The world’s most bloated browser

Firefox 1 Minute

This made me laugh out loud:

Yesterday I decided to undertake an experiment. My favourite browser, Firefox, allows its users to add extensions. Currently 1148 extensions are available at Mozilla update. I decided to install 100 of the most popular extensions at the same time, trying to avoid those that duplicated others functionality.

Here’s a small sample of what the final result looked like (click the screen here to go to the original post and see the complete, overwhelming mess).

The author initially said, “Overall I was very impressed. The browser was a little slow on my machine (which doesn’t have impressive specs) but there were no crashes except when installing the extensions.”

After a couple days, however, the dark side of overcustomizing had emerged:

It takes around seven seconds to start up.

It freezes for at least one second between pages (I guess a lot is hanging on the onLoad.)

It has not yet crashed, half hour or so I’ve browsed with it, since all the extensions have been installed (for some reason it did crash immediatly after installing them, before restarting.)

So, Firefox users, how many extensions do you have installed?

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Published by Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/

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20 thoughts on “The world’s most bloated browser”

  3. Nine for me:

    DOM Inspector – used rarely when I need to debug something
    Talkback – used rarely when Firefox crashes
    IE Tab – used moderately when sites require IE
    BugMeNot – used rarely when sites need a login ID
    Nuke Anything Enhanced – used sometimes when stuff just needs to die
    Viamatic foXpose – used rarely
    SessionSaver – used rarely, but essential when the time comes
    Tab Mix Plus – a big enhancement on Firefox’s default tab management
    Greasemonkey – used very frequently to customize Bloglines; also, I have a custom script that alerts me when meebo sends me a message

  4. about 20 with a memory load of 170mb
    it’s kind of cool but not everything that’s free it’s great
    i kinda like it but in the same time kinda hate it

  5. I have six extensions:
    * Compact Menu
    * Tab Mix Plus
    * Foxpose
    * AdBlock
    * SmartSearch
    * Download Status Bar

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  13. 15, with 2 disabled – one because I don’t use it anymore and the other isn’t compatible with 1.5.0.1 and hasn’t been updated yet. That said, I’m using Nightly Tester Tools which can re-activate disabled extensions so I could just reactivate it…

  14. Holy crap. I have 7 (not including the Talkback and DOM Inspector that came with it) and I thought that was a lot… I suppose I’m mistaken.

  15. Jeez. I just looked for the first time and I have 31! Time to slice and dice a few of them off I guess.

  16. I have 21.

    I don’t know why he’s complaining that it took 7 seconds to startup. Maybe it’s something I have installed, but Firefox takes about 15-20 seconds to startup on my WindowsXP box (which means I don’t quit it all that often). It runs just fine after that. I have a few extensions that communicate with other applications, such as EverNote, Onfolio and RoboForm so I have a feeling my slowdown is probably there.

  17. 19 installed – AdSense Notifier, Roboform, Answer.com,AutoCopy,BugMeNot,CopyURL+,Farecompare,Mouseless Browsing,NukeAnythingEnhanced,PDF Download,Scrapbook,Session Saver,SiteAdvisor,TabX,Tabbrowser Preferences,Talkback,TinyURLCreator

    Firefox does take a while to start, but once running, seems fine. Still a memory pig, of course, but….

  18. 2: Tabbrowser Extensions and IE View. The most I’ve ever had was ~7 – but that was for Firebird 0.3.

  19. Eight currently.
    Only “Customize Google” and “Adblock” could be considered essential (how did I ever surf without Adblock?).

    Had to get rid of “InfoRSS” which I liked a lot but it was all too often found chomping away at half (125KB/s) of my broadband-width!

    Great experiment though Ed.
    Gave me a chuckle.

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