Speed up firefox.

**Tiny Hero** Sat Oct 18, 2008 9:45 pm

If you dont already have Mozilla Firefox get it here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all

Now, enter the URL about:config

it will bring up firefox's built in configuration screen. Not sure how many people knew about this but if you know a decent amount about what your doing you can tweak firefoxx from night to day. Here are some things I found that may help you out take a look and share your experience.

Code:: nglayout.initialpaint.delay * Description: time to wait before an initial reflow attempt during page rendering (?) * Type: integer * Unit: milliseconds * Default: 250 * Recommendation: keep in synch with content.notify.interval (?) content.notify.ontimer * Description: enable timer-based reflows during page rendering (?) * Type: boolean * Default: true * Recommendation: leave on default. content.notify.interval * Description: time steps for the initial reflows defined by content.notify.backoffcount (?) * Type: integer * Unit: milliseconds * 1000 (?) * Default: 120000 * Additional Info: nsHTMLContentSink.cpp, Bug 72138 * Recommendation: do not set this below 100000. Synchronize with nglayout.initialpaint.delay (?) In contrary to what other tweak examples say, setting this to 100 is absurd. content.notify.backoffcount * Description: number of initial reflows during timer-based rendering (?) After this number the page is only reflowed when the calculation of the layout of larger parts of the page is finalized (?) * Type: integer * Default: -1 (never) * Example: 10 * Additional Info: nsHTMLContentSink.cpp * Recommendation: experiment with some values depending on the bandwidth/latency of your connection and overall system speed. Even more Voodoo: content.switch.threshold * Description: (?) * Type: integer * Unit: milliseconds * 1000 (?) * Default: 750000 * Additional Info: nsHTMLContentSink.cpp * Recommendation: keep in synch with nglayout.initialpaint.delay and content.notify.interval (?) content.maxtextrun * Description: (?) * Type: integer * Unit: kilobytes (?) * Default: 8191 * Additional Info: nsHTMLContentSink.cpp, Bug 77540 * Recommendation: leave on default. content.interrupt.parsing * Description: enable interruption of parsing to return to the application's event loop from time to time (?) * Type: boolean * Default: true * Recommendation: leave on default. content.max.tokenizing.time * Description: time after which parsing is interrupted to return to the application's event loop (?) * Type: integer * Unit: milliseconds * 1000 (?) * Default: 3 * content.notify.interval * Example: 2250000 * Additional Info: nsHTMLContentSink.cpp, Bug 76722 * Recommendation: leave on default. Lowering this might make Firefox more responsive during loading of large pages, but might also raise total page load times. If you change this, make it a multiple of content.notify.interval. HTTP Connection Preferences: These options control the number of opened HTTP connections. If you raise them, do it reasonably. Changes like these are at least partly responsible for the infamous /. effect. network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server * Description: maximum number of persistent (keep-alive) connections per server. * Type: integer * Default: 2 (as per recommendation in HTTP/1.1 specification) * Recommendation: none network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy * Description: maximum number of persistent (keep-alive) proxy connections. * Type: integer * Default: 4 (as per recommendation in HTTP/1.1 specification) * Recommendation: none network.http.max-connections-per-server * Description: maximum number of HTTP connections of any type to a single server. * Type: integer * Default: 8 * Recommendation: none network.http.max-connections * Description: maximum number of total HTTP connections. * Type: integer * Default: 24 * Recommendation: none HTTP Pipelining Preferences: Pipelining is a HTTP/1.1 feature that speeds up transfers by requesting several objects at once without waiting for a response first. More info... network.http.pipelining * Description: enable pipelining for non-proxy connections. * Type: boolean * Default: false * Additional Info: might still lead to problems with servers that don't support pipelining correctly and that are not on the internal blacklist. * Recommendation: true network.http.proxy.pipelining * Description: enable pipelining over a proxy. * Type: boolean * Default: false * Additional Info: see network.http.pipelining. * Recommendation: true network.http.pipelining.maxrequests * Description: maximum number of consecutive requests in one pipeline. * Type: integer * Limit: 8 * Default: 4 * Additional Info: nsHTTP.h. Optimal value depends on connection bandwidth/latency. * Recommendation: 8. While it doesn't hurt to set it to 100 like in other tweak examples, it will have no effect whatsoever because of the mentioned limit. network.http.pipelining.firstrequest * Description: enable pipelining on first request to a server. * Type: boolean * Default: false * Additional Info: since it doesn't seem to get picked up anywhere in the source, this preference doesn't seem to be used. First requests are obviously never pipelined. * Recommendation: do not use this preference. While it probably doesn't hurt, it will have no effect either. Useful Cache Preferences: browser.cache.memory.capacity * Description: amount of memory assigned to memory cache. * Type: integer * Unit: kilobytes * Default: 4096 in older builds, dynamically assigned depending on total amount of memory in newer builds (?). * Recommendation: set this to a high fixed value if you have enough RAM to noticeably improve back/forward button performance while going many steps back/forward (?) browser.cache.disk.capacity * Description: amount of disk space assigned to disk cache. * Type: integer * Unit: kilobytes * Default: 50000 * Recommendation: none browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl * Description: switch to enable caching of objects served over a secure connection (SSL). * Type: boolean * Default: false * Recommendation: true on systems where it is secure to cache these objects. browser.cache.disk.parent_directory * Description: path to parent directory of Firefox' disk cache. * Type: string * Default: profile folder * Additional Info: use double backslashes as path separators in Windows. Not existing directories will be created if they don't exist. * Example: E:\\Folder1\\Folder2 * Recommendation: none Useful Miscellanous Preferences: browser.xul.error_pages.enabled * Description: use an error page instead of a modal dialog when a connection error occurs. * Type: boolean * Default: false * Additional Info: Bug 28586. This is not enabled by default because the implementation lacks some functionality. * Recommendation: true (in combination with Show Failed URL) plugin.expose_full_path * Description: show full path to plugins in about:plugins. * Type: boolean * Default: false * Recommendation: true signed.applets.codebase_principal_support * Description: this is a preference to be used while developing scripts that need enhanced privileges. It allows potentially security-critical JavaScript to bypass the signing stage (?) * Type: boolean * Default: false * Recommendation: unfortunately setting this to true this is the only working way I'm aware of to selectively grant JavaScript access to the clipboard. The user will still be asked everytime a script/applet requests access to privileges. If you're using this, be sure to only grant access for scripts/hosts you trust, otherwise this can be a huge security risk, because it opens your system to virtually everything (!!!)

Heres a site that explains ALL the different options available. Check it out:

http://preferential.mozdev.org/preferences.html