There
have been tons of Firefox hacks out there that have been covered to
death, but I’ve recently taken some time out and run a side-by-side
comparison on a couple of identical computers from the shop we had
laying around. What did we find? You can essentially double your
browsing speed if you’re currently on a broadband connection if you
just run a few simple tweaks. We have a set of three. That’s not too
many for you, right? Now let’s get started.
Basically, what we
found is that Firefox tends to eat a lot of RAM in exchange for quicker
launching and handling of the browser. It’s a pretty steep trade-off,
and for those of us with tons of RAM and a broadband connection usually
end up seeing no difference or at times, even slower performance than
if these restrictions weren’t enabled by default. Here’s how to take
them off and harness the full power of Firefox:
Reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses for it’s cache feature
Try this:
1) Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the address bar in the browser.
1) Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the address bar in the browser.
2) Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers”
3) Set it’s value to “0“;(Zero)
Increase the Speed in Which Firefox loads pages
1) Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit Enter. (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 10.
This means it will make 10 requests at once.
3) Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New->Integer. Name it
“nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“;.(Zero)
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on
information it receives. If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll
load pages faster now.
Optionally (for even faster web
browsing) here are some more options for your about:config (you might
have to create some of these entries by Right Click –> New–
>Interger or String
“network.dns.disableIPv6”: set “false”
“content.notify.backoffcount”: set “5”; (Five)
“ui.submenuDelay”: set “0”; (Zero)
Reduce RAM usage to 10mb when Firefox is minimized
This little hack will drop Firefox’s RAM usage down to 10 Mb when
minimized:1) Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in
about:config and then press Enter.
2) Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3) In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4) Now select True and then press Enter.
5) Restart Firefox.
These
simple tweaks will make your web browsing with Mozilla Firefox at least
twice as fast and it’s a pretty simple thing anybody can do. Enjoy and
let us know if these steps helped you!
