VACUUM your Firefox 3.x database

It should be exam period for polytechnic students right now (or just over for some). Here's a tip i read up earlier today. Firefox 3 was a great improvement over Firefox 2 which had one of the worst memory issues since version 0.8.

Firefox 3 also added a new feature dubbed the "awesomebar", it use SQlite to store the data as a database. But there's a catch, over time, writing, erasing & modification to data will cause the database to be fragmented. Result: slow performance over time and especially with version 3.5.

Mozilla had made a script that will VACUUM (de-fragment in SQlite terms) the database but required a browser restart. Now they released another work around that does not require that.

1. Open the Error Console: Tools menu/Error Console
2. In the Code text box paste this (it's a single line):
   Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("VACUUM");
   );