In the Add-ons section of the Firefox Website, there are a few tools to make your Fox out run the other browsers and load pages significantly faster. I have tested two of these Add-ons and found that one Add-on in particular that doubles my page load time. The first Firefox Add-on I tested was Faster Fox by Tony Gentilcore. This Add-on has some good Features that does add a little speed and pep to your Firefox page load time. After testing the page load and performance of several websites I installed and activated Faster Fox. To my surprise I noticed that every page that I visited had increased their load time noticeably. Keep in mind that this was not a bench mark test and I can not claim any scientific data to substantiate my claims. However as we spend more time on the Internet we can notice page load times that vary by fractions of a second. One of the great features of Faster Fox is the page load timer in the bottom corner of your browser (optional, pictured above). This will give you an idea of over all browser page load speed.

Without getting into all of the available options for Faster Fox there are a number of settings that you can use to further tweak the Add-on. I did have some time to tweak these and was able to squeeze a little more performance out of Faster Fox. You can download Faster Fox Here!

The Other Add-on I tested was Tweak Network by Edwin Martin. Tweak Network out performed Faster Fox without even changing any of the settings allowed by the Add-on. What I found particularly interesting was the “power” setting, which I immediately went for. Even though you are greeted with a warning when you bring up the Tweak Network Settings I was happy to click POWER and let her rip. The Tweak Network Add-on is a great tool for faster browsing. The only draw back is that it lacks the page load timer available in Faster Fox. However I found that you can tweak Faster Fox to get the same performance of Tweak Network and you get the timer. One point to remember is once activated the Tweak Network Add-on settings are found in the Tools menu and not the Add-on menu. You can download Tweak Network here!

Out of the box Tweak network is faster but if you have a little time on your hands the Faster Fox Add-on is just as good.