Firefox : Speed It Up a Notch

December 24, 2006 by Raj | Filed under Firefox

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One easy, cool preference you might want to tweak deals with speed. By default, Firefox runs fast enoughâ€”it’s like driving at the speed limit. But if you want to push your browsing experience, modify a few settings in about:config. Note that these edits are for broadband connections only; if you’re still dialing up, you’re stuck with whatever speed you’ve got.

On the about:config screen, scroll down to the network.http.pipelining options. The name says it all: Firefox normally processes all HTTP requests sequentially. Once it sends one out, it waits for a response before sending the next request to a server. If you set network.http.pipelining and network.http .proxy.pipelining to true then you’ve basically just upgraded an antiquated browsing system with modern plumbing. Set the network.http.pipelining.maxrequests option to 30 and Firefox will now send up to 30 HTTP requests at onceâ€”theoretically, although not always, making your browsing that little bit faster.

Before you close the window, right-click anywhere on the about:config page and select New | Integer. Then type in nglayout.initialpaint.delay and enter 0 as its value. Firefox will now render pages immediately instead of waiting its default 250 ms, a slight but noticeable difference when you’re surfing the Web.