Most people would agree that Firefox 4 is a fine piece of software with a lot of new features, improvements and now even faster than previous versions. But if you have noticed, even though the start-up time has improved, it still takes some time for Firefox to start, apparently it’s been hard for the Firefox team to really understand and integrate an even faster load time optimization into the browser. So if you are one of those Firefox users that feels that the start-up is never fast enough, Start Faster is the add-on that you need, and it will allow you to start Firefox really fast. This is a “work in progress”, so you can use this add-on until developers can properly integrate this kind of optimization into the core of the browser.
Start Faster only works with Windows Vista and Windows 7 for the time being. If you are curious, this is what the add-on does: It installs a service in Windows that allows to speed up the loading time of Firefox’s gorillaesque DLL libraries; this is a service that runs under administrative privileges and permits Firefox to bypass the Windows prefetcher, improving the start-up time of Firefox up 2x faster. One thing to notice is that after you install the Start Faster add-on a shortcut named Faster Firefox will be added to the desktop, which will be the one that you now are going use to start Firefox faster.
This idea isn’t new, Mozilla has been trying to implement this optimization for a long time, so you can think of it as preview of what is to come and hopefully in later versions of Firefox we might see this built-in to the core.
Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 21 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].