There are some tweaks that you can put in the Mozilla Firefox web browser to speed up your web user experience. Pages will render faster using more simultaneous connections, prefetching and other tricks.
In a blank Firefox window, enter “about:config” in the location bar. Some of the preferences below already exist, and you can check if they are there by typing the beginning in the “Filter” line. If a preference exists, you can change its value by double-clicking on it in the list. If a preference does not exist, right click on the window and select either “New”, then the appropriate “Type”. Enter the value and press “Enter”.
| No. | Preference | Type | Value | Description |
| 1 | network.http.pipelining | boolean | true | send multiple http requests before receiving any responses |
| 2 | network.http.pipelining.maxrequests | integer | 8 | as previous |
| 3 | network.http.proxy.pipelining | boolean | true | as previous |
| 4 | network.dns.disableIPv6 | boolean | true | disable IPv6 DNS servers’ bug of returning IPv4 addresses for IPv6 requests |
| 5 | content.interrupt.parsing | boolean | true | allow browser to respond to UI events by interrupting parsing of a page |
| 6 | content.notify.interval | integer | 750000 | as previous |
| 7 | content.switch.threshold | integer | 750000 | as previous |
| 8 | nglayout.initialpaint.delay | integer | 0 | set time delay from initial page loading to the first page that is rendered |
| 9 | browser.cache.memory.capacity | integer | 65536 | memory size used for storing pages for instant recall |
Restart Firefox to make the changes take effect.
If you are not comfortable with messing with the above and/or want more complex enhancements, try the Fasterfox extension for Firefox. It can prefetch links, tweak network settings, and block popups created by Adobe Flash.
List of options in Fasterfox (bold means described earlier):
- Enhanced prefetching
- Page load timer
- Memory cache
- Disk cache
- DNS cache expiration
- DNS cache entries
- Max. connections
- Max. connections per server
- Max. persistent connections per server
- Max. persistent connections per proxy
- Pipelining
- Pipelining first request
- Proxy pipelining
- Max. pipelining requests
- Initial paint delay
- Submenu delay
- Disable popups from plugins
Related post:
Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 Web Browser Released
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/12/mozilla-firefox-2001-web-browser.html>
Links:
Fasterfox
<URL:http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/>
Download Firefox
<URL:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=187103&t=213>
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