328976 - Speed Launch / PreLoader

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 217026

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, enhancement)

Description

[Damien Stevens]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

I wish Firefox loaded faster, and I'm not the only one.  I'm referring
to the initial launch of the application.  Of course, a smaller faster
browser is one answer.

In the mean time - how about a speed launch / preloader?  Adobe does
this with Acrobat Reader.  Their program takes to long to load, so I
have the speedlaunch in my startup folder and know it feels faster
loading adobe acrobat, as some of it is already loaded.

Now you can compete with IE in terms of initial load time of the
application, because FireFox will be partially preloaded as well!

I think you should build this, default it to on; but allow anyone to
remove the speed launch from startup.

Has this been proposed?  What do you think?

Sincerely,
Damien Stevens
Utopia Net

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Actual Results:  
It loads slowly the first time.

Expected Results:  
Faster load time!

See what Adobe has done with Acrobat Reader.

Comment 1

[Steve England [:stevee]]

There's an extension that does such a thing
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffpreloader/

Also see bug 285854.

I guess this bug is INVALID or WONTFIX.

Comment 2

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Also bug 217026 comment 2

Comment 3

[Steve England [:stevee]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 217026 ***

Comment 4

[Damien Stevens]

Steve,
I know this isn't a bug; and I'm not referring to the old turbo option.  What I hoping is that somone will see how important a quick load time is for FireFox's longevity.  With IE7 coming out this year (and baked into the new OS), it gives FireFox an equal ground from a users' perspective.

Thanks for letting me know about the extension that does this, I'll probably use it.  However, this request is not about me; it's about FireFox first impressions for everyone that installs and uses it.

Can this be brought to others attention to see if anyone else agrees?

Comment 5

[Steve England [:stevee]]

I believe the devs are aware of loadtime; certainly it is tracked closely by tinderbox (which builds firefox 20 times a day) and the results are graphed here:
- http://build-graphs.mozilla.org/graph/query.cgi?testname=startup&tbox=pacifica&autoscale=1&days=7&avg=1&showpoint=2006:03:01:08:33:40,468

Whilst of course startup time is important, there's a limit to how fast one can make it. IE starts up so quickly because so much of it is embedded in the OS and loaded when windows starts up. But compared to other apps that aren't loaded when the OS starts up, firefox seems to compare favourably; for me, anyway.

Comment 6

[Damien Stevens]

(In reply to comment #5)
> I believe the devs are aware of loadtime; certainly it is tracked closely by
> tinderbox (which builds firefox 20 times a day) and the results are graphed
> here:
> -
> http://build-graphs.mozilla.org/graph/query.cgi?testname=startup&tbox=pacifica&autoscale=1&days=7&avg=1&showpoint=2006:03:01:08:33:40,468

Steve, Thanks for the reply and the link.  I didn't know they watched the startup time so closely.  I have to wonder what kind of hardware that is - my experience is more like 5 seconds.

> Whilst of course startup time is important, there's a limit to how fast one can
> make it. IE starts up so quickly because so much of it is embedded in the OS
> and loaded when windows starts up. But compared to other apps that aren't
> loaded when the OS starts up, firefox seems to compare favourably; for me,
> anyway.

I see what you're saying.  And compared to other apps, FireFox is a good application.  Their is no question about that.

However, I wonder if the devs cannot see the forest for the trees.  What I mean is if start time isn't likely to improve significantly - then make it appear to start faster instead of trying to optimize the start time without significant gains.

The reason I strongly believe this is because FireFox isn't being compared to other applications.  On Windows, it's mainly being compared to IE6 and soon IE7.    Of course they have the unfair advantage of being baked into the OS.

Which is why a case should be made for Pre-loading FireFox.  Think about the first impressions a new FireFox user will have.  If FireFox ever wants to get more than 10% market share I think these kinds of things must be comparable to IE.  And pre-loading gives it an equal playing field.

BTW - I did install the preloader extension and it works great.  I just think it should be built in as a first impression helper.

If I didn't believe in FireFox so strongly, I wouldn't be making this case.
Where do we go from here?

Comment 7

[Steve England [:stevee]]

I'm not sure where we can go from here. Firefox used to have the turbo option, but the devs decided it should be removed a long time ago. There was outcry then, but that did not effect their decision, so it must have been for a good reason.

Also, the devs may well think that the startup time is perfectly acceptable, so no action is needed. Or that startup time is not as important as other features (there are limited resources and a whole long list of things that need worked on), or simply that the loadtime isn't going to be much of a factor in whether a   user sticks with firefox or not. Or that preloaders are best left to third parties.

I'll try and encourage a dev to read this, but i'm unable to give you any definite answer because such decisions are nothing to do with me; i'm just a triage monkey :)

Comment 8

[Damien Stevens]

Steve,
Thanks, I appreciate your help.  I would hope that their is someone looking out for product strategy - not just development.

I think it's key because of the user experience - especially when competing with IE as the #1 competitor.  For that reason, adding -turbo or a 3rd party plugin only affects those technical enough or curious enough to search that out.

Why not build-in a better user experience out of the box?