Slow Firefox? Mozilla Says Add-Ons Are to Blame
Found on Webmonkey on Sunday, 03 April 2011
According to Mozilla, "installing 10 add-ons will double Firefox's start-up time." In some cases poorly written add-ons can slow down the browser even more.
The slower start-up times make Firefox look bad, even if add-ons are responsible, which is why Mozilla is launching a new effort to improve Firefox add-ons.
To help speed up what many consider the best part of Firefox, Mozilla is reaching out to developers of slow add-ons and asking them to work on performance. The company has updated its Performance Best Practices for add-on developers and is encouraging developers to optimize their code.
Instead of blaming plugin authors, the Mozilla developers should concentrate on what their business is: creating and maintaining a stable browser core instead of stuffing all sorts of useless extras into it which should be only available as a plugin. I couldn't care less about the Awesomebar, that Firefox parses RSS or checks my spelling by default. All that is plugin material. The core only needs to render HTML/CSS; even Javascript should be a plugin only. Having everything available as plugins does not mean you cannot install them by default; but in a customized install the user should be able to deselect them to get the most minimal browser possible. That's why Mozilla started: because Netscape was too bloated.