Light Firefox might be your interest in case you're not using some of the Firefox components that are normally part of full Firefox distribution.
Those components are not present in the light version of Firefox called simply Light Firefox so it's very fast to load and shall use less RAM.
But on the other hand, for example if you're heavy user of Developers tool, the Light Firefox is probably not for you as they're simply not present. If you want one of the fastest available Firefox based browser, than the Light Firefox shall satisfy your needs.
Light Firefox – What's not in?
What's been stripped down in this version of Firefox? According to the developer, the following parts are not part of the Light Firefox:
- crashreporter
- skia
- webm
- opus
- ogg
- wave
- webrtc
- jsd
- gamepad
- intl-api
- accessibility
- webapp
- sync
- healthreport
- safebrowsing
- pdfjs
- identity
- spellcheck
- tabview
- social
- devtools
- printing
- webspeech
- webgl
- directshow
I'm not a heavy user of Firefox, and to be honest, long time ago I moved to faster Chrome. But I still keep it as a second browser as some VMware products aren't Chrome compatible. I can't remember which ones right now, but I remember that Chrome wasn't a first choice for many VMware folks when managing VMware appliances or vSphere web client.
This does not mean that you cannot keep the original Firefox installed! In fact yes you can even run Firefox and LightFirefox side by side. When installing, you have the options to recover your bookmarks from IE, Chrome or Firefox.
There are x32 and x64 versions available of Light Firefox. You can also run a portable version (rename the custom_t.ini file to custom.ini.)
Features
- built by vs 2013 or ICC 14
- slim and light
- support portable mode
Inconvenients (sort of):
Missing parts like the Developer Tools, the spell checker, or Firefox sync, and also WebGL, WebRTC, support for webm, opus or off, or printing support might refrain you from using it. But if you don't need any of those, than you might want to take a look.
The Light project site: https://sourceforge.net/projects/lightfirefox/
Not convinced of the speed increase? You might want to check this website where you can see a real benefit in speed – https://peacekeeper.futuremark.com
This is not the only one alternatif Firefox build, you might want to check for
