Free Tips How To Make Firefox Respond Faster

If you're surfing the net a lot and are already using Firefox browser with the tabbed browsing extensions, you might not have things tweaked for optimal speed.

Here's how you can make tabbed browsing speedier in Firefox.

Just open up the Firefox browser normally.

In the URL bar, type the following (without quotes or spaces):

" about:config " - should look like: about:config

This will open up commands and editable variables right in your main browser window. The objective here is to tell the browser to use more than the standard number of connections to load sites, rather than the basic number that Firefox is set with upon installation. This speeds up response time of both loading websites and switching between tabs, the latter, because tabs don't necessarily like to switch over to what YOU want to see in a different tab until the facing tab website is fully loaded. Hence, if every site is loading in each tab at a faster rate, browser tabs will feel more responsive to your clicks and you will experience less wait time as you're surfing.

Okay - now that you've typed " about: config " and your main window is showing you some 'stuff' you want to ignore most of it and leave most settings alone! Don't mess around in here - we just want the items that change the number of connections loading websites, okay?

When this about:config opens up for you, there will be a location/detail bar that will say "Filter" and you want to type the following in this space:

network.http.pipelining

That should read network-dot-http-dot-pipelining

Now when these details are typed in, set the "value" to true (it should ask for either 'false' or 'true' values, so make sure you set this to true or this procedure won't work right.

Next, you have to put another item into the filter. This one is:

network.http.proxy.pipelining

Set the value of this item to true as well

Then scroll down and highlight on:

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and this will probably already have a number set of around 2-8, more likely on the low end of the scale. You want to raise this value to 8 to be at the top end of the scale, and do not set this number at more than 10 - this is basically how many connections you want the browser to use in locating and loading websites from now on. Don't go crazy with this number. More is better but too much 'more' is just too much, so at the top end, a value of more than 10 is going to hinder, not help you.

If you hover your mouse then right-click on network.http.pipelinking.maxrequests this will force you to make a selection, so please select, "New" and then "Integer" from the menu. You're going to 'name' this now:

nglayout.initialpaint.delay and make the value of this part "0" (zero). This part makes Firefox act faster concerning site information it receives.

You're done with the nitty-gritty stuff now but you'll have to re-start your Firefox browser for these settings to take effect.

Close the browser and use task-manager to make sure that Firefox really shuts down.

Then just re-start Firefox and your tabbed browsing should be much faster and more enjoyable for you!

* Note - I edited this article recently. Previously, I had said you can set 'pipeline-maxrequests' at 10, 20, even 30 for a value. I have recently read some tech papers and articles which say that pipelining values above 10 simple do not cause positive effects. I checked this out by setting these values very high in my browser settings.....I tried '15,' '25' and '30,' and the other articles are very much CORRECT...no useful effect happened at all and nothing loaded well at all when I set values above 10.

MY pipelining-maxrequest values are actually set at '7' right now and this is working well for me on WinXPHome.