Firefox “auto-complete” is very slow

Question

Firefox version: 3.6

My places.sqlite is rather big (114MB, after being optimized by SpeedyFox.) If I turn on auto-complete, it may take 1 or 2 seconds for Firefox to accept a newly typed URL. To reproduce the issue:

1. Type a URL into the URL bar, press enter.
2. Nothing happens, and Firefox consumes 100% CPU (actually 50% of 2 cores) for 1 to 2 seconds
3. Then Firefox start the network connection and load the webpage.

Since it consumes 100% CPU, I don't think the bottleneck is the disk. I have some experience with SQLite and I know a 100MB DB is very small. To achieve the delay Firefox must be doing some expensive processing or inefficient queries.

The issue does not appear if:

1. auto-complete is turned off, or
2. the URL is frequently used, or
3. a new profile with no history is used

Does anyone have any idea how to solve the problem? Should I file this as a bug? I don't want to give up my 100MB history, but I don't want to give up auto-complete either :)

Answer 1

Try this addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13878 | It is not a bug, 'its a feature'. ;) There is an other addon, but you may have to edit its compat info to make it work with 3.6. If you dont know how, just ask. >> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11198