Help Stop Firefox Slowdowns and Crashes with Add-on Tab Counter
Posted by: Barry Cleave in Firefox Add-ons, tags: Add-ons, Firefox, Freeware, Independent Review, Software, Utilities, Windows, WIndows Vista, Windows XPWhat Is It?
Tab Counter (by Morac) is a very simple Firefox Add-on that simply displays the number of tabs that are currently open in a Firefox Window. You say “Is that all”, I say “Read on”
(Note: Not to be confused with a similar add-on TabCounter by felipc)
Why Would You Want It?
As you open more tabs in Firefox it uses more and more resources. It is very easy to open a lot of tabs, particularly if you have Firefox set to open links in new tabs or, if like me, you use an RSS reader to open interesting posts in Firefox. At some point Firefox will stop displaying pages or grind to a halt due to lack of available memory and the performance of your computer will also suffer. When this happens will depend on many things such as your PC hardware, the number of other programs in use, the Firefox add-ons you have installed and the information on the web pages. My experience with Firefox 2 Portable on my main PC was about 100 open tabs before Firefox started to misbehave. With my Firefox 3 Portable setup (and less add-ons than the old setup) I can open over 130 tabs without to many problems). Each setup may be different and you would need to work your own limits out, but once you know these you can keep an eye on the tabs you have open and take action before problems occur.
What Does It Do – The Essentials?
Summary:
- Displays the number of Open Tabs
- Options on display and placement
Pros: What’s Good?
- Freeware
- Helps manage Firefox resource use
More About What it Does in Detail:
Go to Page 2 for details and screenshots
Go to Page 3 for ProReviewer Summary
(see Page Navigation below)
Popularity: 42% [?]
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October 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am - Edit
nice add-on. personally speaking i love it since i am accostumed to open a lot, really a lot of tabs during my surfing. my fox doesnt crash but my pc gets slower. nice article!
web talks last blog post..Windows Vista doesn’t shut down
October 19th, 2008 at 9:54 am - Edit
Doesn’t make sense to me, sorry. I don’t think we live in (IT) times where you have to limit yourself to keep the program from crashing. IF firefox is prone to problems when many tabs are open, the right way would be to fix that, not to install another add-in…
October 19th, 2008 at 10:51 am - Edit
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October 19th, 2008 at 4:34 pm - Edit
why would I need this kind of “little” plugin anyway? it will just consume “more” memory.
Pete, agree with you
Acakaduts last blog post..encyclopedia of life
October 20th, 2008 at 5:19 am - Edit
Hi Acakadut,
A little analogy. For me I see it like instruments in a car or plane, maybe some are not essential for you to make the journey but they may just save you from breaking the engine or crashing. They give you confidence all is OK. So they use a little resource but that’s better than the alternatives
Regards,
Barry Cleave
October 20th, 2008 at 5:34 am - Edit
Pete,
The “problem” as I see it is maintaining flexibility (in Firefox) across a wide range of platforms and hardware. Sure Firefox could limit the number of tabs you can open but unless that was a number based on the lowest spec of hardware etc. it would probably be too difficult for Firefox to calculate programatically due to the large number of variables across different computers and operating systems.
Regards,
Barry Cleave
October 21st, 2008 at 12:19 am - Edit
I have to agree with Pete, being a webmaster, I have on average about 15 tabs open at a time, and I should be able to do that without problems, and even be able to open even more.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:11 am - Edit
I have used it but unistalled it after a while,quiet a nice add-on. personally speaking I love it since I am accustomed to open a lot, really a lot of tabs during my surfing. my browser doesn’t crash but my pc gets slower. nice article!
Monic
November 7th, 2008 at 9:39 pm - Edit
Sounds like a great add-on that I had not come across yet. Personally my favorite add-on for Firefox is Adblock. It lets you block unwanted ad’s or sites from slowing down your computer which seems to be more and more of a problem these days.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:46 am - Edit
Hiya,
When reading stuff at night, I tend to have loads of tabs open at once. This seems like a really good way to manage it so I don’t have too many!
Thanks for the post,
Andy
March 6th, 2009 at 4:53 am - Edit
130 tabs :O
are you serious bout it dude?
my stupid firefox crash cause of java script issues :s
March 9th, 2009 at 12:34 am - Edit
It makes my firefox ( 3 ) crash
April 12th, 2009 at 10:22 pm - Edit
my opinion that’s awesome i like add-on basically its a small instrument a part of fire fox its can help to many part of side………. so that’s why its advantage for us
April 15th, 2009 at 11:03 pm - Edit
I will try your tips. I hope this adds-on will help manage my firefox crashes.
July 6th, 2009 at 7:57 am - Edit
well, my level is not around a 100 or so, i just keep myself at 15 tabs at the max. Useful tool for many, not really so for me, but may require it when i start using as many tabs as you people do.
July 25th, 2009 at 9:18 am - Edit
nice information, I use firefox and I still not slowdown, I’ll try to use add on tab counter, thank you
July 25th, 2009 at 9:21 pm - Edit
I just downloaded the latest firefox and seems slowdown, does this add on really improve the performance?
August 18th, 2009 at 4:51 am - Edit
Do not know whether it can be installed on each computer