Speed up Firefox for broadband connections

Dec 30, '04 08:36:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

forevergeek.com has a useful guide on speeding up Firefox for broadband users. Basically, after getting to the hidden config settings, you set the browser to request more data that it usually does.

  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 ... Control-click on the line to get the menu to 'toggle' or 'modify' as the entry requires:


  3. Lastly, control-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.
If you're using a broadband connection, you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

[robg adds: Before you implement these hacks, you might want to read Asa Dotzler's blog entry on the subject first. If you implement these tweaks, you may break some web pages (as pipelining is a bit experimental). You might also actually slow down page loads if you implement the initialpaint.dely change, and Asa explains why...]

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