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Question: How to make firefox browser up to ten times faster.
Think your FF is fast now?.. thats prob just because your new computer is so much faster than anything you've ever had in the past. Try this:
If you are running a 64bit OS.. I recommend the 64bit version... But beware, some plugins won't work in a 64bit browser.
Here is a small set of changes that has to be made to make your firefox browser up to ten times faster.
***Note, if you are running the "portable version" see the notes at the bottom of this commentary.
1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit enter. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
2. ****Firefox - Use memory cache instead of disk cache.
Description: If you use Firefox, there's a way to write cached files to RAM instead of the hard disk. This is not only faster, but will significantly reduce writes to the SSD while using the browser.
Instructions: Open Firefox -> Type about:config into the address bar -> Enter -> double-click "browser.cache.disk.enable" to set the value to False -> Right-Click anywhere -> New ->
Integer -> Preference Name "disk.cache.memory.capacity" -> value memory size in KB. Enter 32768 for 32MB, 65536 for 64MB, 131072 for 128MB, etc. -> restart Firefox
3. Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
4. Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
5. set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 100. This means it will make 100 requests at once.
6. Right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.
*NOte.. except for needing to bump the maxrequests from 8 to 100... the extension addon called "network tweak" sets this to "30" when hitting the power button but higher is ok too.
7. Search for the following entry "true.gfx.color_management.enabled" and set the value to true, you can double click the entry to make it true.
8. Network.prefetch-next, and if the entry in the Value column reads ‘True’ right-click on it and select Toggle (or double click) and it will change to false.
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More you can add if they are not already there.
Note.... to create a new entry... use "boolean" for true false switches, and "integer" for numbers.
Tweaks For A Fast Computer With A Fast Connection
"content.interrupt.parsing", true
"content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000
"content.notify.interval", 750000
"content.notify.backoffcount" = 5
"ui.submenuDelay" = 0
"content.notify.ontimer", true
"content.switch.threshold", 750000
"nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0
"network.http.max-connections", 48
"network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16
"network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16
"network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server",16
"browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536
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"plugin.expose_full_path”, true
A couple settings of note - Firefox is allocated 4096 KB of memory by default and in this configuration we give it roughly 65MB as denoted by the last line. This can be changed according to what is used.
Offline Storage: The browser cache is a form of offline storage on your hard drive where Firefox holds website elements such as images, text, ads etc. This speeds up browsing, because when you revisit these sites, the stored version of the unchanged elements are loaded from your hard drive as opposed to having to be redownloaded over the Internet. It is best to make the cache size not too large so that it takes a while for Firefox to search through it to retrieve the right elements, and not too small so that it is constantly being overwritten by new
information. I suggest something like 150MB as a good compromise value for everyone. I don't recommend the cache be extremely large - unless you have a very fast hard drive; and no smaller than 50MB - unless you have a very fast Internet connection combined with a very slow hard drive. As web content becomes more and more data intensive, you may have to increase the
cache size, particularly depending on your own usage patterns. For example, if you constantly see graphics elements of web pages you commonly visit reloading slowly, you should increase the cache to help hold more of those elements locally.
However, USB drive installations should have cache set to zero because of the much much slower speed of accessing date from the USB drive verses the hardrive.
That’s it! Done, restart firefox for the settings to take into effect.
If you make a mistake and mistype and entry and keep it.. the way to delete it is to go to about:config, right click on the mistyped value and choose "Reset." Then, restart Firefox. The value will be deleted. Simple!
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Notes for Portable Firefox:
Improving Firefox Portable's Performance
Firefox Portable runs quite well from faster flash drives (and portable hard drives or iPods) when connected to a USB 2.0 port. But what if your flash drive is a bit below average speed-wise (and just because it says "USB 2.0" on it, doesn't mean it's fast)? Or what if you're stuck connecting to USB 1.1 ports at work or school? Well, there are a few ways to improve performance.
First off, it helps to realize why things are slow. Firefox Portable has to read and write bits of data to and from your portable device while it's running. On most flash drives, every time something is written, all reads stop. When this happens, Firefox Portable can appear to "freeze" or "hesitate" momentarily. Add to this the fact that most flash drives aren't as fast as they promise. They all say "USB 2.0 high speed" on them, but they're actually limited by the speed of the memory chips inside them and the controller chip that handles communication between those chips and a PC. There's about a 40x speed difference between a slow drive and a fast drive when dealing with writing small amounts of data. And, even if a drive can write a 5mb MP3 file quickly, it may be slow with writing lots of tiny files.
Here's a list of different things you can do to speed things up:
Make Firefox Portable Faster
If you are running Firefox portable from your flash drive you might have noticed that it running slow. One reason could be that writing cache is taking time. You can optimize this by changing your cache directory to a local hard drive.
*******To Change Cache Directory to hardrive "or Ram" for faster accessing "this really works!"
First and fastest Solution:
****Firefox - Use memory cache instead of disk cache if you have ram to spare! -
Description: If you use Firefox, there's a way to write cached files to RAM instead of the hard disk. This is not only faster, but will significantly reduce writes to the SSD while using
the browser.
Instructions:
1. Open Firefox -> Type about:config into the address bar ->
2. Enter -> double-click "browser.cache.disk.enable" to set the value to False ->
3. Right-Click anywhere -> New -> Integer -> Preference Name "disk.cache.memory.capacity" ->
4. value memory size in KB. Enter 32768 for 32MB, 65536 for 64MB, 131072 for 128MB, etc. -> restart Firefox
If you don't want to use Ram "the fastest" and use your hardrive instead do this:
1. On address bar enter about:config
2. add/edit entry by rightclicking on space and going to "add", Note.... to create a new entry... use "String", paste "browser.cache.disk.parent_directory" into the space and hit ok
3. Change value to "c:\\temp\\ffoxcache" , hit "enter"to see its really there.
4. Restart Firefox, now go to that location on the hardrive to confirm that FF made the directory you stated "c:\\temp\\ffoxcache"
Note the presence of files in the c:\\temp\\ffoxcache\cache directory, then close FF and confirm they all left when FF is closed if you have ticked for FF to delete them. You should only see 4 files and no more, ie: _cache_001_ "4kb", _cache_002_ "4kb", _cache_003_ "4kb", and _cache_map_ "9kb"".
5. You can also go to the address bar enter "about:cache", now verify that your changes reflected in cache-directory name (Look for Cache Directory)
If you choose to use RAM you will see no directory pathway.
6. Go to Tools, Options, Advanced, Network tab, Offline storage and put to 20mb or so.
7. Go to Privacy, private Data, settings, make sure "cache" or "offline website Data" is checked and whatever else you want, hit ok.
Note that if you are using Firefox Portable on someone’s machine, you might leave your cache traces on that box. Be sure enable automatic cleanup of your cache data on Firefox exit. To configure this goto Tools > Options > Privacy > Private Data, enable ‘Always clear my private data when I close Firefox’, and click on Settings next to it, to ensure you choose only Cache, or any other data you want to purge when FF closes.
* Another option is to Disable Cache - Cache is disabled by default because on most drives, cache will actually slow Firefox Portable down. If you've copied in a local profile or
enabled it, you can disable it within the Options window.
* Disable Session Restore / Undo Close Tab - Firefox 2.0 introduced a new feature called session restore. It keeps track of all your open windows and tabs and can restore your session if Firefox should crash. While a handy feature, it does have the unfortunate side effect of writing to disk on every page load, which slows down Firefox Portable. In Firefox 3.0, this
feature was enhanced to provide more features but at the cost of more disk writes (which is why Firefox Portable asks on first run if you'd like to disable it). There's no option to disable it in the usual Tools - Options windows, but you can disable it manually.
1. In Firefox's address bar, type in about:config and then hit enter
2. Right-click on any entry and select New - Boolean
3. For the name, enter "browser.sessionstore.enabled" and click OK
4. Select false and then click OK
When you restart Firefox, session restore (and undo close tab) will be disabled and you should notice an improvement in browsing speed.
* Disable Anti-Phishing - Firefox comes bundled with an anti-phishing filter that warns you of fake sites pretending to be things like ebay and bank login pages. As with the session restore, though, it results in additional writes to the drive. This is especially noticeable in the first several minutes of using Firefox Portable as it has to download the anti-phishing database and store it within your profile (a 3mb+ file on Firefox 2 and a 50mb+ file on Firefox 3). You can disable this feature by clicking Tools - Options and then selecting the Security tab. Uncheck the box next to "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected forgery" and/or "tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected attack site", and then click OK.
The anti-phishing filter is now off. If you'd like to get back the space taken up by the database of forged sites, exit Firefox Portable and then head to the FirefoxPortable\Data\profile directory on your drive. Delete the "urlclassifier#.sqlite" file.
* Disable History if you wish - Disabling history will prevent Firefox from writing a small bit of data to your drive for every page you visit. I Prefer to keep mine as I use it.
Firefox Speed Tweaks
Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by windstrings, Mar 29, 2010.
