Mozilla tackles slow Firefox add-ons

Written by Antony Leather

April 4, 2011 | 12:11

Tags: #add-on #firefox #speed

Companies: #chrome #mozilla

Mozilla has announced a crackdown on slow Firefox add-ons. In a recent blog post, Mozilla's add-ons product manager Justin Scott described the measures the organisation will take to minimise slowdowns.

'We’ve updated our Performance Best Practices and have begun reaching out to developers of slow add-ons and asking them to work on performance,' says Scott. According to the blog post, each add-on you install adds an average of 10 per cent to Firefox's startup time, with some adding considerably more.

Mozilla is kicking off the process by benchmarking add-ons from the top 100 list to see how they affect the browser's startup time. You can see the results here.

The list of scanned titles will soon extend to every new version of every add-on, and Mozilla plans to include benchmark figures such as page-load time too. Warnings will appear in the add-on gallery next to add-ons that increase the startup time by 25 per cent or more, with the warnings appearing in Firefox's add-on manager in the near future.

A future version of the browser will also include a mandatory user-accepted installation system, which is aimed at preventing add-ons from sneakily finding their way into the tool bar, for example.

In the meantime, you can see some of our favourite Firefox add-ons here.

If you use Firefox, does this sound like a good idea? How many add-ons do you use and what are your favourites? Let us know in the forums.
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