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Performance and network tweaks for Firefox – Browse faster

By Debjit on August 1st, 2011 
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Firefox is already one of the fastest browsers out there but some simple tweaks could actually turn your firefox browser into a blazingly fast browser. The tweaks which we will describe below actually deal with http pipelining, link prefetching and the last trick involves the use of the temporary filesystem but this trick is valid only for linux and mac based systems whereas other tricks are applicable to Windows systems too.

*Windows - W, Linux - L, Mac - M

In the address bar type about:config and hit enter. You will be shown a screen, click the button that says "I`ll be Careful, I Promise".   Now you will be presented with a screen which will have many a options all marked under a column called Preference Name. See the screenshot below to have a fair idea of what we are talking about.

firefox-tweak-screenshot-new

Now find the following properties (marked in bold) in the list (you could use the filter) and set the values of the entries that have been mentioned against each property:

network.http.pipelining =>   true                                                      (works on Win,Lin,Mac)

network.http.proxy.pipelining =>  true                                       (works on Win,Lin,Mac)

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests =>  8                            (works on Win,Lin,Mac)
(note: you could set any value here, for eg. setting x will mean that the browser make x requests to the webserver at once.
But be sure not to put an extremely large value, as you might end up getting your IP blacklisted as a result)

network.dns.disableIPv6 =>  true                                                    (works on Win,Lin,Mac)

Now, this trick is to set the amount of time the browser waits before it acts, making this time zero will result in a even faster Firefox. Right-click anywhere in the blank area and select New-> Integer. In the box that shows up, key in  nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set its value to O .                                                                                      (works on Win,Lin,Mac)


Now we will show you how to reduce Firefox`s sluggishness by making use of the temporary file system. For this tweak to work you must setup your temporary filesystems to automount. Right-click anywhere in the blank area and select New-> String In the box that shows up, key in  browser.cache.disk.parent_directory and set its value to /tmp
(works on Lin,Mac. Doesn`t work on Win)

Now all these tweaks mentioned above and more can be done easily using a so called controversial Firefox Extension called Fasterfox

PS: Keep watching this space for the screencast!


Technorati Tags: fasterfox, Firefox, network, speed, tweak

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Performance and network tweaks for Firefox – Browse faster was originally published on Digitizor.com on February 1, 2009 - 12:46 pm (Indian Standard Time)