How To Speed Up Firefox (Helpful Vanity)

[KoRn]

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

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

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

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.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

[Ronaldus Magnus Reagan]

I still prefer IE over Firefox. The main reason is adjusting text size on web pages. I am on the computer all day for work and visit many web sites. It is much less cumbersome to use IE. With IE you can put the "Size" button on your toolbar, click on it and hit "larger". With Firefox, you have to click "View", then "Text Size", then "Increase" and and then repeat all those steps AGAIN if you want to go to a even larger text size. What a hassle! The extension doesn't work with the 1.0 version.

[Hang'emAll]

Changing text size can be done easier:

Push the keys CNTL+ to increase text size and CNTL- to decrease size. I believe this works on both browsers.

[Ronaldus Magnus Reagan]

Those keyboard commands require me to sit upright and get out of my reclining position in my chair in order to use the keyboard. That's a hassle, too!

[Malsua]

One question... has a fix come out for the slowness of Firefox and Mozilla when you restore them from being minimized?

I found this answer on another forum. I have at least a GB of ram in every machine I use and they're all recent so I never noticed this minimize problem. Maybe this will help you.

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By default, when you minimize Firefox, it gives back to Windows most of the RAM the browser was using. It sometimes can take several seconds for the browser window to become fully loaded when you restore the window to its original size. This is one of those "version 1.0" things, in my opinion, that will become more streamlined in future bump revs of the program.

Fortunately, there's a hidden setting that can accomplish the restoration of Firefox windows much more quickly:

Step 1. Use about:config to create a new, Boolean value. Type or paste the following string into the dialog box that appears:

config.trim_on_minimize

Step 2. Click OK to close the dialog box. Change the value from "true" to "false" and restart Firefox.

This doesn't piggishly retain all of the RAM that Firefox has claimed. If Windows needs more RAM to devote to another application, Windows can take it. What the setting does is prevent Firefox from giving up most of its RAM until the memory is actually required elsewhere.

Setting this item to "false" may noticeably slow down other applications while Firefox is minimized, if your PC has less than 256 MB of RAM. If so, change the setting back to "true."

[KoRn]

Bumperzzz for all of the Firefox interest today!

[Old Professer]

I'm using Comcast with IE; I clicked on your Google link and it took 3.5 seconds.

[general_re]

Your cable connection is probably slightly faster than my DSL - for me, it took 4.2 seconds in IE, versus 4.4 in Firefox. With pipelining disabled in FF, that is, and IE doesn't implement http pipelining anyway. Enabling pipelining in FF caused that same page to take 13.9 seconds to load here, a fairly significant slowdown.

[KoRn]

You had to set something wrong. I'm on T1 speed DSL, and I've never had a page to load that slow. Recheck what you did just to be sure. Something is definitely wrong.

The changes I listed made mine, and many other FReeper's Firefox from noticeably to allot faster. Check over everything and report back, something is wrong somewhere.

[general_re]

That's the point - it shouldn't load that slow, and if pipelining is disabled, it doesn't load that slow. Enabling pipelining is what slows it down. Don't take my word for it, though - try it for yourself. Just make sure you follow the steps above, so you don't hit your local cache.

[KoRn]

Send me the URL to the site you are trying this one. Some sites don't support it. I'll check it out.

[general_re]

It's the Google translation page - see post #230.

[antiRepublicrat]

I have another minor issue with Firefox. Under Old Netscape you could place the pointer on any photo and right click to see it's name and the kind of file. That has been lost with Firefox. I really miss that when cruising FR.

Sounds like another job for an extension to me. I'm not volunteering this time -- I wrote "openurldialog" last time based on a comment like this.

BTW, Firefox extensions are easy to learn to write if you know JavaScript and have a vague familiarity with XML concepts.

[antiRepublicrat]

ADSL is available here, but I'm something like 20 miles beyond the 3 mile limit.

Don't feel bad. I was once about 500 feet beyond the limit and the telco wouldn't budge, sticking me with overpriced 64Kb ISDN. I was about to set up getting my neighbor to get DSL, put a directional wireless antenna on his house, and beam it to me so we could share the connection. But then I moved, where I now have 2.5Mb (actual test rate) cable -- sweeeet.

[antiRepublicrat]

I have looked into satellite.

Satellite's nice, but forget it if you want to do gaming or have to VPN into work. The latency will kill you.

[BigDaddyTX]

BTT

[antiRepublicrat]

Those keyboard commands require me to sit upright and get out of my reclining position in my chair in order to use the keyboard. That's a hassle, too!

Get a good mouse and assign them to buttons. Or learn how to do extensions and make those buttons (easy if you can do simple programming).

I should start making custom obscure extensions for people. Profit!

[antiRepublicrat]

BTW, if you go many places on Microsoft's site using Firefox you'll get the "Warning: You are viewing this page with an unsupported Web browser." message. Simply install the User Agent Switcher extension and flip to Firefox saying it's IE before visiting. No more messages.

[KoRn]

Very good! Thanks for the tip!

[Warhammer]

ping