Speed Up FireFox

[The New Guy]

There is an interesting post on WebMasterWorld, on how to decrease the loading/rendering time of Firefox. I have tried the settings, and have noticed a mild improvement. Just wanted to share the information.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/8007.htm

Edit: Updated Instructions:

open about_:config (without the underscore).

1.) network.http.pipelining = true
2.) network.http.pipelining.firstrequest = true
3.) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = (the poster says 32, but suggest 8 is the limit)
4.) network.http.proxy.pipelining = true

Don't do number #5.

[someonewhois]

Would expect this to work better on large downloads, does the equivilent to Download Accelerator Plus. Will try. Thanks!

[megamanXplosion]

I thought people already know about configuring pipelining, guess not. I would suggest all of the settings that he mentioned, except for the redraw speed. Setting it to 0 will not get the information to you any quicker (I think the default is 250ms which is bad enough, since you probably won't have enough data in 250ms to actually render anything), all it will do is cause the browser to use more resources (since it starts the rendering loop sooner). Besides that one setting, I agree with everything else.

[The New Guy]

Thanks for the info, I edited my post to reflect new instructions.

[Silverado4x4]

I'm getting about twice the speed.

It boosted my download speed by about twice as much and pages now load almost instantly!

[someonewhois]

I would update it to say "true" instead of "TRUE" as if you type TRUE it doesn't modify it.. you need true.

[The New Guy]

Silverado4x4: I think it works best for dial-up users

someonewhois: thats how I program (fixed)

[Silverado4x4]

Silverado4x4: I think it works best for dial-up users

someonewhois: thats how I program (fixed)

I thought I noticed an increase, but I think my cable might be just going really fast today. I guess I'll find out tomorrow. lol

[someonewhois]

Yeah, sucks cable isn't consistant. DSL owns... 400 KB/sec, now I get like 600

[mmj]

Pipelining is disabled in all Mozilla browsers by default, because some servers and proxies do not conform to the HTTP 1.1 standard properly, despite it being designed to be backward compatible with HTTP 1.0. Thankfully, these kinds of foul-ups are very rare now and you can safely switch on pipelining.

Would expect this to work better on large downloads, does the equivilent to Download Accelerator Plus

No, this is not what HTTP pipelining is. HTTP pipelining allows for the browser to keep the connection open while requesting more than one file from a server. It will speed up the loading of web pages that contain lots of small downloads on the same page such as multiple images, stylesheets, Java scripts, etc. Pipelining will have no effect whatsoever on a single large download.

I think it works best for dial-up users

Actually, this will work best for broadband users, because with broadband, the amount of time it takes to establish a connection with the server is a bigger proportion of the time spent waiting for a website to completely load. However, it is still worth doing it on dialup connections.

[The New Guy]

Thanks for the info mmj.

[stymiee]

Wow, what a difference.

[astericks]

i saw this too:

/ Increase Multi-Threaded Downloading performance
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 60); //Default is 24
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 32); //Default is 8
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16); //Default is 4
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8); //Default is 2

from
http://www.mrtech.com/news/messages/2977.html

[astericks]

<schoolgirl voice>OMG!!! This totally rocks.</schoolgirl voice>

The amount of time it takes to load up any forum or espn.com is less now!!! and noticeable too.

I'm on shawcable.

[stymiee]

[QUOTE=stymiee]

<schoolgirl voice>OMG!!! This totally rocks.</schoolgirl voice>

LMAO

[megamanXplosion]

user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 60);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);

This configuration isn't suitable for everyone, but it can be beneficial if you have no problems with it. I'd advise anyone on broadband to do these changes because the connection is fast enough to handle 60 small downloads at once.

I wouldn't recommend setting the values that high for dialup though because it would actually decrease loading speed, dialup wasn't built to handle 60 simultaneous downloads at once, so it would probably transfer about 0.1kbs per connection and it would take about 6 seconds to load a smiley on a message board. This setting on dialup could slow down the time it takes to grab the CSS and render the completely, which will leave you looking at a plain-text-looking website for a lot longer than anyone would want. I would recommend 8 connections max and 4 server connections, this way it will distribute the filesize a bit more properly and you'll get things to the screen a lot quicker. It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it.

Hope this info helps anyone who was thinking about using these settings

[natemc]

There is an interesting post on WebMasterWorld, on how to increase the loading/rendering time of Firefox.

Is it just me or wouldn't you want to decrease the loading/rendering time? Increasing the loading time would just make it slower... right?

Also, this would only work if the server allows that many connections from one IP address, I know I have my server set for like 4 maximum connections from a source.

[Fusio]

There isn't network.http.pipelining.firstrequest