How to Speed up Firefox

Gigabot

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I'm using Cable and the speed after using this hack on Firefox is noticeable but when I was using dialup this speed was very noticeable as well. This hack works!

Tip 1 : Normally when you type in a url, the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several requests at once, which really speeds up page loading.
Step 1: Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

  • network.http.pipelining,
  • network.http.proxy.pipelining,
  • network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Step 2: Alter the entries as follows:

  • Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
  • Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
  • Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
Tip 2: Change the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

  • Right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer.
  • Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0?. This value reduces the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.


Source: http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2004/12/quick-tip-to-speed-up-firefox/
 
piplining does in fact work although if the server your connecting to does not support it, also i would lower the requests a bit, it can cause worse performance, also works for us linux/unix people too ;)
 
Sorry I just remembered there's also a downside to this. Another poster explained this best so I'll post a quote here instead of rewording it:
Yes, enabling HTTP pipelining can dramatically improve networking performance. The downside, and the reason it's not enabled by default, is that it can prevent Web pages from displaying correctly. If you've enabled this, and you find pages that aren't displaying correctly, please don't blame Firefox or the Web developer. It's probably the fact that you enabled an "unsupported" feature which is incompatible with some Web servers and proxy servers.

The second change, setting the initial paint delay at zero, may get you some content on the screen faster, but it's worth noting that it will dramatically slow down the time it takes the entire page to display. Here's what's going on. Gecko, Firefox's rendering engine, is trying to optimize between the cost of waiting for a bit more data versus doing more painting and reflows as new data comes in. Waiting a bit longer before it starts painting the page gives Gecko a chance to receive more content before chewing up CPU cycles to render and reflow the document. If you drop this value down to zero or near zero, that means you'll see the page start displaying a bit earlier, but not having received much data in that short interval, you'll have a lot more paint and reflow cycles to complete rendering of the page.

This one probably comes down to a combination of bandwidth, CPU speed, and personal preference. If it works for you, and you don't mind the side-effects, then great. Just note that what works for one person/system, may not work for another.

Yes, there are tuning change you can make (even at compile time, see Moox' optimized builds) that will dramatically alter the performance characteristics of Firefox. Feel free to experiment, but remember that most of the defaults are defaults for a reason. If your browser starts misbehaving or web sites look broken, it might be worth going back to default settings.

Source: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/1610363-post14.html
 
I used to use the Firefox extension FasterFox, which when I used to use it seemed to make a difference, but I don't use it anymore because it does not work with 3.0. And it could be argued that it did anything at all.
 
yeah, im in the same boat as u bman
 
one quick easy way to make firefox faster is to remove all the extenstions you load it up with.
 
i find firefox fast enough already :)


btw.. easy with the spam gigabot :p
 
Really now, it doesn't really make it compatible.. it just removes the compatibility check - I've had extensions that just plain didn't work and/or crashed Firefox on some betas when forced to run.
 
Really now, it doesn't really make it compatible.. it just removes the compatibility check - I've had extensions that just plain didn't work and/or crashed Firefox on some betas when forced to run.

I was going to point that out, some you can make compatible with a newer version of Firefox and they actually work, but many of them cause problems and don't.
 

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