How To Block Fasterfox Requests

How To Block Fasterfox Requests - February 15, 2006

Over the last few months the amount of visitors using Mozilla Firefox has grown to about 25%. The amount of bandwidth being used has also increased a large amount. Part of the reason behind this is that many Firefox users use an extension called “Fasterfox”. This extension “pre-fetches” links on a page so that if the user were to click on a link it would load much faster because its already been downloaded. This may be more convenient for viewer, but is a major problem for many webmasters who are low on bandwidth. Since Fasterfox constantly requests new files, it can cause many servers to overload much faster than if a person viewing the same content without Fasterfox were to view it.

Fasterfox is in fact one of the most popular extensions for Firefox. It is currently ranked as the 3rd most downloaded extension for Firefox on Mozilla Update page. (aka. Firefox Add-ons) The latest version of Fasterfox, v1.0.3, checks the for the robots.txt file on the site the viewer is visiting to check whether it should pre-fetch or not. This new feature allows webmasters to add the following text (in bold) to their robots.txt file to prevent Fasterfox from pre-fetching links. Text To Add To “robots.txt”:

User-agent: Fasterfox
Disallow: /

Adding these two lines somewhere in your robots.txt file and placing it in the root folder will prevent Fasterfox from pre-fetching links anywhere on your site. (ex: yourwebsite.com/robots.txt) Webmasters can modify the text so that Fasterfox will only be prevented from pre-fetching on specified directories. Still have questions? Ask us! (reply in the comments)

Links: Fasterfox | Firefox Add-ons
Related: “robots.txt” Tutorial
Recent: Firefox Extend Contest Finalists

Tags: bandwidth, firefox, mozilla

posted by Sahas Katta in Tips & Tweaks
on 2/15/2006 at 10:56 AM with Comments (49) & TrackPings (13)

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2/16/2006 08:59 PM

jucyfruit3 says

i just added this to the robots file. ill see if this actually works since fasterfox is sorta stupid at times.

2/17/2006 05:17 PM

thomas says

if i knew about this i would have used it a long time ago. i just checked the fasterfox change log and indeed they have added “robots.txt” check for instructions.

2/17/2006 05:36 PM

jim says

this is actually neat that they created this so ppl w/ bandwith issues can block it and others who have excess of bandwidth can allow it. i guess noone needs to complain about fasterfox anymore :)

2/17/2006 05:58 PM

Ryan Williams says

This is a good move on the part of the developers. While I’m not sure that the entire concept of these things particularly sound - most people will never stumble across this fix, particularly casual bloggers and such who might attract a lot of traffic but are bandwidth limited - having a way to block it is probably more than many developers would bother to implement I’m sure.

2/17/2006 05:59 PM

Stwo says

fasterfox isnt all that anyway… use google web accelerator

2/17/2006 06:03 PM

DD32 says

::most people will never stumble across this fix, particularly casual bloggers and such who might attract a lot of traffic but are bandwidth limited ::: Digg Frontpage enough advertising for it?

2/17/2006 06:04 PM

James Carlos says

Great tip! Adding this to robots.txt now.

2/17/2006 06:06 PM

Ryan Williams says

No, DD32. Unless the fix is integrated as an option with popular software such as WordPress, a lot of *casual* users will not be aware of the fix. Still, the fact it exists at all is a good step. :)

2/17/2006 06:23 PM