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Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 08:35
by link68759
Does this work with palemoon? If so, how? I thought it would create a process of palemoon.exe that forks to the background, but it just starts and exits.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... preloader/

Are there any other ways to decrease startup time? I have a lot of extensions and it takes roughly 7 seconds from start to finish.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 12:36
by Trinoc
I can never understand why programs which people frequently want to keep running in the background (browsers, emailers, etc.) do not have minimizing to the system tray as a standard option.

With Palemoon I use "MinimizeToTray revived" (https://tn123.org/mintrayr/). I use the option to minimize to the tray when I click on close ("[x]"), to prevent me from accidentally shutting it down, but there is the option of only catching the minimize button.

Minimizing on close has an unfortunate "feature" in that if you close a secondary window (often even a pop-up) this ends up minimized to the tray as well, and you can end up with multiple Palemoon icons in the tray. It's annoying, but you can get rid of the extras by right clicking the icon in the tray and selecting "Close window".

I normally start up Palemoon (and Thunderbird) just once on boot-up. If I need the memory they are using for something else they just get swapped out to the page file.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 13:21
by megaman
I tried this extension, several times, but it hardly works any wonders for me and my 22 add-ons.
I tried Chromium-based browsers with 25 extensions that almost equal the add-ons and features that Palemoon does better, but Chromium-based loads-up in a blink of an eye, regardless of amount of extensions.
Nothing compares to Firefox/Palemoon, to me, but these slow start-ups are a pain.
Trinoc wrote:I can never understand why programs which people frequently want to keep running in the background (browsers, emailers, etc.) do not have minimizing to the system tray as a standard option.
I normally start up Palemoon (and Thunderbird) just once on boot-up. If I need the memory they are using for something else they just get swapped out to the page file.
I have tons of add-ons and tabs that I don't want the browser hogging any of the resources that I use for gaming, so I close the browser. Besides, I use CleanMem and the browser still ends up hogging too much memory and I can't free it even with the CleanMem feature, so I have to close the browser. CleanMem would work similar to Minimize to Tray Revived, but it works manually when I need it (I use it a lot when needed) or automatically in a set time frame. Also, you can do the minimize thing that frees-up memory from the about:config manually.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 15:38
by Moonchild
I'm assuming people are talking about cold starts here (after a fresh reboot)? In that case, 7 seconds is really not strange and about on-par. Cold starts lasting more than 20 seconds should be considered too slow for good measure.

Especially if you are restoring a session with more than a few tabs, startups can take a while.

A warm startup (you've run Pale Moon, closed it down, and starting it up again in the same Windows session) should not take much time unless you've completely flushed your memory from any cached files. If warm starts take a long time, then make sure you are excluding the Pale Moon application and profile folders from AV scanners and the likes as that can slow things down tremendously. Also consider cleaning up your history database once in a while. Once again: a session with a large amount of tabs can take a while even with warm starts, simply because a lot of work needs to be done to reload and re-render the pages.

I personally don't have slow startups of the browser, at all; it's hard for me to reproduce anything in that respect since I don't have, and never had, any slow startup issues. The only relatively slow startup I see is when I load it up on my really crappy 1.4 GHz Atom netbook that has the slowest hard drive in existence ;) But that's to be expected.

EDIT: example timings for me, restoring a 2-window, 12+5 tab session (including Facebook, Twitter, 2 art sites):
---- main start startupCDB StartupCDE firstPaint sessionR createTopLW firstLoadURI
Warm 31 undef 101 32724 2544 2674 425 2658
Cold 546 530 1045 35615 5226 6052 2574 5460

That's 6 seconds to fully restore my session on cold start, and 2.7 seconds on warm start. Fully loaded and rather dirty profile, 19 add-ons including a few heavyweights like ABP and Firebug. I don't consider that slow.

Of course I'd like to help improve startup times, but I need something to work with first. Specific details about your system, running software and exact situations where slow startups occur (as well as indications of exact startup times, e.g. through https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo ... t-startup/ ) would help.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 16:29
by megaman
No idea what these figures say.
About 6 - 8 seconds on warm.
Edit: My problem is that I have 22 add-ons, excluding this one I am using to test with. Yet, the main reason for using the browser is for the add-ons/features that can't compare to Chromium, so I can't let go.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 16:48
by Moonchild
megaman wrote:No idea what these figures say.
The main (top level) window is created in about 1 second for you - the other 5 are spent initializing the UI (before the first paint event of content). Your add-ons are using the startup time, by the looks of it. Either that or slow hardware initialization for graphics. Hard to tell.

EDIT: by the way: add-ons made using Jetpack/Add-on SDK will add a significant amount of time to startup in many cases because the SDK runtime libraries need to be loaded.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 17:00
by megaman
Moonchild wrote:The main (top level) window is created in about 1 second for you - the other 5 are spent initializing the UI (before the first paint event of content). Your add-ons are using the startup time, by the looks of it. Either that or slow hardware initialization for graphics. Hard to tell.
I'lll try to get this tested with an SSD or at least an SSHD. My other hardware is too quick to be faltered.
I'll look for similar add-ons that don't rely on Jepack.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 18:07
by Moonchild
All in all, anything < 10 seconds is certainly nothing to complain about. A modern web browser is a very complex piece of software, more akin to a 3D game than anything else. It just takes time to load up. If you can't spare 10 seconds to load up the browser, then you're way too much in a hurry, IMHO ;)

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 18:44
by megaman
Moonchild wrote:All in all, anything < 10 seconds is certainly nothing to complain about. A modern web browser is a very complex piece of software, more akin to a 3D game than anything else. It just takes time to load up. If you can't spare 10 seconds to load up the browser, then you're way too much in a hurry, IMHO ;)
Yes, that is correct, 3-5 seconds is too slow for me.
Hyper-active and always hoping things show up as fast as I act on them. (I am insane, I know)
Maybe upgrade my processor to a new Steamroller processor, but it still is limited by the HDD, maybe get an SSHD.
Any other tips that could just make the browser load faster without sacrificing my add-ons, that I want, are welcome.

Excluding Palemoon in avast!, to see if that helps.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-29, 20:55
by Rohugh
megaman wrote:
Moonchild wrote: Excluding Palemoon in avast!, to see if that helps.
Disabling Avast! makes no difference to the speed of loading for me - and that includes the Avast firewall as well. First time load of a different version of PM takes a bit of time whilst Avast! checks it out but after that all is good and speedy.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-30, 01:03
by Moonchild
@megaman:
If you want the browser at the ready in <2 seconds at all times, then put it in your Windows startup group and don't close it unless you shut down Windows.
You can set it to "hibernate" when minimizing by using trim_on_minimize in about:config if active memory use is a problem for you.

There are alternatives possible. A small tool that preloads all Pale Moon application files into memory/cache, for example - but that too will have its drawbacks. Or set up a RAM drive with the app files on it to be loaded at boot time, for example. Somehow, though, I don't think I/O would be the bottleneck, but rather processing power caused by initialization of code/UI.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-30, 07:37
by raindress
thought that my 15-20sec browser load time was normal!? until this post.started to go thru all this post,even adding "guru" line to about:config(after some search)don't know it's affect yet. my system is slow,use xp. tried changing palemoon properties to run minimized window(?)good luck. and adding something to .exe with no difference. have tried "palemin" .what puts the second counting to the background is to load PM at windows startup & load the extension: Minimize On Start and Close 1.3.2 with a setting of 50ms. a case of no look,no see. so who's counting now?!! something to do with a rocket,payload & liftoff? browser,extensions,speed? :idea:

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-30, 11:17
by Moonchild
raindress wrote:thought that my 15-20sec browser load time was normal!?
It is for a first start on a slow system. As stated, modern browsers simply take some time to load up because of the way they work.
My system takes, as stated, about 6 seconds for a fresh start - that is loading on a fast quad-core system with 16GB of RAM and an SSD/HD combo (browser loads from HD, profile is on SSD). Getting 2 or 3 times that is normal for a slow system.

People are probably being just too impatient. :P

PS: If you don't know what something does, don't add it to about:config. The defaults are recommended for everyone.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-30, 14:30
by megaman
Moonchild wrote:@megaman:
If you want the browser at the ready in <2 seconds at all times, then put it in your Windows startup group and don't close it unless you shut down Windows.
You can set it to "hibernate" when minimizing by using trim_on_minimize in about:config if active memory use is a problem for you.

There are alternatives possible. A small tool that preloads all Pale Moon application files into memory/cache, for example - but that too will have its drawbacks. Or set up a RAM drive with the app files on it to be loaded at boot time, for example. Somehow, though, I don't think I/O would be the bottleneck, but rather processing power caused by initialization of code/UI.
It will be done.
Yeah, the preloader tool is a pain, most of the time it is because I have to rename Palemoon to Firefox, and that causes many issues to begin with.
Ah yes, I forgot to try that AMD RAM Drive, I'll check it out.

Edit: Right, sometimes I look up something fast, information on a game or to find information on something that comes to mind at the very moment, and I need the browser to load-up fast to get things done. Sometimes I forget the reason I open the browser because I am more focus on waiting for it to load that I push away the reason for opening it in the first place. (Meh, I didn't think about using Flash Note in the first place to jot things down. Okay, no more need to worry about Boot times.)

Edit 2: A co-worker got arrested last year and I had my phone off. Imagine the pain I had to go through while I wait for the phone to get to the UI, so I can jot the number down that he wanted, no pen in hand. (By the time the phone was ready, they already had taken him downtown) Lesson learned, carry paper and pen.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-30, 15:34
by Trinoc
With an earlier Firefox (3.6) I found that running Speedyfox occasionally to defragment the records in the sqlite files improved start-up time a lot. I still run it with Palemoon 24 but I don't know how much difference it makes since I have never left it long enough for the files to get seriously fragmented.

Edit: I just closed Palemoon, ran Speedyfox, then started Palemoon again. It took 10 seconds to start. I have 33 add-ons and I'm running XP SP3 on a 3GHz Pentium 4 (with hyper-threading), 4GB of RAM and disks with about 100MB/sec peak transfer rate.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-30, 15:37
by megaman
Trinoc wrote:With an earlier Firefox (3.6) I found that running Speedyfox occasionally to defragment the records in the sqlite files improved start-up time a lot. I still run it with Palemoon 24 but I don't know how much difference it makes since I have never left it long enough for the files to get seriously fragmented.
I have used it several times in different versions of Firefox, but it doesn't do any difference to me, at least. It is a good program, no doubt.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-30, 20:12
by mr666
Mines are :
192.67 25.00 3305.67 46862.67 16687.00 sessionRestored:16703.00 5207.33 16506.00
as average!

:think:

I have an old notebook with Xp, just 1 ,4 Ram and 4 add-ons extensions active.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-31, 03:04
by link68759
megaman wrote:I tried this extension, several times, but it hardly works any wonders for me and my 22 add-ons.
I tried Chromium-based browsers with 25 extensions that almost equal the add-ons and features that Palemoon does better, but Chromium-based loads-up in a blink of an eye, regardless of amount of extensions.
Nothing compares to Firefox/Palemoon, to me, but these slow start-ups are a pain.
Trinoc wrote:I can never understand why programs which people frequently want to keep running in the background (browsers, emailers, etc.) do not have minimizing to the system tray as a standard option.
I normally start up Palemoon (and Thunderbird) just once on boot-up. If I need the memory they are using for something else they just get swapped out to the page file.
I have tons of add-ons and tabs that I don't want the browser hogging any of the resources that I use for gaming, so I close the browser. Besides, I use CleanMem and the browser still ends up hogging too much memory and I can't free it even with the CleanMem feature, so I have to close the browser. CleanMem would work similar to Minimize to Tray Revived, but it works manually when I need it (I use it a lot when needed) or automatically in a set time frame. Also, you can do the minimize thing that frees-up memory from the about:config manually.
Chrome is running in the background 24/7, which is why it seems to "start instantly". Google's software is glorified adware/spyware and imo it is poor practice to do that without telling the user (as well as all of their auto update services you can't stop or even easily uninstall).

My warm start is 7 seconds moonchild, I wasn't aware there was such a thing as a cold start so I haven't measured it yet. You say 7 seconds is acceptable........ if I click a link on a web page, is it acceptable to wait 7 seconds for a new tab to be opened, before the page even starts downloading? There are many times when an external program wants to open a web page (8.1's nifty search for example will bring me to the download page of a program if I had not already had it installed), and my work flow comes to a grinding halt if I had not remembered to start palemoon earlier.

My preferred solution would be to have it running in the background at boot, and "starting" it via shortcut or URL unhides the window. I guess I can try sloppily doing that myself with autohotkey, but I was hoping to get some answers about that extension I posted.

Unless there's a lighter alternative to ABP that also comes in pop up blocker form (apb pop up blocker is an amazing extension, abp rule hider for pages is awesome), or unless abp can be made more efficient, I can't actually do much about extension boot time. I know ABP is responsible for like 3-4 seconds, which is ridiculous, but what can I do?

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-31, 06:08
by Accel
link68759 wrote:
megaman wrote:I tried this extension, several times, but it hardly works any wonders for me and my 22 add-ons.
I tried Chromium-based browsers with 25 extensions that almost equal the add-ons and features that Palemoon does better, but Chromium-based loads-up in a blink of an eye, regardless of amount of extensions.
Nothing compares to Firefox/Palemoon, to me, but these slow start-ups are a pain.
Trinoc wrote:I can never understand why programs which people frequently want to keep running in the background (browsers, emailers, etc.) do not have minimizing to the system tray as a standard option.
I normally start up Palemoon (and Thunderbird) just once on boot-up. If I need the memory they are using for something else they just get swapped out to the page file.
I have tons of add-ons and tabs that I don't want the browser hogging any of the resources that I use for gaming, so I close the browser. Besides, I use CleanMem and the browser still ends up hogging too much memory and I can't free it even with the CleanMem feature, so I have to close the browser. CleanMem would work similar to Minimize to Tray Revived, but it works manually when I need it (I use it a lot when needed) or automatically in a set time frame. Also, you can do the minimize thing that frees-up memory from the about:config manually.
Chrome is running in the background 24/7, which is why it seems to "start instantly". Google's software is glorified adware/spyware and imo it is poor practice to do that without telling the user (as well as all of their auto update services you can't stop or even easily uninstall).

My warm start is 7 seconds moonchild, I wasn't aware there was such a thing as a cold start so I haven't measured it yet. You say 7 seconds is acceptable........ if I click a link on a web page, is it acceptable to wait 7 seconds for a new tab to be opened, before the page even starts downloading? There are many times when an external program wants to open a web page (8.1's nifty search for example will bring me to the download page of a program if I had not already had it installed), and my work flow comes to a grinding halt if I had not remembered to start palemoon earlier.

My preferred solution would be to have it running in the background at boot, and "starting" it via shortcut or URL unhides the window. I guess I can try sloppily doing that myself with autohotkey, but I was hoping to get some answers about that extension I posted.

Unless there's a lighter alternative to ABP that also comes in pop up blocker form (apb pop up blocker is an amazing extension, abp rule hider for pages is awesome), or unless abp can be made more efficient, I can't actually do much about extension boot time. I know ABP is responsible for like 3-4 seconds, which is ridiculous, but what can I do?
how about using this extension?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... lentblock/

the only downside is it use regex not the usual abp filter and no subcription so you must make your own lists.

Re: Speed up boot times

Posted: 2013-12-31, 07:40
by link68759
Thanks, but if there's not a predefined blacklist to import, not interested. I'm not about to expose myself to hundreds of ads and just block them one by one with regex expressions. And according to the comments, restart firefox every time to have the changes take effect, only to realize you typed it wrong.... That doesn't cover ad blocking or element hiding either.