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SpeedyFox Optimizes Firefox Databases To Speed Up The Web Browser

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:48:57 +0000

The switch to storing data in SQLite databases has caused a problem for Firefox users who use the web browser heavily. The databases grow over time and reduce the startup time and responsiveness of the web browser due to fragmentation. This can be largely attributed to the fact that Firefox will not optimize the databases by default.

We already covered several methods to regularly optimize the Firefox databases. Some options included the Firefox add-on Vacuum Places which is able to optimize the databases automatically and manually.

Some users on the other hand might prefer a third party tool for the process. That’s where Speedyfox comes into play. The program is offered both as a setup and portable version at the developer’s website.

It will perform the same operation that the Vacuum Places add-on performs to optimize the Firefox databases. There are however a few differences. SpeedyFox is currently only available for the Windows operating system. It will automatically detect the default Firefox profile and offer to optimize its databases. It is possible to change to other existing Firefox profiles or to select a custom location which is very handy for portable versions of Firefox and those that are not registered in the operating system.

SpeedyFox is available at the developer’s website. A version for computer systems running the Mac operating system is in the making.

Optimize Firefox Databases With Vacuum Places

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 09:19:12 +0000

The Mozilla Firefox development team switched to SQlite databases for data storage in Firefox 3. One problem that arose because of this switch was an increasing Firefox profile folder size as there was no build in way to optimize the SQlite databases regularly. We reviewed a solution to this problem a while ago (read: optimize sqlite databases in Firefox) which involved running a batch file in the Firefox profile directory to optimize the databases and reduce their file sizes. The process can be best described as a defragmentation to close gaps that contain no data which will free the disk space.

The Firefox add-on Vacuum Places makes this process more comfortable by providing the means to run the database optimization right from within Firefox. The experimental add-on will optimize the SQLite databases of the active Firefox profile whenever its button in the Firefox status bar is pressed.

The database size reduction depends largely on the amount of data in the database, the time it has been in use and the last cleanup. A run on a test system (using the batch file) reduced the size of the profile folder from 64.8 Megabytes to 53.4 Megabytes.

Vacuum Places can be downloaded from the official Mozilla Firefox website. It is advised to create a backup of the Firefox profile folder before running it for the first time.

Create Firefox Smart Bookmarks

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:40:04 +0000

Firefox 3 changed the bookmarking system from using html files to using sqlite databases. One benefit of using databases is the possibility to run custom queries. Three of the so called smart bookmarks are already available after installing Firefox3: Most Visited, Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags all make use of database queries to provide the user with dynamic results.

So what’s possible with this technique besides the three default dynamic bookmark folders? Users could display all bookmarks that are tagged with a specific tag, display the latest ten pages that they visited on a specific domain or to list the least visited bookmarks. Many additional possibilities exist and it is just a matter of defining the database query correctly to achieve them.

The basics first. Database queries are added as normal bookmarks and placed in the location field instead of the usual url. The name can be selected freely. Database queries use the place:query syntax. Let’s take a look at an example:

The above query is “place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10″ uses the filters queryType, sort and maxResults.

queryType=0 will return an URI for each result
sort=8 will sort the bookmarks by visit count
maxResults=10 limits the results to ten bookmarks.

The guys at the Mozillazine forum did a good job of listing the relevant queries and it would be redundant to simply copy and paste their work here. Just head over to the forum and take a look at the queries. If you want to have a specific query and cannot get it to work let us know in the comments and we try to build it for you.