Firefox With Many Addons

Published by: Codrut Nistor, in SoftDistrict Series

July8th2008

Most of the Firefox users I know have a lot of addons, no matter if they're running Firefox 2 or Firefox 3. Now, the problem appears when some of those addons start crashing, or when Firefox ends up eating huge amounts of memory. Yesterday, I read an older article on CybernetNews about having 200 addons installed in Firefox, and this made me think about taking things to a whole new level... Since all that was happening back in 2006, when Firefox 3 was not ready yet, and to have 200 addons installed and notice how the browser behaved with one or two sites opened is already a bit outdated, I decided to try and go for a new Firefox 3 world record as of 2008!

Obviously, things are not that easy as it seems, because I have a really rough ride in mind for Mozilla's pet, my computer, and myself as a user. Here's what I want to do:

1. First of all, I will be using Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit, and the last Firefox 2 version. No matter what people may say about it, Vista seems to have a better memory management than XP, and I also think it may all get a bit more interesting in Vista...

2. I won't start installing extensions right away, because there's one more thing I have to do first - create a group of sites able to stress the browser a little from the beginning. I am not talking about more than 20-30 sites - those from our network, and then some big ones, like IMDB, Google, Microsoft.com, Yahoo, 2Advanced.com and maybe another 2-3 Flash sites...I'll let you know when that is done, don't worry!

3. The sites in the group will be set to open with Firefox, and then I'll start installing extensions. I'll tell you next time how I will choose those extensions.

4. After installing a batch of 50-100 addons, I will perform some tests to see how is Firefox handling them. More about those tests, in the next episode, of course!

5. If the browser doesn't crash and it doesn't run out of memory either(hah! I would like to see that!), I will try to reach the 500 addons installed mark(Guinness Book, here I come!), but this is only the first part...

6. As soon as I reach an insane number of addons installed in Firefox 2, I will install Firefox 3 over it, and this should keep all settings intact and, more important, all addons. If Firefox 2 would crawl with that whole bunch of extensions installed, we'll see the real difference between the two versions of the browser for sure.

Now, some last thoughts... If you want to get involved, feel free to drop your comments at the end of the article, I surely want to get some fresh ideas from other Firefox power users! If you want to steal my idea, at least give us a backlink... More people doing this would mean more results for the tests, and it may even give some interesting data to Mozilla and the producers of those plugins we'll install, who knows...

At last, I can tell you this - tomorrow, I'll setup the group of sites to use, we'll go through my Firefox 2 settings and currently installed addons once more, I'll tell you a few things about the software and hardware I am using, and then we'll get ready for the first 50-100 addons, which I hope to have installed and running by the end of the week, if not even sooner.

So...what do you think? "Firefox with many addons" doesn't mean 10, 20, or 50. Firefox with many addons means "as much as it can carry," and if I reach 500+, I won't need to get into Guinness Book, although that would be a nice achievement. The record set by Firefox 3 made me think about a record I can set by using it, and since I am not up for "longest Web browsing session," here you have it - over 500 Firefox addons installed & running, headed your way!!!