Speed Up Performance of Mozilla Firefox

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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Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.8 Web Browser Released

For those Mozilla Firefox 1.5.x users who are cool with their version and can wait for 2.x to be downloaded automatically, your browser will probably be downloading 1.5.0.8 right now.

This version resolves three bugs and improves the update feature for it to download lean and custom FF 2.0 installation instead of full installer.

FF 1.5 will be supported and updated until April 27 2007. Although most extensions work in FF 2.0, your only reason to stick with FF 1.5 is the themes, unless you can find FF 2.0 versions.

I’m giving one last chance to FF 1.5 not to crash occasionally when I open a link in a new tab…

Meanwhile, let me recommend a really fun extension, called StumbleUpon. It is a social bookmarking service which lets your surf to pages recommended by others. You can share interesting pages that you have visited and give reviews. Pretty useful extension when you have been surfing for eight hours already and can’t seen to find any more and will crash and die of fatigue. Check it out using the link below.

Oh, FF 1.5.0.9 and 2.0.0.1 are planned to be released on Dec 14 2006. So, you got some time to really think carefully if you want to move on to FF 2.0. ;)

Related posts:

Mozilla Firefox 2 Web Browser Released
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/10/mozilla-firefox-2-web-browser-released.html>

Firefox Into The Sky!
<URL:http://glob.lokety.com/2006/05/firefox-into-sky.html>

Links:

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.8 Release Notes
<URL:http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/releases/1.5.0.8.html>

Download Firefox
<URL:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=187103&t=213>

StumbleUpon
<URL:http://www.stumbleupon.com>

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