Make Firefox faster

[eirebhoy]

If there's anyone out there that can use Firefox but still use Internet Explorer I could only put it down to ignorance or lack of knowledge as once you've tried it there's no turning back. And if it wasn't quick enough I found a little tweak on another forum to speed it up more.

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 by double clicking the entry

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. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

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Go to a site which is normally slow to load and you should see a difference.

[anto eile]

tried firefox, but got rid of it.i dont really care much whether i use IE or whatever. IE is just handier. makes no difference to me.have broadband anyway so not an issue for me

[Buller]

tried firefox, but got rid of it.i dont really care much whether i use IE or whatever. IE is just handier. makes no difference to me.have broadband anyway so not an issue for me
Yea, same.. i would try it if you still use dial up but with broadband theres practically no difference, just the inconvience of downloading it...

[eirebhoy]

Firefox is an awful lot more than speed and I also have broadband, doesn't mean IE is fast. I just couldn't use IE anymore. One of the main benefits of Firefox is no more spyware. There's also plenty of other things.

When I come onto this forum I middle click (the scrolly button on the mouse) on all the threads I want to open and they'll all open in tabs. Saves an awful lot of time going back and forth.

I also have 5 of my most visited sites on my toolbar so I can visit them in one click. I also have a spell checker so if I'm writing a big long post in a forum it will let me know of the mistakes. There's also a translator so if I'm on a site and I don't know what language it is, i just click that button on the toolbar and it will translate it for me (I think there's 12 languages it will translate).

What else. Eh, there's a fantastic weather thingamajig on the bottom left and it gives a really accurate forecast of Dublin. There's a music toolbar on the bottom right so I just click play and it will play my favourite songs without having to open up WM player or Real player. There's a pop-up blocker so I don't get any popups. the search is much better than that of IE. When you right click on where your posting a message on a forum it gives you the option to paste. With an extension on Firefox you can paste it rapped in quote tags which can be really handy if you want to quote a few times in a post.

I'm sure there's many more things but I couldn't imagine having to go back to the Spyhole IE. Sounds really cluttered but here's a screenie:
http://members.boards.ie/eirebhoy/paypal_funds.JPG

[eirebhoy]

BTW, this is what tabbed browsing looks like (clicking the middle button on the mouse over a link). It also shows the weather forecast looks like:
http://members.boards.ie/eirebhoy/tabbed.JPG

and this is what Ad-aware will look like from now on :) :
http://members.boards.ie/eirebhoy/adaware.jpg

/edit boards is down again so screenies unavailable for the moment. :)

[dahamsta]

Note that the "make firefox faster" tip breaks RFC's (technical recommendations) and risks putting sites that you visit with these settings under considerable strain.

adam

[eirebhoy]

Note that the "make firefox faster" tip breaks RFC's (technical recommendations) and risks putting sites that you visit with these settings under considerable strain.

adam
I'm not well up on anything technical but would it be doing harm to this site and should I edit it out?

[dahamsta]

No, it's fine, it's been recommended all over the web, one more post here isn't going to make much of a difference. Unfortunately it's spreading via people that don't really understand the tweaks, which is generally a bad idea. Technically, even on the client side there's a risk performance will actually degrade on some websites. Also, there's little point in setting pipelining.maxrequests to above 8, since that's the inbuilt limit. Firefox comes with networking/rendering defaults for a reason, it's usually logical to leave them as is unless you really know what you're doing.

adam

[pete]

Started using firefox only in the last week & pretty much same look & feel as IE although seems a bit tidier (less options to mess with).

Amount of spyware on the web has increased unbelievably in last year. :( Its so bad i have to run Ad-ware daily. I've yet to analysis if FF is reducing it.

[dahamsta]

FF will reduce it now, but it'll increase as it becomes more popular and more people try to crack parts of it. As an example, a horrendous spoofing vulnerability (http://lists.netsys.com/pipermail/full-disclosure/2005-February/031459.html) was discovered last week, that allows anyone to pretend to be another site with IDNs (Internationalised Domain Names). The exploit example used an IDN to spoof the (secure!) PayPal site perfectly, which is guaranted to start appearing in phishing attacks by the end of the week. Ironically, the exploit doesn't work in IE, because it lacks IDN support.

My own full disclosure: I love Firefox under Linux, but I absolutely hate it under Windows. Yuk.

adam

[A face]

RFC's

But who even looks at them anyway really !! :eek: :p

[dahamsta]

RFC821 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc821.html) is my favourite. Even if it is deprecated, poor mite.

[cullenswood]

I also have a spell checker so if I'm writing a big long post in a forum it will let me know of the mistakes. There's also a translator so if I'm on a site and I don't know what language it is, i just click that button on the toolbar and it will translate it for me (I think there's 12 languages it will translate).
There's a music toolbar on the bottom right so I just click play and it will play my favourite songs without having to open up WM player or Real player.

With an extension on Firefox you can paste it rapped in quote tags which can be really handy if you want to quote a few times in a post.




How do you get the spellchecker, translator and music button. I couldn't find them when I installed it

[dahamsta]

They're extensions. See here (https://addons.update.mozilla.org/?application=firefox). The music toolbar is called FoxyTunes. Mouse Gestures is another essential. ConQuery, Diggler and Tabbrowser Preferences are essential for the power user.

adam

[cullenswood]

Excellent,

Thanks Adam.


Not sure what half of them do, but have installed them anyway!