Prioritize Tabs In Firefox

It is possible to load several websites in different tabs or windows at once in Firefox. This can happen after a session restore for example where all websites that had been open before are loaded again, while opening a bookmark folder with all its bookmarks, using add-ons like Snap Links to open multiple websites at once or by loading multiple links manually in new tabs or windows.

Firefox by default will not prioritize any of the links. The Firefox developer’s now thought that it might make sense to prioritize certain tabs in Firefox. Why would that make sense? The active tab for example is the tab that the user is currently looking at. Should not that active tab load faster than tabs that are not in the focus of the user?

That’s basically what the experimental Firefox add-on mozNetworkPrioritizer tries to accomplish. It prioritizes tabs based on their status based on the following order:

• Selected Tab in a Focused Window
• Background Tab in a Focused Window & Selected Tab in a Background Window
• Background Tab in a Background Window
• Any Tab in a Minimized Window

The add-on will speed up the loading of websites from top to bottom. The developer of the extension shared his experience at his website.

Initial results showed some improvement when loading large groups of tabs. It was most noticeable when loading many tabs from the same site (e.g. the default BBC livemarks). It was somewhat noticeable during a typical (for me) session restore. There was no difference during normal browsing

The Firefox add-on is available at the Mozilla website if you want to give it a try.

Update: The developer has pulled the add-on from the Mozilla add-on repository. It is no longer available, and there is no comparable add-on available for the Firefox web browser.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday September 8, 2009 -
Tags:Firefox, firefox add-ons, firefox priority, firefox tips, mozilla-firefox, web browser