This is an experimental extension to save CPU (battery) time and make
the browser more responsive. It suspends actions in background tabs
until they become active again.
By Wladimir Palant, the author of Adblock Plus.
Many addons fast up Firefox as a side-effect. The following ones are mostly duplicated from other answers:
Adblock is also good as it blacklists many flash ads, cross-site requests, javascripts.
Ghostery is for privacy what Adblock is for ads, blacklisting tracking, statistics, etc. and has the same side-effects on CPU time. (Personal favourite addon.)
RequestPolicy is explicitly for cross-site request control. (From Hennes' answer!)
From vasa1's comment: the plugins.click_to_play setting in about:config
can be used to disable plugins (flash/java/etc.) until you click on a placeholder icon.
(Side-note: the same idea is around in Opera Browser's On-demand plugin or ODP since 2010.)
I also like to use QuickJava to manually (as in snail) disable JS/Java/Flash/etc. when I feel like it. I prefer it over the more powerful (and automatic) NoScript, for NoReasonTM.
experience: RequestPolicy needs a little accustomization from you to it, in order to be useful. First time you install it, all you get is strangeness - like css and images not loading, and you wonder is this empty page at google the same stuff I should (and used to) get, or did I just get a malware attack blocking my net? If you feel like this, relax, it's not a malware, it's the opposite - it's YOU back in control, again - it's just strange, at first!
Why do my eyes hurt?
You've never used them before.
--Neo & Morpheus, The Matrix
Search & find the icon of RequestPolicy a Red Flag (in the statusbar (Ctrl+/
), for example), at least it's red when it's actively doing sumthin'.
1Not really an add-on because it's integral to Firefox: click-to-play. This isn't yet enabled by default since it still has rough edges but one can go into
about:config
and changeplugins.click_to_play
fromfalse
totrue
. I've been using it for a couple of months. – None – 2012-09-19T15:01:46.310@vasa1: Would nice if you said what
click-to-play
does/controls... – martineau – 2012-09-19T15:19:55.3431
@martineau, click-to-play, if enabled, prevents plug-ins from running automatically. The user has to click on the icon representing a plug-in to let it function. Plug-ins would include things like Flash, Quicktime, and Java.
– None – 2012-09-19T16:10:38.143community wiki? – n611x007 – 2012-11-23T01:13:03.790
@naxa: Voting to close as off topic. – bwDraco – 2012-11-23T02:06:52.720
2@DragonLord I think it is a valid question. I simply thought that it would be formally/technically more useful as a community wiki. – n611x007 – 2012-11-23T02:08:31.233
Haha. I think the only reason people are voting to close this (as it is neither off topic nor localized, especially considering that this site has mostly localized trouble shooting questions that never get closed) is because they are butt-hurt over firefox being perceived as slow (which it is, very). – Zombies – 2012-12-26T15:28:53.330