How To Speed Up Firefox

Is your browsing experience at its maximum? Or is there something to do to improve it even more?
Actually there are various things you can do to boost up your Firefox speed: many are the plug-ins and add-ons that can help you, but there’s a faster way that doesn’t involve any particular installation.
Photo credit: David Knudsen – Edited by Nicolo’ Canali De Rossi.

If you have a broadband connection in fact, you can just follow these four simple steps, and immediately see the benefits that this trick will bring.
Here’s what to do:

1. Open Firefox, and type “about:config” in the address bar. An infinite list of services will come up
2. Look for “network.http.pipelining” and set it to true by double-clicking it. Now do the same for “network.http.proxy.pipelining”.
3. Now find “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” and set it to a number like 30. This number represents the number of requests your browser will make at once.
4. Finally right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer.

In the name field insert “nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, and set its value to “0″.

Restart Firefox and start browsing!
If you want to go deeper and modify other values to bring your browser to its real maximum, here is a full detailed list of values by PcTipsBox.com:

Common to all configurations
These are the settings that seem to be common to all configuration files regardless of connection speed or computer speed with a couple of additions – plugin paths can be found with about:plugins and the bookmark menu delay is turned off.
user_pref(”network.http.pipelining”, true);
user_pref(”network.http.proxy.pipelining”, true);
user_pref(”network.http.pipelining.maxrequests”, 8);
user_pref(”content.notify.backoffcount”, 5);
user_pref(”plugin.expose_full_path”, true);
user_pref(”ui.submenuDelay”, 0);

Fast Computer Fast Connection
user_pref(”content.interrupt.parsing”, true);
user_pref(”content.max.tokenizing.time”, 2250000);
user_pref(”content.notify.interval”, 750000);
user_pref(”content.notify.ontimer”, true);
user_pref(”content.switch.threshold”, 750000);
user_pref(”nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, 0);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections”, 48);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections-per-server”, 16);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy”, 16);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server”, 8);
user_pref(”browser.cache.memory.capacity”, 65536);
A couple settings of note – Firefox is allocated 4096 KB of memory by default and in this configuration we give it roughly 65MB as denoted by the last line. This can be changed according to what is used.

Fast Computer, Slower Connection
This configuration is more suited to people without ultra fast connections. We are not talking about dial up connections but slower DSL / Cable connections.
user_pref(”content.max.tokenizing.time”, 2250000);
user_pref(”content.notify.interval”, 750000);
user_pref(”content.notify.ontimer”, true);
user_pref(”content.switch.threshold”, 750000);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections”, 48);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections-per-server”, 16);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy”, 16);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server”, 8);
user_pref(”nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, 0);
user_pref(”browser.cache.memory.capacity”, 65536);

Fast Computer, Slow Connection
user_pref(”browser.xul.error_pages.enabled”, true);
user_pref(”content.interrupt.parsing”, true);
user_pref(”content.max.tokenizing.time”, 3000000);
user_pref(”content.maxtextrun”, 8191);
user_pref(”content.notify.interval”, 750000);
user_pref(”content.notify.ontimer”, true);
user_pref(”content.switch.threshold”, 750000);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections”, 32);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections-per-server”, 8);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy”, 8);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server”, 4);
user_pref(”nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, 0);
user_pref(”browser.cache.memory.capacity”, 65536);

Slow Computer, Fast Connection
user_pref(”content.max.tokenizing.time”, 3000000);
user_pref(”content.notify.backoffcount”, 5);
user_pref(”content.notify.interval”, 1000000);
user_pref(”content.notify.ontimer”, true);
user_pref(”content.switch.threshold”, 1000000);
user_pref(”content.maxtextrun”, 4095);
user_pref(”nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, 1000);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections”, 48);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections-per-server”, 16);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy”, 16);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server”, 8);
user_pref(”dom.disable_window_status_change”, true);
One of the changes made for this particular configuration is the final line where the status bar is disabled for changing web pages to save processor time.

Slow Computer, Slow Connection
We have entered the doldrums of the dial-up user
user_pref(”content.max.tokenizing.time”, 2250000);
user_pref(”content.notify.interval”, 750000);
user_pref(”content.notify.ontimer”, true);
user_pref(”content.switch.threshold”, 750000);
user_pref(”nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, 750);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections”, 32);
user_pref(”network.http.max-connections-per-server”, 8);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy”, 8);
user_pref(”network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server”, 4);
user_pref(”dom.disable_window_status_change”, true);