FARAWAY

Mozilla Firefox is a web browser project descended from the Mozilla application suite, managed by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox had 16.80% of the recorded market share in Web browsers as of December 2007, making it the second-most-popular browser in current use worldwide.

Background

On Windows operating systems, when a program is minimized and left for a period of time, Windows will swap memory the program is using from RAM onto the hard disk in anticipation that other programs might need RAM. Because of the way Mozilla applications are stored in memory, Windows is much more aggressive in swapping out the memory they use, which can cause a delay when the program is restored.
The “Config.trim_on_minimize” preference determines whether to allow Windows to swap out memory from a minimized Mozilla application.

Possible values and their effects:

true — Allow Windows to swap out memory when the program is minimized.

false — Prevent Windows from swapping out memory when the program is minimized. (Default)

This preference does not exist by default, in order to change it’s default value:

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the dialog box that pops up, enter config.trim_on_minimize and hit Enter.
4. Now set value to True.
5. Restart Firefox.

Setting this preference to true has it’s advantages and disadvantages.

If you’re experiencing problems with the application consuming too much RAM (Mem Usage in the Windows Task Manager), you can try setting this preference to true.

Now, Firefox would use very less memory, which is very evident from the Task Manager too, however, when you restore Firefox again, it takes more time as everything needs to be brought back .
So, it’s better not to enable trim_on_minimize if you have a decent enough system.

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