this is for you.

It's nice to have a particular page come up each time you open your web browser. But what if you have three websites that you check regularly? or a dozen? You can set them all to come up each time, and still have only one window open in Internet Explorer or Firefox. You do this through the use of the tabs.

(I am going to use Firefox for this example, but the newest version of Internet Explorer - version 7 - does the same thing.)

Okay...so you open Firefox, and you see the page you always like to see. For example, a local news page:















We are going to assume that you want to always open that site, plus two other sites. Here is how to do it.

Click File - New tab. Up in the address bar, type the address for the next website (we'll say it is another newspaper site, such as www.quoddytides.com), and hit Enter. You should now see that site open in the second tab.

Do the same thing for a third tab - for this one we'll use some big-city news, The New York Times (www.nytimes.com).

Now you should see 3 tabs - one for each of those three sites (click the image to see it full size):



Now there is one more IMPORTANT step - you have to tell Firefox to use these 3 pages as your home page. Click on Tools - Options and choose the "Main" section. Click the button that says "Use these pages" and click OK to close that window.

Now close Firefox completely, and open it again. There are your 3 tabs. While you are reading the first one, the other 2 are loading in the background, and will be ready for you to click on them at your convenience.

You can always change your home page preferences by deleting some of them or adding more (although the more you have, the longer it will take for them to load - you can experiment with that based on your internet connection speed). And always remember to "lock in" your preference with that last step.

In order to avoid missing any computer tips, I recommend making my blog one of your home pages (www.ComputerTutorFlorida.com/blog).

Windows Media Player in Firefox

The general trend in web-based video is to have the video play in a Flash player (you probably already have Flash installed so that it plays in your web browser). Flash is just a programming language. If you can see the video I have posted below, you are viewing it in Flash.

However, some sites display videos in Windows Media Player format. If you use Firefox (as I know many of you do), and you have trouble viewing Windows Media videos, you may just need to install the Windows Media Firefox plug-in. This is very simple to do. Just open Firefox, then download the plug-in from here. When you see the "Install" button, click it. You will probably have to restart Firefox.

Now you are ready to view Windows Media videos from Firefox.

This week's video is a compilation of various people having a really bad day at the office:

Linkwad

One of the things I love about using the Firefox web browser is that there are hundreds of ways to customize it by using what are called Extensions. An extension is a small bit of software that makes Firefox do something interesting or handy - something that it originally was not designed to do. I have lots of extensions already installed, but I found a new one this week that is wonderful.

The new extension I just discovered is called Linkwad. If you use a lot of tabbed browser windows in Firefox, you might like it too.

If you use Firefox, you know that one of its great features is tabbed browsing. You can have 2 or 3 or 10 different websites open in one window, each one with its own tab. My problem is that I have too many tabs - I have a bunch of websites that open up automatically when I start Firefox, and even on high speed it can seem to drag a bit while all those sites are loading at the same time.

With Linkwad, you can have different groups of tabs. For example, you could have one group that opens automatically when Firefox starts. Then you could have another group of sites that are all political blogs. Then you could have a different set of tabs that are all news or entertainment sites. Another group could be a set of different pre-set eBay searches. There really is no limit! All you do is create a set of tabbed sites, then save that set (each set is called a "wad") by giving it a name.

Linkwad always resides at the top of the Firefox window, and you have the command to Open a set of tabs you have already saved, Save a set of tabs you just created, or Close the current set of tabs. And of course, it is completely free.

You can read about Linkwad and download it here.