Solved Slow Loading Website Using Firefox

[jsquareg]

Here I am finally getting around to dealing with an annoying quirk using Firefox. I have FF10 on three machines all running Windows7 -- two desktops and one laptop. The behavior I am asking about occurs on all three so I believe that rules out a machine dependent problem. One site WTKR.com (Our local TV) loads very slowly. The bottom of the screen shows a multitude of 'Transferring data...' messages and it takes over 7 seconds for it to get rendered. The same thing happens on WVEC.com -- another local TV station but not as slow. All other sites I have come across load almost immediately. If I visit those two sites using Chrome or IE, the come up almost immediately. I have removed or disabled all FF's extension, plugins and even have gone back to several earlier versions of FF, the earliest being 4.0, but they still load slow in each case. If it helps, one thing I noticed in Tool>Page Info for WTKR and WVEC is the first entry which says X-UA Compatible IE7. This entry does not appear in the Page Info for any of the pages that load 'instantly.' Others in the Mozilla Firefox forum report the problem doesn't exist on there Vista machines so I wonder if it is a Firefox vs. Windows 7 issue? I doubt it. Will someone please help me get rid of this annoying quirk? Thank you.

 

[Anak]

Hi jsquareg,

It could be a FireFox (FF) vs. Windows 7 issue. Do you preform regular maintenance, and updates? Malware, and virus scans? Your System Specs look strong enough, they are better than mine.

You could try clearing the FF cache.
In 10 go to Tools >Clear Recent History, a small dialog box will open, and I would uncheck all, but cache. Then click Clear Now. Even if it does not restart FF I would.
If you cannot see it, click on Details.

But, it could also be a FF vs certain websites quirk. The X-UA Compatible IE7 tag points to these conditions: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2008/06/10/introducing-ie-emulateie7, and it goes back to "Are these sites compatible with certain browsers".
With that being listed in Tools >Page Info it is telling FF to try and emulate certain elements on that page in IE7 fashion.

Years ago it was common to see an area/element on web pages that proclaimed that the site worked better with this or that browser, now it is not, and television stations can be notorious for leaving their website improvement for last.

Out of the four in my area WHP, WHTM, WPMT, and WGAL WPMT is the only one that has the X-UA-Compatible IE=7 tag, and on my FF10.0.1 they all load within 3seconds, and my FF cache is at 12MB.

It might also be your ISP I have the lowest tier Verizon DSL 1.0MB download. Check your ISP's homepage to see if it lists the X-UA element mine does not.

 

[jsquareg]

Thank you. I did all the things you suggested in the first part. Will check with my ISP about the X-UA sometime this morning.

 

[Anak]

Your welcome, in the meantime I am looking for other possibilities.

I already checked this: http://www.wwco.com/~wls/blog/2008/03/28/firefox-slow-page-load-solved/, but my network.http.keep-alive is true with the integer set to 115

To enter about:config just type/copy/paste about:config in the address bar, click on "I'll be careful" then type/copy/paste network.http.keep-alive in the Filter box.

It is an older fix so you have to be careful checking which version of FF they are working with.


EDIT:

I see you have ADSL, this site may help: How to Make Firefox Load Pages Faster: 10 steps (with pictures) - wikiHow - from October 21, 2011, and in my FF10.0.1 all the settings are there, and they match.

In step #6 it suggests to up the network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 8, but I did not, since I am happy with how my FF works I left the settings alone.

One other suggestion, If you make any changes copy/paste the original settings into any text editor, and save to keep track of them that way you can revert back if the changes make FF run slower....Almost forgot, restart FF just to be sure.

 

[gini]

Using FF 10.0.1 on Windows 7-64, I found WTKR.com opened instantaneously, as did WVEC.com

 

[Anak]

WTKR.com was okay for me, but WVEC.com was slow.
I noticed WVEC had two more metatags than WTKR.

Then using these links both were okay, I'm beginning to think it is cache related.

 

[jsquareg]

Your welcome, in the meantime I am looking for other possibilities.

I already checked this: http://www.wwco.com/~wls/blog/2008/03/28/firefox-slow-page-load-solved/, but my network.http.keep-alive is true with the integer set to 115

To enter about:config just type/copy/paste about:config in the address bar, click on "I'll be careful" then type/copy/paste network.http.keep-alive in the Filter box.

It is an older fix so you have to be careful checking which version of FF they are working with.


EDIT:

I see you have ADSL, this site may help: How to Make Firefox Load Pages Faster: 10 steps (with pictures) - wikiHow - from October 21, 2011, and in my FF10.0.1 all the settings are there, and they match.

In step #6 it suggests to up the network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 8, but I did not, since I am happy with how my FF works I left the settings alone.

One other suggestion, If you make any changes copy/paste the original settings into any text editor, and save to keep track of them that way you can revert back if the changes make FF run slower....Almost forgot, restart FF just to be sure.

Wow! 'Instant' loading now.

Thank you very much.

 

[Anak]

Your welcome! Glad you have it sorted out now.

Could you elaborate?

Did you upgrade to FF 10.0.1?
Did you clear the cache, was it the link in my Edit?
Were your settings that far off, some missing?

 

[jsquareg]

Your welcome! Glad you have it sorted out now.

Could you elaborate?

Did you upgrade to FF 10.0.1?
Did you clear the cache, was it the link in my Edit?
Were your settings that far off, some missing?

I went through all the steps in the article and found those recommended to be true were set to false. Corrected those and bumped the maxrequest up to 8. I did clear the cache but after several runs of FF 10.0.1 things are still 'instantaneous' (loosely defined of course.)

Since I did them all in one pass it is hard to tell if anyone of them did the trick but collectively they worked.

Thanks again.

 

[Anak]

Your welcome, thank you for posting back to let everyone know!