How to speed up Firefox

Posted on December 15th, 2007.

In the last three years, Firefox’s market share in internet browsing has risen from nothing to over thirty-six percent. It’s a great browser and I’ve found two tweaks to make it even better.The first speed tweak is well known but I’m going to mention it anyway. Please note: I didn’t invent or discover these tweaks.

Type “about:config” into Firefox’s address bar.
Type “network.http.pipelining” into the filter and two settings should be left.
Set the value of “network.http.pipelining” to true and set the value of “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number above ten.
Finally, right-click anywhere in the options area and create a new integar option. Call it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to zero.

Provided you have a broadband connection, the above tweak should increase your browsing speed significantly.

The second Firefox speed tweak isn’t as technical. However, I noticed a great increase in speed.

After using Firefox for a while, it begins to slow down (mine was getting very slow). This next tweak can solve that problem.

First of all, you need to export your bookmarks. Do this by selecting “Bookmarks,” and then “Organise Bookmarks.” In the Bookmarks Manager, choose “File” and then “Export.”
Open up Windows’ run dialog (”Start,” and then “Run…”).
Click “Browse” and find firefox.exe (for example, something like this - “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”).
Add ” -P” to the end of the program path (see screenshot below).
Firefox’s profile manager should appear. Create a new profile and select it.