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(I’m obviously over-simplifying, but I think it still reflects reality.)
Think about two of the basic bottlenecks to you seeing a Web page, the time it takes to download the page content and the time it takes to “paint” that content onto your screen so that you can see it. Both depend on the resources you have available. The first resource is bandwidth and the second is CPU.
By waiting for a half second, Firefox can download 1/2 a second of data before it makes its first “paint”. If your connection is fast enough, that first paint gets enough of the data onto the screen that you can start reading the page right away and it may not matter how many more paints it needs to make because you’re already engaged with a somewhat functional page, not waiting.
For people with fast connections, setting the initial paint delay to a smaller number often works just fine because they get enough data downloaded and even if that means that the total time it takes to complete loading the page (because it requires more time-consuming paintings) is a tad longer, it’s all OK.
But for people with slower connections (and or slower CPUs) changing that initial paint delay number lower usually means that the first paint doesn’t get enough of the page data painted onto the screen for it to be usable and it might take several paints before the page becomes usable. Because painting actually takes time, the more of those Firefox has to do, the longer it is before the page becomes usable and before the page is completely finished displaying.
For some people on really slow connections, dial-up, for example, or with slower CPUs, setting the initial paint delay up to half a second or even a full second might actually make the browser feel a lot faster.
So, a setting that works for one user may not work for another. Firefox’s default settings are optimized to work for the largest number of users. That means that some people on both ends of the spectrum could benefit by tweaking a particular setting but most people will have a good experience with the default settings.
http://www.bitstorm.org/extensions/tweak/
You do actually have a right-click on your Mac. They just don't tell you. You just need to buy a 2 button mouse. I've had a mac since 1984, love the Mac hate the ignorant refusal to add a 2nd button on the mouse after 20 some years. Anyway, the alternative is to CTRL-Click...
BTW, AWESOME speeeeed up on my work PC. Great post.
very bad tweak for me, had to change it all back (n)
In most cases I have noticed changes in speed.
Tell me more anything. Version of Firefox, Windows, etc..
I was getting a lil' frustrated with having 400 tabs open in 7 different browser windows! (Kidding, but it was always a lot).
So far, your tweaks seem to have put my Firefox on steroids and made it behave remarkably instantaneous! That's brilliant work there...
Thanks so much.. can be more productive now... :)
Martin
Thanks for taking the time to post this.
I'm giving the 10 max requests a try.
Related tip: Create a RAM disk and assign your FF cache to it. Very fast, plus your cache is deleted when you shut down. Helps reduce HD fragmentation, too.
I'm using FF 3.0.7, Windows XP Pro SP3, IN\ntel Core2 Duo E7300 @ 2.66GHz, 3GB RAM....
I guess it was based to some of the tweaks you suggests.
I am going to try them on.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
MC
Does anyone know how this stacks up to Fasterfox Lite? I've been using that for a while and I've got it on optimized. I'm wondering; is this faster than that? Enough of a difference to switch?
Reducing the amount of memory available to firefox for caching pages is going to slow navigation down when you walk a URl path using the backward/forward button - a lot.
Trimming on minimize is going to involve either a lot of costly swap operations or, again, the loss of information from the cache, both of which will slow firefox down. All this is doing is freeing memory. Memory exists for a reason and free memory is a waste.
Pipelining can speed things up, but only on certain types of connections and with certain ISPs, it's not a foolproof way of making things better.
You should read up on what these things actually mean before blindly copy-pasting them into your blog. >:
You may see a short term bump in your page load speed but if everyone takes your advice, you will cause server loads to spike whenever even a few folks with the limit set that high try to hit a server.
It's common courtesy, like not taking all of the complimentary mints offered at the front of a restaurant. Sure, you COULD take them, but then you'd be screwing it up for the rest of us.
Thanks
Is there a way to add comments into the about:config file?
That would be helpful to record comments about what changed, old values, etc
Mine is at 30, do i leave it?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downlo...
I Knew There Had To Be Something 4 The Fox
COOL ! TWEEK !!!!.....Have A GREAT ! One !!!
Eric B. ; )
While I would say that those tips wouldn't improve browser performance, they would certainly improve your overall PC performance if you have a limited amount of RAM. Somewhere along the lines it got into people's heads that using less ram meant better performance. This is true for the system OVERALL. But looking at a specific application, more RAM means better performance. The trick is to balance your applications so the ones you use most have the most resources available to it.
Julia
(i'm able to write this comment because i set back everything in firefox)
I salute you with a shot of vodka from the old country!
The other site, can't remember which one, (stumbled) was good enough to include how to restore the default settings, which I ended up doing, and everything went back to working perfectly.
My advice would be to check out what the changes actually do before rushing in blind and making unnecessary changes to something that works perfectly fine in the first place. If it aint broke, don't try and fix it.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”--- Increases server load. If everyone does this, the speed deteriorates exponentially for everyone
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 10--- So you are just throwing some number out, arbitrarily? The reason that some users can't load youtube is because many servers block connections that request too many persistent connections
network.dns.disableIPv6set false: Almost all ISP's in the U.S. still utilize the IPv4 method domain name resolution. The default is false anyway, and setting to true can increase the speed at which your domain name resolution occurs
Check the Mozill knowledge base to look these up
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Preferences
Just my .02
Any advice on how to do that safely? Do I just reverse the steps?
I am unsure! :(
Does anybody have any ideas as to how to best remedy this?
my inital guess was that each time you did it, it loaded up more information into the cache.
and im assuming when you set the cache file limit to 0 is because you dont want ten deposits of every page?
you can find a lot more....
i followed ALL your tips regarding how to speed up
Firefox .
i noticed a vast increase in speed .
thank you for this " much appreciated "
information .
it really was as easy as you said .
Regards ,
Dick
ALSO: Speed up Firefox startup time by going to Preferences>advanced/update and then unchecked all the update boxes. You will have to update every so often on your own, but it's worth the (not) wait. :)
Oh man - and again 6572635 people with fucked up configurations asking so called experts for help. Thanks, no.
1) Install Chrome
2) Transfer bookmarks
3) Uninstall Firefox.
thanks for your efforts and info.