While developing on my local machine I noticed Firefox took a long time to load even the simplest page, with 6 seconds being the average. Googling around I found several possible causes, but the actual culprit was put there by a trusted companion.

DNS lookups?
Several blogs reported that the reason might be slow IPv6 DNS lookups. If you type about:config and change the setting “network.dns.disableIPv6″ setting to “true” it solved the problem for some people. Alas not my problem.

Firefox itself?
Other blogs gave tips on generally improving the internal mechanics of Firefox. I kept this reference as a last resort, but my instincts told me to look elsewhere.

Next thought: add-ons.

Add-ons can slow down Firefox’ performance so it’s worth checking. In fact the first suspect on my list turned out to be the actual add-on causing the slow loading speeds: my antivirus software’s “Anti-phishing toolbar”!

I disabled the add-on and hey presto everything worked as fast as in other browsers. (Note: remember that if you disable a plugin you will loose that functionality, in this case a useful security aid)

Thought I might share these possible solutions with the community before going back to work again (at milliseconds speed!)

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.