How to Improve Your Firefox Browser Performance in 5 Minutes

In many cases we’ve experienced with our faving fans, the browser is more often the culprit for lagging screen refreshes and VoIP performance. In just a few months, your browser will accumulate junk like histories, cookies, plug-ins, add-ons and a host of other well-kept but often unused browser snippets you’re sometimes not even aware of. So much so if you’re one of those surf masters – you know, people who spend hours a day jumping from one social media, social news, sports, lifestyle, gossip, and entertainment site to another. By the time you get back to talking to your customers, your browser’s refresh speed and performance is crawling to a halt. What gives? Is GoAutoDial down?

It’s not even Mozilla’s fault, nor is it GoAutoDial lagging in committed performance. It’s the junk you’re keeping in your browser that’s affecting everything else important to do.

Mozilla recently sent a few reminders on how to keep things tidy with your Firefox browser, particularly for you who are devout customer loyalists that need nothing more but to have crisp, clear and uninterrupted conversations. There are gazillions of tips out there but let me just point out two easy, five-minute activities to power-start your Firefox browsers like they were brand new.

Check Your Plug-ins

Plug-ins are built outside of Firefox, and often power videos, animation and games. They’re great tools that speed up specific browser activities. However, old and unused plug-ins can interrupt or slowdown browsing, waste your time and worst, you browser hangs (and you either blame Mozilla or GoAutoDial which neither is the reason). For those once-in-a-lifetime use of plug-ins, some are even susceptible to malware, viruses and other security threats that everyone in your office or network gets infected (so who’s to blame this time, eh? LOL!)

So, click on Tools | Add-ons | Plug-ins (tab), scroll through that long list and start disabling those unused and never-used plug-ins that may be hampering the performance of GoAutoDial in your Firefox browser. Useful plug-in stuff are Flash and Silverlight. But unless you don’t really need to use a plug-in while having conversations with your customers, I suggest you disable those deadweight items.

Doing a Do-Over with Your Firefox Browser

Okay, you have 100 plug-ins or more (Geez! What have you been doing?) Cleaning up is going to take longer than five minutes. I mean, who has the time to troubleshoot these things. So, you holler at the top of your voice, “Is there a reset button here?”

“Your wish is my command!” Or something like that. That’s exactly what the solution is. Firefox does have a reset button and it’s clearly labeld as “Reset Firefox.” It’s not a best kept secret but because it’s not something you do everyday, Mozilla placed it in a far away place that you have to go to only when you need it.

Click on Help | Troubleshooting information and slide your pointer to that label – Reset Firefox (Trivia: did you know your Uncle used to call it “cursor?” LOL! Again!) Like all good computer applications, there’s always something that asks you, “Are you really, really sure you wanna do that?” So, with Firefox, confirm that you do really want to reset Firefox by sliding down the selection prompt. When Firefox is done with resetting your browser, click the “Done” prompt.

“Egad! I’ll lose all my good stuff!” Not really. Here’s what you’ll still have after the reset activity:

• Bookmarks
• Browsing history
• Passwords
• Cookies (you won’t be logged out of any sites you were logged in to before the reset)
• Web form auto-fill information

What you will eventually lose are following:

• Extensions and themes
• All open websites before you hit the “Reset Firefox” button
• Site-specific preferences
• Search engines
• Personal dictionary
• Download history
• DOM storage
• Security certificate settings
• Security device settings
• Download actions
• Plug-in MIME types
• Toolbar customizations
• User styles

“Wish life also had the reset button.” Well, that’s not up to GoAutoDial. But with all those sluggish browser performances that affect your good work with your customers, this reset feature of Firefox is an easy way out of the gunk and garbage you’ve accumulated and simply, well, start life anew!

Happy Conversations!

Source: Mozilla Blog 1 | 2

Photo from freedigitalphotos.net

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