gHacks technology news » firefox cache http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:22:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Firefox Cache Viewer Gui Frontend http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/19/firefox-cache-viewer-gui-frontend/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/19/firefox-cache-viewer-gui-frontend/#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:42:21 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=16501 firefoxThere are two ways to access the Firefox web browser cache. The cache can either be accessed from within the web browser by entering about:cache into the Firefox address bar or by opening the cache directory located in the Firefox user profile on the hard drive. The in-browser solution displays a bare-bone file browser with little comfort while the solution to browse the cache on the hard drive requires to locate the Firefox profile folder to access it. Data is still not presented in a comfortable way.

The Firefox add-on Cache Viewer offers a third option. It is basically a gui frontend for the browser cache viewer. Its advantage over the two original solutions to view the cache are numerous. This includes a visual preview of the cached item which is extremely helpful to identify images that have been placed in the cache.

It is possible to sort by url, size, mime type, cache location or date. Another handy option is the ability to use the search form to locate specific files or file types.

firefox cache viewer

Additional information about a selected cache item are displayed next to the visual preview area including the expiration date and connection headers. A right-click on one or multiple images will open a context menu with options to save the selected items to the local hard drive, to delete them or to open them in the web browser.

Cache Viewer is available for Firefox 3 and can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/19/firefox-cache-viewer-gui-frontend/feed/ 3 Web Browser: Firefox Cache Search http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/17/web-browser-firefox-cache-search/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/17/web-browser-firefox-cache-search/#comments Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:33:27 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=11292 Cache Search is an experimental add-on for the Firefox web browser that allows the user to search the contents of the Firefox cache from within the web browser’s interface. The Firefox add-on can only be installed after logging into the Mozilla website as this is required to download and install experimental Firefox extensions.

The add-on will add a Cache Search option to the Firefox Tools menu. It will load a new window that contains a search form on top and two windows below which display the files that are found that include the search phrase and the source code of the page if one is selected.

Each page that has been found to contain the search phrase in the Firefox cache is displayed with information like its size, the times the search phrase was found in the file, the mime type, character and content encoding. Once a file has been selected the source code will be displayed in the second window. It will immediately jump to the first hit in the source code and highlight it so that it is easier to analyze it.

firefox cache

There are Next and Previous buttons that work in the second window that will jump forward and backward in the source code to highlight all the different hits in the source code.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/17/web-browser-firefox-cache-search/feed/ 2 Moving The Firefox Disk Cache To Another Drive http://www.ghacks.net/2008/11/20/moving-the-firefox-disk-cache-to-another-drive/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/11/20/moving-the-firefox-disk-cache-to-another-drive/#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:37:00 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=8417 The Firefox disk cache is usually located on the same drive that Firefox got installed. In Windows it is located in the Documents and Settings folder. It usually is a good idea to have temporary directories located on a fast hard drive. In this case the hard drive that Firefox was running on was a Solid State Disk which is usually not the best choice for lots of write operations since those drives read data fast but write them rather slowly.

The main reason for moving the Firefox disk cache is therefor performance. Security could be another reason. The disk cache could for instance be moved to an encrypted part of the hard drive, a removable drive or ram disk.

The location of the the Firefox disk cache cannot be changed in the Firefox settings. The only way is to add a new parameter in the about:config dialog to change the location of the Firefox disk cache.

Type about:config in the Firefox address bar:

firefox disk cache

Right-click and select New > String from the menu. Enter browser.cache.disk.parent_directory as the preference name and the new path to the cache location, for example d:\temp

Opera users can practically do the same by typing in opera:config#UserPrefs|CacheDirectory4 and changing the preference there.

Internet Explorer users can simply change the location in the Tools > Internet Options by clicking on the Settings button under Browsing History.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/11/20/moving-the-firefox-disk-cache-to-another-drive/feed/ 4 Run CCleaner With One Mouse Click http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/21/run-ccleaner-with-one-mouse-click/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/21/run-ccleaner-with-one-mouse-click/#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:33:45 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=7772 Click&Clean is a software program for users who like to optimize their workflow to the maximum. The software adds a link in the Windows Quick Launch bar that executes CCleaner with one click. CCleaner will automatically clean the system according to the settings that the user defined in the main application.

CCleaner is also the requirement obviously for anyone who wants to use Click&Clean since it won’t do anything if CCleaner is not installed on the computer system. Besides placing a link in the Quick Launch Bar Click&Clean adds buttons to the web browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox which can also be used to quickly clean the system using CCleaner.

The advantage of using Click&Clean is minimal and probably only useful for optimizers and users who run CCleaner several times during a session and do not want to click more than once. Everyone else is better off using CCleaner independently.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/21/run-ccleaner-with-one-mouse-click/feed/ 8 Automatically clear RAM in Firefox http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/02/automatically-clear-ram-in-firefox/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/02/automatically-clear-ram-in-firefox/#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:27:38 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5179 I reviewed the RAMBack add-on for Firefox 3 yesterday which provided a function to clear RAM in Firefox 3 to avoid an steady increase of memory usage of Firefox during a session. The only thing that was not optimal was that the user had to press a button to clear the RAM. An automatic solution to clear the RAM would be preferable.

Cache Status is a Firefox add-on that can clear the RAM and Disk Cache of Firefox automatically when it reaches a defined number. The add-on is not yet compatible with Firefox 3 right away but it works flawlessly if the install.rdf file is alterered that comes with the installation package.

To do that you need to download the Firefox extension from this link by right-clicking on the button and saving it to your hard disk. Now open the downloaded file with an unpacker like Winzip, Winrar or 7-Zip and extract the install.rdf file from the package.

Open install.rdf in a text editor and search for the line that begins with . Replace the complete line with the following line 3.0 and save the file. Now add the file to the installation package again and double-click it after that to start the installation.

firefox cache status

The add-on will display the RAM usage of Firefox 3 in the status bar and it is possible to clear the RAM manually by right-clicking those information. If you want the RAM and Disk cache to be automatically cleaned you need to open the options of the add-on under Tools > Add-ons and click on the Options button of that add-on.

cache status

Just check the automatically clear .. options and define a percentage for each value when the automatically cleaning should kick in.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/02/automatically-clear-ram-in-firefox/feed/ 7 Firefox Cache Viewer http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/06/firefox-cache-viewer/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/06/firefox-cache-viewer/#comments Fri, 06 Oct 2006 05:14:19 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/06/firefox-cache-viewer/ The cache viewer extension for firefox might be a nice add-on for some users out there. One way to look at the cache is to enter about:cache in your address bar and hit enter. This display is unfortunately not very practicable and the information displayed are scarce. The cache on the hard drive is even worse, all files are obfuscated and you can only guess what this file is about by looking at the file size and type.

Cache Viewer displays more information about the files cached and even previews them in a small window. Let us say you viewed some nice flash animations or listened to several mp3 files on some websites. It’s pretty time consuming to find out which files you need, unless you would be using cache viewer. You can sort all files in the cache by size (and other parameters) and flip through them until you find the ones that you want.

The extension offers some filters as well, you can filter parts of the file name or url to find files from a certain url for instance. It can run in it’s own window or in a tab.

The preview window is not limited to image files it is also able to display most flash files and other types of files as well.

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