How To Put FireFox, Or Chrome, On Your Ram.

[Billie Tutas/Co-Owner TTR]

Recently I was having trouble with FireFox being slooooooooooooooooooooow. While romping around in space, looking for a solution, I ran across the neatest little trick that speeds up FireFox. In spite of the fact that my FireFox is an over weight bloated browser, the trick I'm going to show you worked, even on mine :)

Now you probably know that by default FireFox, and Chrome, load all their data from your hard drive. That default status can be changed. It's possible to load these browsers from your RAM (Random Access
Memory). The process is simply enough to do. What it does is cache your FireFox/Chrome in memory with no disk requirement. Once you've changed the default status over to RAM, you'll see a huge difference in the speed in which both these browsers load, and romp around in space for you. Lightening fast.

Before you even think about doing this, you need to know a few things. First, this tutorial is written for MicroSoft users. I have no idea whether or not the same thing can be done on a Mac. Secondly, I recommend you create a restore point before you make changes. Do this just in case you hit a wrong setting, or answer your phone, and forget where you left off. Don't laugh. I've done that :)

*With that out of the way, open up your applicable browser. In the address bar type ---> about:config

*Press enter. A screen will pop up that looks like this:

*Agree to be careful and for goodness sakes pay attention. Another screen pops up. Look up to the top left corner where it reads ---> Filter. In the filter field type in ---> browser.cache. The page your on should now look like this:

*Use the above screen shot to change the default settings:

Double click ---> browser.cache.disk.enable. Change the "false' over to true. Next double click ---> browser.cache.memory.enable. Change that "false" over to true as well.

Hang in there, you're almost done.

*Next right click anywhere on your screen and a pop up box comes up. Here you'll need to change the integer. Click on ---> New ---> Integer ---> now type ---> browser.cache.memory.capacity. Press ---> OK. Now type ---> capacity. In that field type how much space you're applying to your cache. I put mine at 100000. No comma. That equals 100 megabytes. When you're finished with this step close all tabs and restart your browser. On a side note, if you rarely clean out your browser cache, you may wish to set your capacity to 500 megs. Personally, I clean out my browser every few days. So, 100 MB works fine for me. Just so you know keeping your browser clean helps to speed you up in the long run. Do consider a little housekeeping in lieu of storing 500 megabytes of crap on your RAM.

*When you're done doing this geeky trick you can confirm the changes by once again typing --->about:cache in your address bar. Scroll down to the "Memory cache device". You'll note that it will reflect the changes you've made. They are in bold print and the changes will read "user set". Like this:

That's all there is to it Guys. I found it very easy to do. And holy crap did it speed up my bloated, added on to, plugged in, waaaaaaay over weight FireFox. Once of these days I'll help my FireFox lose some of those pounds. Perhaps I should just take it to the Gym with me :)

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