12 Tricks To Increase Your Firefox Speed By A Noticeable Amount

Posted by Bhanu Ahluwalia On January 15, 2009 In Tutorials 89 Comments

Firefox is a well known open source browser and is

widely used around the world for it being secure, stable and fast.
With this tutorial you will be able to explore the hidden speed of Firefox which will boost the
speed of Firefox and make your Firefox much more faster
Download the latest version of Firefox from here. Now install the Firefox.
To speed up Firefox follow these steps.
For those who are unsure about the changes, please first refer to this post:
Backup Firefox Profile And Restore It
If you are looking for Firefox Addons, check this article on
Firefox Addons
01. Type about:config in the address bar and then press Enter.

And you will see a confirmation message like this:

Now click Ill be careful, I promise!

02. You will see a label there Filter, just next to it type network.http.pipelining. Now be sure
the value field is set true, if not double-click to set true.

Info: 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!
03. Go back to the Filter search bar and type network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Doubleclick this option and set its value to 8.

04. In the Filter search bar and type network.http.proxy.pipelining Once opened double-click
on it and set it to true.

05. Type network.dns.disableIPv6 in the filter search bar and set this option to true by double
clicking on it.

Info: 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.

06. 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.

07. 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 2250000 and click OK.

08. 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 750000 and click OK.

09. 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 popup 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 750000 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 doesnt
have much useful information to display, Mozilla applications will wait a short interval before
first rendering a page. This preference controls that interval. 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 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.

Thats it! Now restart Firefox and your browsing as well as downloading speed will be much
more faster. Good luck

How to Hack Firefox to Make it Faster!

Open the Firefox "config" page: click into the Firefox address location bar, and type about:config, press
Enter.
The "Config" file will appear in the Firefox browser as a page with hundreds of lines of code in it. Now,
we start by enabling some advanced tabbed options:
Locate the line browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs . (tip: press "b" on your keyboard to quick
scroll).
Double click on browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs . This will set its toggle to "true". Now your
advanced and enhanced tabbing should be set.
Note: in Firefox version 1.5, the command line is singlewindow.openintabs.
Next: we will increase the "pipeline" RAM ability for Firefox to accomodate more packet transfer. In the
same config document, scroll down to the line that says network.http.pipelining . Double click this line to
set it to "true".
Lastly, we will increase the maximum pipeline requests to 100. Find the line that says
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Double click on it, and a dialog box will pop up. Change the setting
from 4 to 100.
No need to save this file. Simply close and restart Firefox, and you should see an immediate 10% to
40% increase in web page transfer speed, and faster opening of your tabbed windows! Enjoy!