why excessive transfers when I go online with Firefox?

[VanillaMozilla]

I'm assuming that the words plugin, add-on, and extension all refer to the same thing.

No they don't.

A plugin is a separate program that is not installed in Firefox. Many of these can run with any of several browsers. Example: Adobe Reader

An Firefox extension alters the browser itself, and is installed in the browser. Most extensions are written by third parties, and even if you get them from Mozilla, they are tested only very briefly by Mozilla. They are not guaranteed to work with each other or with future versions, and they are not guaranteed not to cause problems. Mozilla takes no responsibility for them, and if you look, you will find a disclaimer.

Themes are also written by third parties, and have similar limitations.

Extensions are themes are called "add-ons".

Disabling an add-on does not mean that it will have no further influence. Some of them change your settings, and the settings remain changed whether the add-on is running or not.

By default there are no Mozilla files in these directories:

C:\WINDOWS\Temporary Internet Files
C:\WINDOWS\History
C:\WINDOWS\Cookies

[frew]

Very interesting. Thank you so much for your help and ideas with this.

I guess at this point I'll just add a little at a time back into FF (mostly just add-ons I like), noticing what causes more transfers at connect/FF startup.

I'm reluctant to just copy all my backed up profile material back into my current FF profile folder all at once, because then I'll not be able to tell for sure what exactly is causing the problem if it should begin to happen again.

I kind of don't want to take so long to put things back one at a time though, like one add-on at a time, but I guess I better. It will be so interesting to see if it begins to happen again, and what exactly causes it.

I'll put a note in this thread if I ever find the specific cause of the excess transfer problem, should it begin to occur again as a result of some specific new setting or addition to FF.


Thank you very much,

frew

[VanillaMozilla]

I'm reluctant to just copy all my backed up profile material back into my current FF profile folder all at once, because then I'll not be able to tell for sure what exactly is causing the problem if it should begin to happen again.

Exactly. And that's a good use for one or two test profiles. Be sure to observe the warnings when creating and deleting profiles. And back up. Good luck.

And by the way, it's good that you found the problem. Most people don't get so far as recommending a complete uninstall <i>in a new directory,</i> and especially including the registry stuff.

If you do find the problem and are sure you can duplicate it, please post back here for the benefit of other users. Also, send me a private message. Thanks.

[frew]

I'm not sure if the registry stuff did anything...I don't think so really. It was just a couple generic folder type keys that said Firefox and Mozilla. I'm not really familiar with registry stuff.

It may take a few days for me to get everything back to normal with my FF setup, because I'm just adding one add-on at a a time and testing it for a while. If I do notice any significant initial transfers at connect/FF startup, I will post back here about it in this thread.



By the way, the new install of FF 2.0.0.3 is in the default directory. I had just moved the Mozilla folder to another drive and named it something like "Mozilla_before5-6-07Firefox2.0.0.3install" before I installed FF 2.0.0.3.

Also, not sure if I mentioned this, I'm on Win98SE and, after backing up these folders below, I uninstalled FF using it's uninstaller exe, then deleted the FF folder at

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox

Then I moved the Mozilla folder at

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla

to another drive

So I guess I'm not certain which folder had the problem stuff in it actually, but somehow I was assuming that the problem was in the folder at

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla

since that's where all the add-ons stuff is kept it appears.

Although now that I think of it, perhaps just an uninstall reinstall might have done it without me having to get rid of the whole Mozilla folder. But I guess I wanted to start from scratch by getting rid of everything, so I could systematically add back one thing at a time to isolate the problem.

In either case, the excess transfers have stopped, and I will build back up to where I had things with FF, and I'll post back any info on anything that appears to cause more excess initial transfers.



One other interesting note, the cookies for the mysterious

load.exelator.com"
and
freshcontent.com"

that were mentioned earlier in this thread showed up again in FF cookies at first connect after FF 2.0.0.3 install, but interestingly, they did not seems to have any effect on the amount of initial data transfer. So they do not seem to be a problem at all, yet I still did delete them and they are now blocked.


I'll post any further observations.

Thank you very much,

frew

[dickvl]

Firefox also checks for updates of extension, even if an extension is disabled as I had a popup that an update was available for a disabled extension a while back.

[frew]

>Firefox also checks for updates of extension, even if an extension is disabled as I had a popup that an update was available for a disabled extension a while back.


Hmmm...I did not know that. I had around 25 add-ons that were all disabled during much testing, and you think that these add-ons (or FF itself) may have been doing some checking to see if there were updates for these add-ons, even though they were disabled, and even though I did not click on any "find update"?

I was thinking that FF (or the add-ons themselves?) would only go check to see if there were updates if I clicked on the add-on's options >find update.

Thank you,

frew

[dickvl]

If you have disabled the check for updates of extensions then Firefox should not look for updates.

[VanillaMozilla]

Connections established on startup - Firefox:
Checking for application updates. Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Update provides options to disable update checks.

I did all this stuff
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Connections_e ... _-_Firefox

Nice call, Dickvl.

[frew]

Yep, all those update checking options at Tools >Options >Advanced >Update have always been disabled (unchecked)...especially since I'm on dialup still, so I had to make sure those update checks only happened when I chose to have them happen, ie not when I'm trying to go to various sites, downloading stuff, etc.

Thank you,

frew

[VanillaMozilla]

Sorry, I misread your previous post. Maybe there's a bug there, but if there is, I'm sure it's well known.

[frew]

Thank you, no problem.

Now I'm a little curious about the two

prefs.js

files of Firefox's.

(Note: I'm using Win98SE, thus the paths below)

I notice theres one prefs.js at

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\prefs.js

and one at

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\myfolder.default\prefs.js

I search the text

"extensions.update.enabled"

in both of these files of the old backed up Firefox folders that were presenting the problem, and interestingly, this one

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\prefs.js

had the line saying "true" (ie enabled)

Whereas this one

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\myfolder.default\prefs.js

had the line saying "false" (ie disabled)

So I'm not sure which one FF was reacting to?

Just thought I'd mention that. I'm not familiar with which one of those files does what.



EDIT: But each one of my individual add-ons were disabled, and I think in the comments of this one

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\prefs.js

it may be saying that the individual settings will overide the "true" at "extensions.update.enabled" in

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\prefs.js


Just some thoughts.

Thank you,

frew

[VanillaMozilla]

Search the Knowledge Base for profiles, and that will explain it.

"I notice theres one prefs.js at

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\prefs.js

and one at

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\myfolder.default\prefs.js"

The second one is your profile. The first is just a sample, for creating a new one.

Also search the Knowledge Base for "user.js".

[frew]

Couple weeks later....

By the way, thanks for directing me to where I can find info about profiles.



Okay, I think I finally found the problem.

It was indeed an RSS feed thing, but in a very unexpected way.
This is what happened:
I reinstalled the new FF and started fresh with none of my old bookmarks.
FF thus does no fetching or updating of any rss feeds when I connect/start FF.
When I put my old bookmarks html file into mozilla profile folder the old problem of about 1 MB of excess loading at connect/FF startup immediately began to occur again.
I looked in the LiveBookmarks folder and it was indeed empty, as it has been through all my tests.

Here's what was happening...

FF must be parsing the bookmarks.html file for any feed links, even links that it finds that are not in the LiveBookmarks folder.
In the past what I did was moved a bunch of my live bookmarks to other folders, to store them, in order to keep my main LiveBookmarks folder uncluttered...ie with just my most commonly used feed links in it...putting less commonly used feed links into folders outside of FF LiveBookmarks folder.
I thought that if they were not in the main LiveBookmarks folder that FF would certainly not go hunting for their feed links to update them. but nope...FF must be parsing the whole bookmarks.html file for any feed links, and it goes out to update any feed links it finds in the bookmarks.html file, even if they are not in the LiveBookmarks folder.


In the bookmarks.html file, I replaced all "FEEDURL=" with "x_FEEDURL=" just to see what would happen and sure enough when all the 119 "FEEDURL=" were replaced with "x_FEEDURL=" in the bookmarks.html file, FF starts up fine with no excess transfers at connect/FF startup.
So I guess the moral of the story is that if you want to move feed links (livebookmarks) to subfolders for better organization of many rss feeds, know that FF will still be updating all the feeds, even if they are not in your livebookmarks main folder in FF.

Just wanted to let you know.

Seeya,

frew

[dickvl]

There is no LiveBookmarks folder in Firefox, unless you created that yourself to put RSS feeds in
Or do you mean the Bookmarks Toolbar folder where Firefox puts the BBC Latest Headlines?
You can put Live feeds in any folder.

[frew]

Thank you,

Yes, actually by LiveBookmarks folder I was referring to Firefox's Bookmarks Toolbar folder.



>You can put Live feeds in any folder

So we need to be careful how many live feeds (feed URLs) we have placed throughout our bookmarks, because apparently FF will look for any feed URL in the bookmarks.html file and try to update any feed URL it finds in the bookmarks.html file.

Interesting...I thought it FF might have only looked in the default Bookmarks Toolbar folder for live feeds to update, rather than looking through the total bookmarks.html file for any feed URLs it can find and updating them all.

Actually, it would be nice to be able to tell FF what folders to look in and what folders to exclude when it goes to look for feed URLs to update. In this way we could, especially dialup users, put feed URLs we don't use much into separate folders where FF will not look, and keep just or more commonly used feed URLs in the folders where FF would look for feed URLs to update. In this way we could control how much initial time is spent by FF to update feed URLs when we connect.

Once again, since I'm using dialup connection, this all makes a difference for me, whereas for most broadband users this updating of any and all feed URLs in the bookmarks.html file will hardly be noticed, since even a 1 MB transfer happens so quickly, whereas with dialup it takes 4 minutes or so.

Thank you very much,

frew