Speed Up Firefox Loading & Prevent Crashes Using BarTab

Like most browsers Firefox takes up a huge amount of memory when you keep multiple tabs open. This is because each tab requires it’s own amount of RAM. Those who have lesser memory configuration PCs will see more of Firefox crashes and experience slower tab switching as well as browsing.

One way to avoid Firefox crash is to close all unused tabs, so that you regain some memory. But isn’t it a pain to remember and re-open all those tabs? What if you could simply unload unused tabs, and later re-load them into memory whenever you want to?

BarTab, an add-on for Firefox 3.5, 3.6 lets you do this easily. With a single click you can unload a selected tab or all other tabs except the selected one. Also you can re-load all tabs in a single go. Right click on any tab in the tab bar, and you can select from the options ‘Reload tab’, ‘Reload All Tabs’, ‘Unload Tab’, and ‘Unload Other Tabs’.

The best thing about this plugin is that it helps you to speed up Firefox load time by loading only the tab in focus. All other tabs are opened in unloaded condition, and are loaded on the fly as you switch to them. You can also select to keep all pages from a certain domain loaded all the time. Right clicking on a tab gives you the option ‘Keep pages from … loaded’.

For customizing BarTab after installation, go to Tools –> Add-Ons and select BarTab. Click on ‘Options’.

This will open BarTab Preferences dialog.

Instead of manually unloading a tab, you can also set to unload tabs automatically after a specified period of time. For automatic unloading, select the option ‘unload it after’ from the drop down menu titled ‘When I don’t visit a tab for a while:’.

Then set the wait time for the automatic unloading, in minutes, seconds, hours or even days!

In the Options window, you can also add all those domains which you don’t want BarTab to unload. Simply enter the domain URL in the text box lef to the ‘Add (+)’ button, and click on the button. All domains will be added to the list. Pages that you have added by right clicking on a tab are reflected in this list.

By default BarTab loads tabs when you open a tab in the background. If you want to change this behavior, select the option ‘don’t load them’ for the drop down menu titled ‘When opening tabs in the background:’.

Download BarTab

Works with Firefox 3.5 – 3.6.*