However, Firefox is fighting a performance perception battle on multiple fronts. In actuality, one of Firefox’s greatest strengths – it’s extensibility through add-ons – is also a downfall. Is it the native Firefox browser itself that causes your disk to grind or memory to slowly creep higher and her, or could it be that new extension you installed? Often it is the case that the extensions themselves are to blame!
Firefox does a disservice to themselves as it’s not possible to natively measure performance or memory usage of components within the browser itself. About Startup is a browser extension that captures a few interesting benchmarks. Specifically, three timings are gathered during the browser load and then displayed through the address URL about:startup
- main: Firefox main function is entered
- sessionRestored: The tabs from the previous session have been created (not loaded)
- firstPaint: Something has been painted in Firefox (whatever this means)
About Startup are merely a start to understanding what is causing any sluggishness in Firefox as it is incapable of breaking down the timings between particular extensions. At this point you are left to enable or disable extension combinations to locate the negative performance culprit.
About Startup remains the best manner in assembling this information, even if a bit of leg-work is necessary.
