FireFox changes tabs slowly
Posted by james on May 7, 2007 in firefox | 4 comments
Have you ever had the issue of FireFox suddenly slowing down quite drastically when trying to change tabs? This can be a REAL pain, especially when you’re researching something…
Well, it might just be BECAUSE you’re researching something that your tabs are changing slowly.
If you are using any plugins/extensions that need to reload whenever you change a tab, this reload will slow you down. Good examples of this are the “Web Developer” extension, and the “All In One Sidebar” (AIOS) extension. The AIOS extension will cause your tabs to change slowly if you used it to view the “Page Info” for whatever tab you’re on. Then, when you change tabs, it will load that info into the sidebar, and keep doing that every time you change tabs.
So, when you’ve finished viewing information about your current tab, click on the “Extensions” button in the AIOS extension. Even if you’re closing/docking the AIOS.
If this answers your question/solves your issue as well, please let me know. And if it doesn’t, leave a description of your problem in the comments section below. I’ve had another instance where FireFox was responding really slowly, though that ones a bit more complicated…
Heya!
I had EXACTLY the same problem, except I was using FireBug (http://www.getfirebug.com/), another web development tool.
Although I have had the suspicion that one of my addons would cause the extreme slowdown when switching tabs (between 2 and 4 secs on a 3GHz!), I never had the time to look it up.
Thanks for the article, good work!
Thanks for the comment and I’m glad this helped. (and, FireBug is probably THE BEST plugin available for FireFox).
I’m still having trouble. The only extensions I have are for organizing bookmarks, which shouldn’t have anything to do with tabs.
Hi Bryce.
What are the specs of your computer? And what version of FireFox are you using. Another thing to check is, does it happen as soon as you open FireFox? Or after browsing for a while, because FF tends to use a LOT of memory after a while.