Fasterfox is an add-on, for those of us that have finally discovered the joys of Mozilla Firefox browser, which allows Firefox to load faster. Hence the name: Fasterfox. Mozilla Firefox is an alternative browser to Internet Exploder or AOL (which is actually an old Native American word for “Will somebody please steal my banking information?”).
What exactly does Fasterfox do?
I’m so glad you asked. The original version of Fasterfox 1.0 (developed by Tony Gentilcore) offered a solution to many connectivity issues such as browser network connections, cache, and timings. The flagship feature that Fasterfox is famous for is link prefetching. This feature alone caused a good bit of controversy, since if it’s not set optimally, a surfer could actually experience longer loading times.
What is prefetching?
Prefetching is the silent loading of links before you click on them. It’s pretty much the same as clicking on every link on any page you visit. For the most part, prefetching only clicked through to extensions such as .gif, .htm, .html, .jpeg, .jpg, .PDF, .png, .text, .txt, and .xml. (What could possibly go wrong with that? You‘re surely asking. Right?)
The benefit offered by Fasterfox and prefetching is a ‘snappier’ transition from one page to another since all of the links are clicked through too. Computer users working behind a firewall, like at work, are recommended to never use Fasterfox due to the appearance of having clicked through to every single link on a page within their browsing history. Not good.
The creator of Fasterfox did, at least, realize the aggravation to be found from being logged out because of prefetching certain dynamic links. With that in mind, the only links set to be prefetched, were static links. So there’s that.
Will Fasterfox work on my older version of Firefox?
The original version of Fasterfox is only compatible with versions below 3.0 of Firefox. Those of us who have 3.0 or later might want to consider Fasterfox by spinball, or even Fasterfox Lite by BigRedBrent…or not.
Okay Don. You’ve griped about Fasterfox. What are some of the features and benefits?
It’s really easy to install. The creators made a very user-friendly interface that allows users to adjust the settings on http pipelining, memory caching, disk caching, DNS caching, and fastback caching. While prefetching may sound scary, it does offer a noticeable time savings on page loads since the link is already cached.
Another advantage is that this feature can be disabled. But if you’re going to disable the one major aspect of Fasterfox why install it at all?
And now…back to the prefetching controversy:
There are several good and valid reasons why prefetching is so controversial. A few of them are:
a) Links are downloaded in the background even if they’re not subsequently viewed. Not only can this cause surfers cache pollution, thereby slowing their own system’s browsing speed, it also costs webmasters extra money in bandwidth.
Pre-loading links can be problematic in a variety of ways. AdSense publishers may find themselves losing their account due to click fraud. Some advertising may not be something you want found on your computer. Also, the extra bandwidth for some surfers might cost additional unnecessary expense, and who needs that?
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasterfox
http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,69086-page,1-c,browsersclients/description.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9037
