How To Speed Up Firefox (Helpful Vanity)

[KoRn]

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly 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.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

[general_re]

Err, lemme finish that thought. Anyway, time it on some common pages and see if it makes a difference - there are plenty of perverse cases where pipelining can make the browser slower, so it's not really as simple as "pipelining - yes" for most people. If it was that simple, why wouldn't it be enabled by default?

[wita]

I install Starband and Direcway, as well as a few others. They are not the end all and be all either. Although for folks in the boondocks, it may be the only other alternative. I think I would wait till the ka band satellite for Wildblue comes on line in early 2005 and then you will have three or four choices of satellite platform. For now, Cable modem appears to have the edge on speed over all possible choices other than T1 line, and now there is one faster than that. I travel enough and need my connection with me, that dial up is my only alternative for now.

[KoRn]

" the only people likely to experience significant increases in performance are folks on high bandwidth"

Umm, Did you miss the part where it said this was for Broadband users only?

[general_re]

Right. Did you miss the part where I said "high latency"? ;)

Satellite broadband users will likely see a big improvement - for the rest of us, not so much.

[KoRn]

I'm using T1 speed DSL at home, and I noticed a HUGE difference on websites that are heavy with lots of graphics and frames.

Before the changes, one site I visit frequently always loaded very slow. After the changes it loads almost instantly.

[ShadowAce]

Done. Welcome aboard.

[general_re]

I'll check in after lunch and give you a case where it fails pretty dramatically ;)

[KoRn]

If you would, when you post your findings please include specific info. The site, your connection speed, general system specs of your machine, and the type of network you are on. Are you using Firefox?

I have yet to see negatives with these changes personally, or from the feedback so far in this thread. I'm very interested in, and not predispositioned to dispute your claims.

[general_re]

Sure - I timed it myself last night after hunting around to find a page that would break the pipelining. 1.5 mbit DSL line, 2.8 GHz P4 with 768 MB memory running Windows 2000 SP4.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying there's no improvement ever, only that there are some cases when it doesn't improve things, some cases where it can make things slower, and that for most cases where it does improve things, the improvement is likely to not be earth-shattering for most people. On balance, it's probably worth enabling for most people, but it's the kind of thing that's worth a bit of testing to see if it helps in some particular case.

[general_re]

Okay, here's how we can test it. Presumably, you've already got pipelining enabled, so grab your stopwatch and get ready. The page I used is Google's translation page - it's nice, because it's got lots of little flag gifs, and even on a fast connection it'll take a bit to load, plus it's not some totally obscure page that nobody ever sees. First, let's clear your browser cache by going to "Tools" -> "Options" -> "Privacy" and hitting "Clear" next to "Cache". Once you've done that, start timing with your watch as soon as you click on the link, and as soon as the status bar at the bottom of the browser says "Done", stop the watch.

http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en

Got it? Now, disable http pipelining and http proxy pipelining in about:config - return to the default settings, basically. Clear your cache again and close and restart your browser. Come back to this page here on FR, grab your stopwatch, and time the page load again. You should notice a fairly significant difference in load times, although which one is faster may surprise you ;)

[Uncle Hal]

Same here but I cannot get my center button to work. Does yours?

[BigSkyFreeper]

My center button works fine. If I click a link with the center button it opens that link in a new tab.

[KoRn]

/Bump for those who may not have seen it.

[philetus]

You can also just put this:

// Enable pipelining:
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 100);

in your user.js file.

[scab4faa]

later read

[perfect stranger]

ping

[Blue Highway]

Any idea om how to speed up the scrolling with Firefox? Seems painfully slow compared to IE 6.

I cleared the cache and set it lower than the 50000kb default and it helped a little but not much. I also tried different settings with smooth scrolling and autoscroll and not much difference there either.

[Blue Highway]

I wonder if there is a way to speed up scrolling to the speed that the page up / page down buttons scroll, with the smooth scrolling option turned on, but by pressing the up or down arrow, or clicking on the up or down scroll arrows with the mouse. The up/down arrows it is painfully slow scrolling and the mouse click over the up or down scroll arrows is even slower. This was one area that IE was quicker.

[KoRn]

Don't know the answer to that one. I can say for sure, I had very bad scrolling issues like yours, mine were caused by not yet loading the drivers for my graphics card. I'm not saying that's your problem, but it may be something to look at.

[Space Wrangler]

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