Firefox tutorials
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers
This tweak is all about the Back Button history cache, when you visit a page and then go to another page Firefox places the last page in memory which is supposed to mean pressing the Back Button will load the page faster as its all ready been visited.
Well this tutorial is going to show you how to change this preference to gain a little more RAM back if back history is not important to you. You know your self how much you use your back button, maybe you don't use it at all in this cause you could disable caching as you don't need it.
What are the affects of this tweak?
Well basically by lowering or turning off history caching you will free up some more RAM how much depends on the amount of RAM you have! Which is why your looking at this tutorial in the first place. If you turn off History caching you can still use the back button the only difference is you may notice a slightly longer loading time when going back because Firefox has to download the web page again, if you have a broadband connection you shouldn't really notice a difference on most web sites How ever it may cause you to use more of your bandwidth! just a warning. Which is not really an issue in my case but maybe in yours it is, You Decide!
Important! Remember to Backup Firefox before following the tutorial
Step One
Open Firefox either by Double clicking on the 'desktop icon'.
or
Hold down the 'windows key' and press 'R' type in 'Firefox' then Click OK
Refer to images below.
Step Two
In your address bar type about:config
Step Three
In the 'filter bar' type browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers as you see in the image below.
Step Four
Now we are going to change the value below are a list of the values you can set:
32MB --- 0
64MB --- 1
128MB - 2
256MB - 3
512MB - 5
1GB --- 8
2GB --- 8
4GB --- 8
The numbers on the right determine how many pages will be kept in history and the amount on the left is how much memory will be used for keeping the history.
Decide which on you would like to use, this will depend on your personal browsing habits. In my case I'm going to be using 0 as I don't want any history to be cached.
Step Five
Double Click browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers
Step Six
Enter the Number of pages to cache, I'm using the value 0
Step Seven
Click OK
Step Eight
Close Firefox
All Done!
You have now configured the amount of history pages and amount of RAM Firefox is to use for caching, if you selected 0 like me then no pages will be cached freeing up more RAM to do other things.
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