Speed up Firefox

If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it's optimized for dialup connections). Here's how:

* Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Type "network.http" in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):

* Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

* Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

* Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.

* Also, 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 receives.

It actually works..

step one: uninstall firefox

step two: install opera

Originally Posted by Bring The Noise

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step one: uninstall firefox

step two: install opera

I use both. Opera to me is like Mac - better out of the box but when I tweak Firefox (and Windows) and install extensions, etc. I prefer it.

The one feature Opera had that gave it a huge edge over Firefox was the almost instantaneous Back/Forward. Using a nightly build of Firefox right now (Minefield) and they seem to have improved that a lot. So much so that I find myself using Opera less.

Originally Posted by Jumbie

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I use both. Opera to me is like Mac - better out of the box but when I tweak Firefox (and Windows) and install extensions, etc. I prefer it.

The one feature Opera had that gave it a huge edge over Firefox was the almost instantaneous Back/Forward. Using a nightly build of Firefox right now (Minefield) and they seem to have improved that a lot. So much so that I find myself using Opera less.

For some reason with firefox i'd just always experience random slowdowns and huge CPU usage
i switched to opera and it seems to have improved

Firefox tends to be a resource hog. I used Opera years ago, should give it another shot...

Originally Posted by Bring The Noise

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For some reason with firefox i'd just always experience random slowdowns and huge CPU usage

I noticed that every now and then. Not so much the slowdowns but it took tons of RAM. I always attributed it to the fact that I have approx. 50 tabs open (47 at current) at any time.

I built a new computer a few months back with faster processor and hard drive + more RAM and now I don't notice it at all.

Of course, throwing more firepower at a problem isn't usually a reasonable way to solve it.

Originally Posted by Connemara

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Firefox tends to be a resource hog. I used Opera years ago, should give it another shot...

It's actually pretty good but I do run into problems every now and then where a site won't work properly with it.

I heard Mozilla fixed the memory leak issue and version 3 is much better in terms of speed and resource usage. I mean in Windows. FF has always been excellent in Linux from my experience. I heard it's because they were able to fix the resource issues earlier with it. Not sure if that's true. I mean it does hog up the most memory for the most part (id est when I'm not compiling, hashing/calculating or watching a 4 GB HD video), but I'd attribute that to the fact that I use light and fast programs such as vim, moc, xmonad, et cetera. So it's not really a fair comparison. As for memory usage, comparing that between Linux and Windows is pretty much impossible because of the different ways they're handled.

What I would really love to use regularly is links2, but there's no flash support or adblock. At least not to my knoweldge.

I'm downloading the new Firefox demo but so far changing the settings in the OP seems to have really sped things up.

Originally Posted by whodini

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so far changing the settings in the OP seems to have really sped things up.
+1

Firefox' killer extension is Adblock Plus. No matter where and for whom I install Firefox, Adblock Plus is the first add on that follows. Depending on the websites that you visit, there is no going back to a browser without advertisement blocking capabilities.

^^^+1 also search for a program called firefoxtune or something like that. It helps to slower the memory usage of firefox.

wow - great tips OP. Much faster already. Thanks.

Webmail notifier, IE tab, adblock plus, google translator, french/english dictionaries (aka spellcheck) are the addons I use, so helpful