# Double the speed of FireFox



## DNA_Uncut (Dec 8, 2006)

Tips & Tricks that can help you to double the speed of Firefox.

1. Type about:config in the address bar and then press Enter.

2. In the filter search bar type network.http.pipelining. Be sure the value field is set true,if not double-click to set true. HTTP is the application-layer protocol that most web pages are transferred with. In HTTP 1.1, multiple requests can be sent before any responses are received. This is known as pipelining. Pipelining reduces page loading times, but not all servers support it.

3. Go back to the filter search bar and type network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Double-click this option and set its value to 8.

4. In the filter search bar and type network.http.proxy.pipelining. Once opened doubleclick on it and set it to true.

5. In IPv6-capable DNS servers, an IPv4 address may be returned when an IPv6 address is requested. It is possible for Mozilla to recover from this misinformation, but a significant delay is introduced.
Type network.dns.disableIPv6 in the filter search bar and set this option to true by double clicking on it.

6. CONTENT INTERRUPT PARSING
This preference controls if the application will interrupt parsing a page to respond to UI events. It does not exist by default. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Boolean from the pop-up menu. Then:
A. Enter content.interrupt.parsing in the New boolean value pop-up window and click OK
B. When prompted to choose the value for the new boolean, select true and click OK.

7. Rather than wait until a page has completely downloaded to display it to the user, Mozilla applications will regularly render what has been received to that point. This option controls the maximum amount of time the application will be unresponsive while rendering pages. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Enter content.max.tokenizing.time in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 2333333 and click OK.

8. CONTENT NOTIFY INTERVAL
This option sets the minimum amount of time to wait between reflows. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Type content.notify.interval in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK.
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 849999 and click OK.

9. CONTENT NOTIFY ONTIMER
A. This option sets if to reflow pages at an interval any higher than that specified by content.notify.interval. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Boolean from the pop-up menu.
B. Type content.notify.ontimer in the New boolean value pop-up window and click OK.
C. You will be prompted to choose the value for the new boolean. Select true and click OK.

10. Notify Backoffcount
This option controls the maximum number of times the content will do timer-based reflows. After this number has been reached, the page will only reflow once it is finished downloading. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Enter content.notify.backoffcount in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK.
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 5 and click OK.

11. CONTENT SWITCH THRESHOLD
You can interact with a loading page when content.interrupt.parsing is set to true. When a page is loading, the application has two modes: a high frequency interrupt mode and a low frequency interrupt mode. The first one interrupts the parser more frequently to allow for greater UI responsiveness during page load.
The low frequency interrupt mode interrupts the parser less frequently to allow for quicker page load. The application enters high frequency interrupt mode when you move the mouse or type on the keyboard and switch back to low frequency mode when you had no activity for a certain amount of time. This preference controls that amount of time. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Enter content.switch.threshold in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK.
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 849999 and click OK.

12. NGLAYOUT INITIALPAINT DELAY
Mozilla applications render web pages incrementally, they display whats been received
of a page before the entire page has been downloaded. Since the start of a web page
normally doesnt have much useful information to display, Mozilla applications will wait
a short interval before first rendering a page. This preference controls that interval. Rightclick (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Enter nglayout.initialpaint.delay in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK.
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 0 and click OK.

Please post a reply if you see any Difference in speed after executing these changes.

Thanks


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

Hi DNA Uncut.........

I already had #2, 3, 4 and 12 plus some I did 10 months ago .
I did the other changes you posted, but I really didn't notice any more of a speed up.
Didn't seem to slow it down either, so I left the changes in place.


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## leaaa (Aug 15, 2007)

woah thats cool, its really fast thanks for sharing


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## Uni (Jul 30, 2007)

much better now! TY!


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## Goblin072 (Aug 18, 2007)

I had the first 5 but once I put the rest in I did notice an improvement. The pages don't draw they sort of go BLAM! and they are there. It feels snappier. Thanks!


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## dead_beans (May 31, 2007)

wow! this helped a lot in increasing the speed of my browser. thanks!!!


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## ravager (Feb 10, 2004)

Seems to have sped up quite a bit, thanks.


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## stupidsucks (Aug 23, 2007)

wow thats great thanks a ton


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## wtxcowboy (May 25, 2004)

wouldn't say it doubled my loading speed w/FF, but it did make it faster somewhat, especially loading google mail! was using the plugin fasterfox, but this made more of a difference 
Thx


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

I'm curious if this opens up any vulnerabilities.

Seems to be quicker .. But I wasn't slow to start with.


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## dotty999 (Feb 3, 2006)

wish someone knew how to start firefox quicker cos mine takes ages


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## RSM123 (Aug 1, 2002)

dotty999 said:


> wish someone knew how to start firefox quicker cos mine takes ages


Don't use FF myself - but a search came up with this :

https://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=129464

Somewhat mixed feedback on whether it does actually benefit, but you might give it a go as you can always uninstall if you don't like it.


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## dotty999 (Feb 3, 2006)

RSM123 said:


> Don't use FF myself - but a search came up with this :
> 
> https://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=129464
> 
> Somewhat mixed feedback on whether it does actually benefit, but you might give it a go as you can always uninstall if you don't like it.


thanks RSM I'll try it out


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## dotty999 (Feb 3, 2006)

RSM123 said:


> Don't use FF myself - but a search came up with this :
> 
> https://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=129464
> 
> Somewhat mixed feedback on whether it does actually benefit, but you might give it a go as you can always uninstall if you don't like it.


many thanks RSM, it works great! :up:


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## boyett (May 5, 2006)

Many thanks bro!!


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## richyrichuk (Aug 28, 2007)

ace!


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

One or more of those changes wasn't entirely compatible with the others I previously made and Firefox became unstable........setting these changes to default corrected it.
Upload became very slow and Firefox often seemed to momentarily freeze during upload.


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## jbm1991 (Sep 1, 2007)

that has actually slowed down my firefox nevermind speeding it up, and it doesnt load all the images on the screen. they just stay as little boxes with that image file picture icon thing in them


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## jbm1991 (Sep 1, 2007)

sorry cancel that its googlemail which is having technical problems and it may be slightly faster now ive tried ign etc. meh i cant be bothered to change it back anyway


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## karl_stade (Apr 21, 2007)

It's probly made it a bit slower if anything..


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## foofoo (Sep 6, 2007)

Definitely faster. Thanks bunches.


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## â«Coderâ« (Aug 2, 2007)

This is the best tweak for Firefox. Tried in new version 2.0.0.12, working like a charm. Thanks for sharing


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## UncleGusTurbo (Mar 19, 2008)

Thanks, it looks good so far.

Mark


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

I tried the latest Firefox 3beta versus 2.0.0.12 on a Linux live cd yesterday ( Slax).
FF3 seemed noticeably quicker.
Has anyone tried the latest FF3 beta under Windows yet?


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

nope.....2.0 works fine for my needs.....


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

besides, I'm not much of a 'beta' person, unless it's on a testing rig. Of which, I may add, I have a few laying around work..

hrrmmm....


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

valis said:


> besides, I'm not much of a 'beta' person, unless it's on a testing rig. Of which, I may add, I have a few laying around work..
> 
> hrrmmm....




I'm not either ....that's why I'm asking LOL!
I'm waiting for the FF3 final before I install into Windows.

Testing with a Live CD of Slax is fairly 'painless'......just reboot and all the damage disappears.


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

first i'd ever heard of slax.....googled it, looks interesting, as I'm planning on partitioning the home rig soon and throwing some sort of linux on there.....doesn't appear to be going away, so I reckon I should probably learn to support it.....


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

No need of a special partition for Slax, Tim......it boots from the cd and if you like it to run faster, you can copy it into memory rather than running off the CD.
Slax 6 is fairly new and there aren't many modules built yet that run on it.....4 is all that are posted.
FF3 for Linux just happens to run from the downloaded folder.
FF2 is offered as a module at the Slax site.


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

yeah, but I was already planning on partitioning and installing red hat sometime soon, so I'll probably end up doing that anyhow.....as I said, damn thing isn't going away, so I should probably learn it.


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

Stoner said:


> Has anyone tried the latest FF3 beta under Windows yet?


Yep. 

Be careful when turning on HTTP pipelining as some sites won't permit those kinds of connections due to "strain" on the server. I remember trying this out, way back when, and I encountered a site that actually told me I had HTTP pipelining enabled and told me to disable it. If I can track down which site that was, I'll post a link here.

Peace...


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

Tim:

Be sure to do a drive image of your Windows install before you install Linux. There have been some horror stories of dual booting gone bad that winds up with fresh installs of Windows.....


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## valis (Sep 24, 2004)

yeah, we've got a plethora of machines here at work that I've had to set up as dual boot......and I've leared to image first.....

after listening to boss rant because HIS boss got reamed by the president who's data had been accidentally scrubbed by a certain novice IT monkey who hadn't even heard of the word 'imaging' 4 years ago, one could say that monkey learned right quick. 

to the extent that I do a weekly back up of all my data, and the hard drive that it's backed up to is not kept in the house. Sort of like the president and veep not riding on the same plane together concept.


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## jls242424 (Nov 22, 2007)

tomdkat said:


> Yep.
> 
> Be careful when turning on HTTP pipelining as some sites won't permit those kinds of connections due to "strain" on the server. I encountered a site that actually told me I had HTTP pipelining enabled and told me to disable it.
> Peace...


Along those same lines is something I just saw a few minutes ago involving security of FF and IE7.
http://tinyurl.com/3ct2q7

"Not long ago an attempt was made to spoof Firefox's address bar to fool people into thinking they were on a site other than the one they were actually visiting when a link opened in a new window. The simplest way to avoid this is by setting Firefox to open links in a new tab rather than a new window: Click Tools > Options > Tabs, and make sure "A new tab" is selected under "New pages should be opened in." You can also disable this feature by typing about:config in the address bar, pressing Enter, navigating to dom.disable_window_open_feature.location, and double-clicking it to change it to "true".

Web sites often know the page you were on before you opened one of their pages. To block this referrer header, type about:config in the address bar, press Enter, navigate to network.http.sendRefererHeader, double-click it, and set the integer value to 0."


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## eddysu (Mar 15, 2008)

thanks for the tip!! nice one


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