Speed up Firefox

How to speed up Firefox to make it even faster!

Mozila's Firefox browser can browse much faster than other browsers. Why wouldn't you make it even faster? To speed up Firefox you have to make a little minor tweaking. You can make Firefox perform up to 40% faster for page transfers. With just a few clicks and some typing, you can experience faster browsing and surfing with Firefox.

Quick Firefox speed up

Difficulty:  Easy
Time Required:  3 minutes

1.   Open the Firefox "config" page: click into the Firefox address location bar, and type about:config , press Enter.

2.   The config file will appear in the Firefox browser as a page with hundreds of lines of code in it. Now, we start by enabling some advanced tabbed options.

3.   Locate the line browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs (only for versions older than Firefox 1.5). Tip: press "b" on your keyboard to quick scroll.

4.   Double click on browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs . This will set its toggle to "true". Now your advanced and enhanced tabbing should be set.

5.   Next: we will increase the "pipeline" RAM ability for Firefox to accomodate more packet transfer. In the same config document, scroll down to the line that says network.http.pipelining . Double click this line to set it to "true". Find network.http.proxy.pipelining and set it to "true".

6.   Lastly, we will increase the maximum pipeline requests to 100. Find the line that says network.http.pipelining.maxrequests . Double click on it, and a dialog box will pop up. Change the setting from 4 to 100.

7.   No need to save this file. Simply close and restart Firefox, and you should see an immediate 10% to 40% increase in web page transfer speed, and faster opening of your tabbed windows! Enjoy!

If you experienced surfing acceleration, share this manual with your friends:

Advanced Firefox speed up

Difficulty:  Easy
Time Required:  5 minutes

If you can spend couple more minutes you can go through optimization that is more adjusted to your computer speed and connection. There are five basic sets of tweaks, so just choose one and implement it.

Fast Computer Fast Connection

user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Fast Computer, Slower Connection

This configuration is more suited to people without ultra fast connections. We are not talking about dial up connections but slower DSL or Cable connections.

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Fast Computer, Slow Connection

user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 8191);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Slow Computer, Fast Connection

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 1000000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 1000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 4095);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 1000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);

One of the changes made for this particular configuration is the final line where the status bar is disabled for changing web pages to save processor time.

Slow Computer, Slow Connection

We have entered the doldrums of the dial-up user

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 750);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);

Thanks to: TweakFactor

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