Hot Koehl

If you’ve read this blog before, you know I’m a big Firefox fan. But the one problem that has dogged me is the inevitable bloat that Firefox suffers when open for long periods of time. I work in my browser all day, and after 8 hours it has usually gobbled up all the available RAM, and sucks processor cycles like a Dyson. Fortunately I’ve finally pinpointed the cause and several solutions.

Let’s start at the source. The Firefox team made a crucial usability decision, which is at the heart of the problem. They wanted to allow the user to recover any page that may have recently opened. So by default, Firefox keeps navigation history for all your open tabs, plus the last 10 tabs that you closed. The navigation history for each of those tabs — both open and closed — can hold up to a maximum of 50 pages (i.e. the number of URLs you can traverse purely through the Back/Forward buttons)

With no limit to the number of open tabs, plus the high limit on the Back/Forward navigation, it’s easy to see why Firefox slows to a crawl. If you do a lot of browsing in a lot of tabs, your memory disappears in a hurry. Managing all that extra memory causes the processor to work overtime to keep Firefox hippo moving.

There are two ways to fix this issue in a pinch. First you can simply restart the browser, making sure that it doesn’t save your tabs (you are prompted to save tabs at close by default). Second, you can clear the Recently Closed Tabs to eliminate a portion of the tab history bloat (History > Recently Closed Tabs > Clear Closed Tabs List).

For a more long-term solution, we need to mess with the system settings. Type about:config in the address bar to bring up Firefox’s complete configurations list. The latest Firefox versions present you with a warning before opening the page.

A warning: this page handles everything in your browser. Everything. Don’t mess with stuff if you don’t know what you’re doing.

In the “Filter” textbox at the top, enter

browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo

This setting controls how many closed tabs to track. Less old tabs = less memory usage. Double click the lone entry in the list and change the value from “10″ to “5.”

Back to the filter box, enter

browser.sessionhistory.max_entries

This setting controls the navigation history limit. Double click the entry and drop the value from “50″ down to “25″.

Close the about:config tab and restart your browser.

Your mileage on these tweaks will vary depending on your system specs. If you can go a day of heavy browsing without hitting the creep, slowly increment the settings back up, until you hit the sweet spot.

I was quoted in an article over at IT Expert Voice that pooled advice from hardened IT Veterans on the process of rolling out a new OS in a business environment. There’s plenty of great advice on the actual act of a rollout — test-test-test, schedule for downtime, etc. — but obviously the timing of the article coincides with the recent release of Windows 7, and is directed at IT folks considering an upgrade.

To that extent, I urge all you IT pros to ignore everything else in the article (wink) and follow my advice, which is to wait.

Find more details in the article.

FYI if you run Mirror’s Edge on your PC and the sound effects are all outta whack, check to see if you have a Realtek sound card installed. Their older high definition drivers don’t work properly with the game, and you’ll have to download the latest version.

Now, chances are that your Realtek is built into your motherboard; that’s how they sell most of their gear. In most cases, you should install drivers for onboard devices — aka stuff built into the mother board, network card, sound card, etc — provided directly by your motherboard retailer. However this update is new this month, so chances are they haven’t picked it up. It’s also very likely that your mobo company doesn’t make changes to the sound card at all.

So, if your Realtek soundcard came in a computer provided by Dell, Gateway, HP, etc., check their update sites for an upgrade. If they do not have one, or if you built your own computer — good for you, great money-saver! — you can grab the latest version directly from Realtek (click the “Software” link, pass agree screen, and get the “Executable file” version).

Secondarily, I found reports that the K-Lite Codec Pack can cause the same behavior. I suggest you try the sound card first. If that doesn’t work, then try removing K-Lite.

Thirdly, if you haven’t heard of Mirror’s Edge or haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend that you do. Hard core FPS fans will get a refreshingly unique experience — you can beat the entire thing without firing a gun — and everyone else can pretend to be a free runner. Neat.

I am a huge fan of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. It provides the same level of virus protection as the pay-for packages—don’t be fooled, the differences are bells and whistles—and because it’s trimmed down it eats up less resources. I always install it as part of a comprehensive approach using several free Windows security tools.

However, how many times have you seen this at the bottom of an e-mail?

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG – http://www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.169 / Virus Database: 270.6.14/1647 – Release Date: 9/2/2008 6:02 AM

This is especially great in e-mail conversations, where I’ll see this same text stacked up five, ten, fifteen times at the bottom. It’s a tremendous waste of space and makes scanning an e-mail conversation difficult to say the least. I don’t need to know that you have anti-virus software installed. If I did, I wouldn’t have installed it on my own computer. Duh.

AVG does this by default, and they don’t make it obvious at install time how to disable it. It may have something to do with the shameless plug they put in there, but I could be wrong.

If you want to get rid of the stupid thing, here’s how to do it in version 8…

1. Double-click the AVG icon in your taskbar to bring up the control panel window.
2. Go the menu bar, choose Tools, then Advanced Settings…
3. Choose E-mail Scanner from the left-hand menu
4. In the right-hand pane, clear the checkbox labeled Certify e-mail.
5. Click the OK button at the bottom