Slow Firefox Startup

Image via Wikipedia

It doesn't seem to matter what version of Firefox you're likely to still have, they are all slow to start up.
In this old post, I gushed about the greatly improved performance with Firefox 3.5, which I stand by.
However, the startup is really poor. Once it gets going, it's great, but there's very little noticeable improvement in startup times for FF 3.5 over FF 3 once you have a load of add-ons installed.
You can tweak as per this old post all you want, but the /Prefetch:n switch doesn't really do it.

As much as I hate preloaders, in the end, I had to capitulate.
The FirefoxPreloader, hosted on Sourceforge, really works and has cut down start times from 30 seconds to about 3 seconds. It loads during startup, and by the time your PC is up and running and you click on old Foxy, you'll be on your home page in no time.
I think this is well worth it if you browse for much more than 50% of your total time at the PC.

Further reading

• Install Firefox 3.6 Beta1Pre In Ubuntu For A Huge Speed Boost (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com)
• Future Firefox 4.0 Could Feature App Tabs (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com)
• Go Straight to Your Unread Gmail Messages with a Shortcut [Shortcuts] (lifehacker.com)
• Firefox 3.5 Reviewed; Draws Praise For HTML5, Speed (tech.slashdot.org)
• Turn your head and cough, Firefox! Mozilla's plugin check is live (downloadsquad.com)