looking for a caching solution to reduce network usage on a mettered connection

[radorn]

Recently I lost access to non-mettered broadband as I used to have. I'm using a rather limited mobile data plan. (I watch video in 144p, and not much of it either).
Additionaly, for a while now, because of how Google and their practices have been changing the web over the years, I had to find a more or less acceptable Chromium based browser for sites that didn't work well with, or outright refused to serve, PaleMoon. Due to my heavy tabbing I found that it was faster due to it's heaving multiprocessing, but I still pretty much dislike Chromium (not just Chrome, which will never touch a computer of mine) for many reasons and would rather go back to PaleMoon. Fast it may be, but it's stupid in so many ways... but I'm not here for that.
The case is that during my Chromium-based experience, I've come to realize that the stupid thing was wasting my scarce bandwidth by using the cache for apparently not much at all. For example, if I open a certain page and there's an image in it that I want to copy to disk, instead of just copying it from disk or ram cache, it will download it again even if the web page was opened just five seconds prior. Now, to be fair, if I disconnect from the net it will try to copy it from some cache. I would assume it's from disk, because after a certain point this doesn't work anymore and the downloads start failing, even if the page is still on an active tab and the image is visible.
It seems like PaleMoon does this too?

I thought of looking for a proxy cache software that I could install directly on the SO (Win7 64b) and force the browser to connect through that, but I haven't been successful with that endeavor. I'm also assuming that today's use of HTTPS isn't friendly to this approach anymore, and perhaps that's why these external proxy solutions aren't popular.

So, it seems that this caching would have to be done at the browser level. Or maybe someone here knows a good way to do this that I failed to see.

Is there any addon, or whatever else, that would enable me to keep a big long-term cache (I do have plenty of local storage for this) and prioritize it's use to minimize as much as possible re-fetching stuff from the internet, particularly images, that also has controls to define what sites, how much to keep, for how long, manual overrides, selective purging, and, preferrably, place it in a secondary disk? But I could also go through the trouble of setting a hardlink to go around this.

[Pentium4User]

You can increase the disk cache of PM to 1024 MB in the settings.
You can also run an proxy server in your network, e.g. squid. But that does only affect HTTP, FTP etc but not HTTPS unless you break up the encryption.
You can also use an ad blocker to reduce loaded data.

[back2themoon]

You can try these extensions:

Greedy Cache
Decentraleyes (current latest PM version is 1.4.3, find it here)

These will cache some stuff, but don't expect miracles or the most advanced operations you describe.

[radorn]

@Pentium4User @back2themoon thanks for the suggestions.

I don't really want that much cache on my system disk, but I guess I could hardlink the cache folder to another disk. Not ideal, but it should help some. 1GB won't do that much, but I guess it should help with the double fetching for image copying, especially wtih that greedycache addon.

I had already played around with squid too, but I didn't get too far with that, and most websites today use HTTPS anyway, so I don't see much gain in pursuing that anyway.
My "network" is just this computer and an android phone with USB tethering.

I've been using ublock origin for years. Although I didn't mind the extra traffic when I had an unmetered line (single T ), I didn't like the tracking aspect of the ads, nor how all the unblocked garbage would quickly overload the browser after a handful of tabs, so I block that stuff, certainly.

[andyprough]

I've been using ublock origin for years. Although I didn't mind the extra traffic when I had an unmetered line (single T ), I didn't like the tracking aspect of the ads, nor how all the unblocked garbage would quickly overload the browser after a handful of tabs, so I block that stuff, certainly.

If you run ublock origin in advanced mode, you can restrict the ability of websites to load large images, js, and even their own fonts by default, and only let the elements through that you want to see. I've run it that way for quite awhile, but one thing I haven't looked at is if that makes any substantial savings in bandwidth. I would imagine that it does make some amount of a measurable difference.

[khronosschoty]

For a little bit over the top and more complicated solution, checkout http://www.squid-cache.org

[basicuser]

Radorn,

Since you look like a brand new user and the add-ons site is temporally down, here’s the link to uBlock Origin. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock-for-firefox-legacy

There’s a good explanation there on how it works.

Under “Releases”, click “latest” then under “Assets” click uBlockO_1.16.4.30.firefox-legacy.xpi which should allow you to install uBlockO.

Hope this helps.

Welcome to Pale Moon

[radorn]

If you run ublock origin in advanced mode, you can restrict the ability of websites to load large images, js, and even their own fonts by default, and only let the elements through that you want to see. I've run it that way for quite awhile, but one thing I haven't looked at is if that makes any substantial savings in bandwidth. I would imagine that it does make some amount of a measurable difference.

Thanks for the tip.
I suppose that involves writing a script or rules or something. I'm not familiarized, but I'll look into that.
Normally, if I visit some site with large images it would be because I'm after those images, so blocking them would be counter productive.
My beef is with that needless re-fetching of stuff that pointlessly wastes of my data quota.

For a little bit over the top and more complicated solution, checkout http://www.squid-cache.org

Yeah, it was commented above. I briefly toyed around with that, but didn't get far.
Also, I assume it won't be able to cache HTTPS sites...? That greatly reduces usefulness in today's web.

Since you look like a brand new user and the add-ons site is temporally down, here’s the link to uBlock Origin.

Returning user, actually. My account was purged. I thought I had logged in time to avoid it, but it seems it didn't work.
I'm more of a simple user than an active member though, so it wasn't a big loss.
And, yes, I'm a long time uBlock Origin user. But thanks for the link.

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Given the prevalence of HTTPS, I suppose external protocol-based proxies aren't going to get the job done, so it seems to me that the only point at which to tackle this problem would be at the browser cache level. But I guess my case just isn't that popular to warrant extensive development by anyone. Most people using a desktop browser would have access to either unmetered broadband or wifi, and probably aren't interested in dedicating a significative chunk of storage to a permanent cache. Those on cell data will mostly keep it to direct phone usage where it's even less practical to keep such a cache system.

Hopeless? Other than the partial solutions already mentioned, I mean.

[Kris_88]

Could you give a specific link to the picture where the file is downloaded again ?

The thing is that the browser cache works normally. I do not find a problem with the cache. But if the server says that the file does not need to be cached, the browser will not cache. And no third-party cache should cache either, as it is assumed that the server can give different pictures to the same request.

[Kris_88]

There is an add-on that allows you to manage caching regardless of server instructions. But it is for chrome. You can search for something like this for the PM or create your own.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... gijjcjnbeh

[gepus]

@radorn

I don't know but you could check if the value set to "0" makes any difference.

browser.cache.check_doc_frequency

0: Check once per browser session
1: Check every time I view the page
2: Never check (always use cached page)
3 (default): Check when the page is out of date (automatically determined)

[khronosschoty]

If you run ublock origin in advanced mode, you can restrict the ability of websites to load large images, js, and even their own fonts by default, and only let the elements through that you want to see. I've run it that way for quite awhile, but one thing I haven't looked at is if that makes any substantial savings in bandwidth. I would imagine that it does make some amount of a measurable difference.

Thanks for the tip.
I suppose that involves writing a script or rules or something. I'm not familiarized, but I'll look into that.
Normally, if I visit some site with large images it would be because I'm after those images, so blocking them would be counter productive.
My beef is with that needless re-fetching of stuff that pointlessly wastes of my data quota.

For a little bit over the top and more complicated solution, checkout http://www.squid-cache.org

Yeah, it was commented above. I briefly toyed around with that, but didn't get far.
Also, I assume it won't be able to cache HTTPS sites...? That greatly reduces usefulness in today's web.

Since you look like a brand new user and the add-ons site is temporally down, here’s the link to uBlock Origin.

Returning user, actually. My account was purged. I thought I had logged in time to avoid it, but it seems it didn't work.
I'm more of a simple user than an active member though, so it wasn't a big loss.
And, yes, I'm a long time uBlock Origin user. But thanks for the link.

----------------------------------

Given the prevalence of HTTPS, I suppose external protocol-based proxies aren't going to get the job done, so it seems to me that the only point at which to tackle this problem would be at the browser cache level. But I guess my case just isn't that popular to warrant extensive development by anyone. Most people using a desktop browser would have access to either unmetered broadband or wifi, and probably aren't interested in dedicating a significative chunk of storage to a permanent cache. Those on cell data will mostly keep it to direct phone usage where it's even less practical to keep such a cache system.

Hopeless? Other than the partial solutions already mentioned, I mean.

Actually squid can be used with https, if you set it up correctly. I've ran a working http + https cache with squid. It may be a little bit of work to setup, but it is probably one of the few true solutions to what you are trying to accomplish.

[kreemoweet]

The program notes indicate it works with Pale Moon. No add-on needed. No network requests made.
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/image_cache_viewer.html

[Gaming4JC]

Historically, I used FasTun for this, but it seems they discontinued their proxy services. skyZIP was another, I'm unsure if it still works but it is still available from ca-archive and their website is up. The "Network Bandwidth Saver" addon also helps some by only lazy-loading images, so if you don't scroll the page it doesn't download all the extra resources.

Other less conventional methods would be changing your browsing habits. e.g. Instead of Google News you would use http://68k.news/

Lowband also brings back some nostalgia: http://www.loband.org/loband/filter/org ... request=Go