Performance:StartupTasks

This is a page for tracking the work on improving the startup performance for Firefox 3. It should list the main items that are being researched or that need to be researched, names against those in progress and where we think we can make useful improvements, bugs tracking the fixes.

XBL Simplifications

Tabbrowser

• Kill off the theme specific bindings and control minor differences with CSS
• Kill the close button binding
• Try to use plain widgets where possible (eliminate extensions)

XUL Reduction

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_frm/thread/6db1639b028850f5/

Toolbars

• Remove endcap stack hack - bug 387646
• Remove autocomplete dropmarker stack - bug 397331
• Remove .formatted-url scrollbox - bug 388030
• Remove autocomplete-security-wrapper - bug 397466

Searchbar

• Remove engine button stack hack (Ryan)

Tabbrowser

• <tab>s are 10 levels down from <tabbrowser>

CSS Optimizations

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Writing_Efficient_CSS

General Quick Gains

• Except in rare cases, any use of the universal selector is wrong!
• Many descendant selector uses are unnecessary and can be refactored to use the child selector or (if applicable) have the targeted element inherit attributes from its parent.

Tabbrowser

• Clean up leftovers from tabbrowser move - bug 393734

Ts Distribution

5 runs of 10 averaged and re-baselined prior to each test.

• Chromeless - 59%
• Searchbar - 7.93%
• Menu items - 7.03%
• Urlbar bindings - 2%
• Personal toolbar - 4.44%
• Findbar - 2.84%