Entrecard Special: Speeding up Firefox for Faster Browsing

Category: Technology Author: Gary R. Hess

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After the post on how to fix the Entrecard toolbar bleeding, I received a comment from Jan asking how she can get Firefox to not take forever to load the tabs.

The reason why Firefox takes a long time to load several tabs is due to the Firefox team configuring the browser for ‘normal’ use. Normal use does not mean loading several tabs at once, nor does it mean zipping through web pages as fast as possible, having a broadband connection, or even having a ton of RAM to spare.

Luckily, Firefox can be easily configured by going to about:config. All you do is type that into your address bar and press enter.

If a warning message pops up, go ahead and click OK

Now you’ll see a long list of words which you probably have no clue what they mean. Don’t worry, you’ll only have to change a few and I’ll walk you through each one.

Changes for a broadband connection

If you have broadband (meaning DSL, Cable, or Satellite), you can change Firefox to make it request more connections for each page. Here’s how you do it:

1. Type in pipelining into Filter and press return.
2. Change network.http.pipelining to ‘true’. You can do this by right clicking and selecting ‘toggle’.
This is telling Firefox to make more than one connection.
3. Change network.http.proxy.pipelining to ‘true’.
This does the same as above, except it does it while you have proxies turned on.
4. Change network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 8. You can do this by right clicking and selecting ‘modify’.
This tells Firefox how many connections to make. Any number can be entered hear, but it should be 30 or less. If you are an Entrecarder who opens many tabs at once, you may want this number to be smaller, such as 8.
Right click anywhere and select New > Integer. Type in ‘nglayout.initialpaint.delay’ and set its value to ‘0′.
This tells Firefox not to have a delay before it attempts to load a page.

Turn off prefetch

Prefetch makes Firefox attempt to load webpages in the background from links on a page. For instance, if you visit a webpage, each link on that page will be loaded in the background. This is done so when you click a link, it will at least be partially loaded and seem faster.

The problem with this is that when you have several tabs opened at once, Firefox will attempt to load hundreds of pages in the background resulting in a slower browsing experience. For Entrecarders especially, this blows goats. So we need to turn it off.

If you aren’t an Entrecarder, yet you are using a slow connection, it may seem like forever before a page is loaded. On a slower computer, Firefox will use even more RAM to attempt to load the pages. This can cause crashing, lagging, and even freezing.

Here’s how you turn off prefetch:

1. Type prefetch into the Filter.
2. Change it to ‘false’. This can be done by right clicking and pressing ‘toggle’.

Limit Firefox’s RAM usage

For some reason Firefox uses an enormous amount of RAM. To attempt to control this, you can set Firefox’s memory cache to a lower size.

I just saw this tip a couple days ago and it definitely seems to make a difference.

Here’s how we do it:

Type browser.cache in Filter.
Select browser.cache.memory.enable and change it to ‘true’. You can do this by right clicking and selecting ‘toggle’.
Select browser.cache.memory.capacity and change it to your desired memory size. Go here to find a good number to use.

Change Firefox’s cache capacity

Browser cache is basically files stores on your machine. So when you visit a webpage, it is cached on your harddrive so when you revisit the page, Firefox doesn’t need to request it again (that is, unless changes have been made).

This can result in a much faster browsing experience. A good number to set for cache is however much you feel comfortable with. I use 50MB but you can use as much as you wish, just don’t make the number too small.

Go to Edit > Preferences (or Tools > Preferences depending on what OS you are using).
Select the ‘advanced’ tab.
Change the “Use up to ___ MB of space for cache” to the number you wish.

Tada! All finished. Hopefully this will help you wish a faster browsing experience. If you have any other tips, I would love to hear them.

Written: May 4, 2009

flit
May 4, 2009 @ 10:49 am

Thanks so much for this… just made the changes and looking forward to seeing how it works.
Jan from BetterSpines
May 4, 2009 @ 5:08 pm

Thanks, sounds good.
However, when I typed “about: config” into my browser address bar, it said “not a valid URL”
Could you please explain further.
- Gary R. Hess
  May 4, 2009 @ 7:07 pm
  
  Be sure not to put a space before the word ‘config’ and be sure not to have www. or http:// or anything like that there either.
  
  That is my fault, I should have double checked to see if my post had any extra spaces or not.
Chinaren
May 4, 2009 @ 8:27 pm

Cool, I’ve done this, I’ll see how it works later.

Thanks for the tips.
Jan from BetterSpines
May 4, 2009 @ 10:26 pm

Well Gary. I’m feeling very brave. I actually turned off prefetch! Your instructions were very clear. I’ll see how that goes in the morning, because I’ve done my drops for today (it’s 1.25 pm here). Then I’ll see if I need to be braver!
Gilang Ramadhan
May 7, 2009 @ 4:34 am

This just what I was searching for, lately my firefox performances always down unexpectedly. And I’ve applied the tweaks above, hope I can feel the differences.

Thanks for the tips, by the way.
Jan from BetterSpines
May 7, 2009 @ 3:53 pm

It definitely makes things faster. I like it. And I must say that I don’t just drop and run – I read the new posts. If people don’t have anything new to say, then I don’t visit as long.
- Gary R. Hess
  May 7, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
  
  Awesome, Jan. I’m glad you it worked out for you.
Jan from BetterSpines
May 7, 2009 @ 11:40 pm

Thanks!