Speed Up Firefox web browser
Posted by admin on January 30th, 2007 
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Mozilla Firefox is a cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Although not officially released for certain operating systems, the freely available source code works for many other operating systems, including FreeBSD,OS/2, Solaris, SkyOS, BeOS and more recently, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
I am providing some Very Useful Tips to speedup your Firefox.
In your location bar, type about:config
Once it Opens You should see similar to the following screen
Tip1
In the filter bar type network.http.pipelining
You should see the following screen
Normally it says ” false ” under value field , Double click it so it becomes ” true “.
Once you finished this you should see the following screen.
Tip2
In the filter bar again and type network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Once it Opens You should see the following screen
Default it says 4 under value field and you need to change it to 8
Once you finished this you should see the following screen.
Tip3
Go to the filter bar again and type network.http.proxy.pipelining
Once it Opens You should see similar to the following screen
Normally it says ” false ” under value field , Double click it so it becomes ” true “.
Once you finished this you should see the following screen.
Tip4
Go to the filter bar again and type network.dns.disableIPv6
Once it Opens You should see the following screen
Normally it says ” false ” under value field , Double click it so it becomes ” true “.
Once you finished this you should see the following screen.
Tip5
Go to the filter bar again and type plugin.expose_full_path
Once it Opens You should see the following screen
Normally it says ” false ” under value field , Double click it so it becomes ” true “.
Once you finished this you should see the following screen.
Tip6
Now you need to Create new Preference name with interger value for this got to Right click -> New -> Integer
Once it opens you should see the following screen
Here you need to type nglayout.initialpaint.delay and click ok
Now you need to enter 0 in value filed and click ok
Once you finished this you should see the following screen.
Tip7
Now you need to Create one more Preference name with interger value for this got to Right click -> New -> Integer
Once it opens you should see the following screen
Here you need to type content.notify.backoffcount and click ok
Now you need to enter 5 in value filed and click ok
Once you finished this you should see the following screen.
Tip8
Now you need to Create one more Preference name with interger value for this got to Right click -> New -> Integer
Once it opens you should see the following screen
Here you need to type ui.submenuDelay and click ok
Now you need to enter 0 in value filed and click ok
Once you finished this you should see the following screen.
Some more Tweaks
Enable the spellchecker for inputfields and textareas (default is textareas only)
layout.spellcheckDefault=2
Open lastfm://-links directly in amarok
network.protocol-handler.app.lastfm=amarok
network.protocol-handler.external.lastfm=true
Firefox Memory Leak Fix
Open a new tab. Type “about:config” without quotes into the address bar and hit enter/click Go.
Right-click anywhere, select New, then Integer. In the dialog prompt that appears, type:
browser.cache.memory.capacity
Click OK. Another dialog prompt will appear. This is where you decide how much memory to allocate to Firefox. This depends on how much RAM your computer has, but generally you don’t want to allocate too little (under 8MB), but if you allocate too much, you might as well not do this. A good recommended setting is 16MB. If you want 16MB, enter this value into the dialog prompt:
16384
(Why 16384 instead of 16000? Because computers use base-12 counting. Thus 16 megabytes = 16384 bytes. Likewise, if you want to double that and allocate 32MB, you’d enter 32768.)
Click OK to close the dialog box, then close all instances of Firefox and restart. If your Firefox still uses the same amount of memory, give it a few minutes and it should slowly clear up. If that fails, try a system reboot.
Now your Firefox will now be 3 - 30 times faster in loading pages.
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January 30th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Would you be so kind to clarify the meaning of tips 5 to 8? Thanx
January 30th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
here you go
Tip5
plugin.expose_full_path
show full path to plugins in about:plugins.
Tip6
nglayout.initialpaint.delay
time to wait before an initial reflow attempt during page rendering
Tip7
content.notify.backoffcount
number of initial reflows during timer-based rendering After this number the page is only reflowed when the calculation of the layout of larger parts of the page is finalized
Tip8
ui.submenuDelay
delay the time a menu takes to open a sub-menu
I hope this helps you
January 31st, 2007 at 5:46 am
Or you can do the simple route and download fasterfox. http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1269/
February 1st, 2007 at 7:37 am
Yeah. Fasterfox does all of this, and more, pretty much out of the box
February 1st, 2007 at 7:53 am
Good post!
February 1st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Hi. I’ve been using FF exclusively since ‘05 and have of course used most of these tweaks before.
After loading an extension last week which corrupted my profile (I think it was called Load Time Analyzer - I left a msg), I completely uninstalled and wiped all traces of Mozilla and Firefox from my box (folders, registry), rebooted and reloaded it. I neglected the normal tweaks only because I forgot about them (so I’m glad I came across this post for a reminder.
Getting to the point, I figured this would be a good test of the aforementioned ‘Fasterfox has all this already” statement. btw: I’ve had that loaded in the past but read that it produced memory leaks in FF so I deleted it - guess I’ll find out now!
WRT this new FF install, here’s how the tweaks above broke down with Fasterfox now loaded too:
1-3 = above changes existed
4, 5 = needed to be manually set (meaning Fasterfox DID NOT change them)
6 = I already had in place ??? (maybe I did set that one after the reinstall but I’m 99.9% I didn’t else I would’ve set all the other tweaks at the same time).
7 = I didn’t have this one but I never heard of it before either.
8 = I had this, it was set to 50, I changed it to 0 as noted.
I’m still MCE only (not Ubuntu) but don’t think FF cares, guess I’ll find out now.
YMMV G/L
February 3rd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Just wanted to report back: all is good.
February 4th, 2007 at 6:24 am
Great tips, thanks for sharing
February 5th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
You forgot 1
content.notify.backoffcount
* content.notify.ontimer must be set to true for this preference to take effect.
-> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Content.notify.backoffcount
February 5th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
By the way you should just drop->
content.notify.backoffcount
content.notify.ontimer
and go with
integer
content.maxtextrun
5000
instead, it’s alot faster.
I’d also throw in->
network.ftp.idleConnectionTimeout 60
network.http.keep-alive.timeout 30
so it’s not locked just waiting for a reply from a slow site, or keeping a connection to a site your done with.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:45 am
What are the units on all those delays and timeouts?
February 8th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Well done tuit !
Check out this kewl site to measure webpage loading speed before and after tweaking about:config. Clear FF cache prior to testing. Also, this site provides testing of download / upload / websurfing speed. http://www.numion.com/stopwatch/
February 9th, 2007 at 7:10 am
prima war firefox wie ein flugzeug,dankeschön
February 9th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Awesome tips dude !
I tried it and indeed my firefox is way faster. Btw this works on every machine running FF not only ubuntu.
Robbert
February 9th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
$11: they’re in seconds, and some, like the sub-menu delay, are in milliseconds.
February 11th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
BTW, computers count in binary, e.g. Base-2 … not Base-12 !! But I guess this was just a typo up there?
February 27th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
These tips work great on FF for Windows too (thank you !) except for the memory leak fix. I’ve set it to 16384 a few days ago but after a day’s use it still takes up over 114MB memory, like it normally does.
What I do find interesting is the disk cache capacity which is set to 50000 by default and not 51200. Why should it need multiples of 1024 for the memory capacity setting ?
March 18th, 2007 at 12:00 am
hi thank’s all
March 30th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Dude thank you so much, FireFox was sucking on Ubuntu 6.06, these tweaks make it fly!!!
April 13th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Good,Download Firefox BLogWe Got You Archives in My blog,Thank’s
April 30th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
thanks good tip…
May 14th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Dude (or dudette), thanks for the tips! My FF browser is loading pages much faster now.
June 11th, 2007 at 3:29 am
do u need to restart firefox?:D
June 13th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Superb! Great tweaks! I really needed to improve browsing & download speeds on my broadband connection. Thanks!
June 14th, 2007 at 4:47 am
Thanks for the tips. They all seem to work (I guess) except for the memory leak. Firefox is up to 105meg after a few hours. Pesky…
June 20th, 2007 at 4:24 am
woo hoo works great, thought I knew it all lol
June 20th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Hello
Thaks for the tweaks.
For the step 7 –> content.notify.backoffcount. is necessary add content.notify. ontimer that it’s another entries in about:config that you have to create like Boolean with a Value of True.
This tip is for the page of mozillazine dot org.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:31 am
thanks for the tweaks.. except for the fact you kept on typing “interger” instead of “integer” a lot. great work1 hehe.. and I tried that guys tip in post #10.. works great.. thanks all..
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Above settings has disabled my Adblock and Adblock Plus addons. How do I re-enable these?
Also please clarify the spellchecker tweak (amorak). Do you set up another integer value for these last 2? Do you leave it at 0?
If I don’t like these tweaks, how to reset to default?
August 4th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Wow good stuff. This is the best article i have come across on tweaking firefox in ubuntu.
Keep up the good work and allow the OpenSource community to grow.
OpenSource baby just love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 17th, 2007 at 11:38 am
just a little question,where i work the it department has put a web browser proxy killer download on some of the network computers,how do i get around this problem so we can start browsing in the internet again
August 25th, 2007 at 1:15 am
holy crap! This works great! The memory cache tip was one I hadn’t heard about before. Will definitely have to try that out on my memory-sieve Windows laptop at work on Monday.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:25 am
thanx for the tips. keep rockin `en happy browsing
September 13th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Fasterfox has memory leaks so its best if you went with these suggestions which are totally awesome and ill do this for my FF at home which is on a mac
September 17th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Are all of this tips safe? are there any side effects? is there any memory leak?
September 29th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I added content.max.tokenizing.time but accidentally hit boolean instead of integer now i have two of these entry’s in the about:config. how do i deleted them and adde the correct integer instead?
December 8th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Some more Tweaks
Enable the spellchecker for inputfields and textareas (default is textareas only)
layout.spellcheckDefault=2
Open lastfm://-links directly in amarok
network.protocol-handler.app.lastfm=amarok
network.protocol-handler.external.lastfm=true
Firefox Memory Leak Fix
Open a new tab. Type “about:config” without quotes into the address bar and hit enter/click Go.
December 8th, 2007 at 8:16 am
I didn’t understand from here .. [:o]
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:01 am
Add to the above tips DNSMasq per http://www.ubuntugeek.com/local-dns-cache-for-faster-browsing-on-ubuntu-machine.html (it adds local DNS to your PC) and you can also save DNS lookup time for web sites your visit repeatedly. Now you have a Firefox rocketsled!
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:15 am
Thank you for sharing these tweaks. If I may suggest the post could be a little clearer at point # 6 where I think you mean to open a new tab and enter about:config and then scroll down to network-protocol-handler.external.ms-help. Same with point #8. Thanks again.
February 4th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
can somebody tell me if the huge memory consumption works on windows? it seems that some ppl didnt succeed at this, thnx
February 21st, 2008 at 6:02 am
This is really a bummer. You would expect it to be like this right out of the box, and not have to spend hours changing it, every time you install firefox.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Thanks to this article, thanks to member responses, I was able to find a solution to the problems that people suffering them.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:36 am
I’m lost at the last part at some more tweaks as well. How to enable the spellcheker and what do I need to do for this command “open lastfm://-links directly in amarok? So, I’m stopping at that point. Could you please explain a little bit.
Thanks,
April 27th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Can the about: config file be saved so that you just reload it with all the tweaks
thanks
April 29th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Thanks for this list. However, it would have saved me time Googling if you would have described what each setting does. After all was done, I noticed that you did post a small explanation in the comments, but why not put it in the actual post were people will see and benefit from it?
I was also curious about why you used WinXP for screenshots on an Ubuntu blog.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Anybody tried this on Firefox 3 beta 5?
May 4th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Your tips to speed up Firefox are very useful.
Thanks.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I’ve been using the new Firefox 3 beta that came with Ubuntu Hardy Heron. I’ve got 2gb of RAM so I changed the memory cache to 102400.
This is because when I put
about:cache
in the address bar it showed it was using more memory than I had available! It’s made a huge difference to page loading (along with all the other tweaks). Thanks!!
June 17th, 2008 at 1:52 am
alot of these tweaks only apply to FF 2 and not 3
June 18th, 2008 at 6:12 am
yeay it is faster but it stuffed up my gmail.
it is in a very little box on the left top conner, how do i fix it.
and youtube stuffed up a bit the same to 1/2 of the time.
June 29th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Firefox 3.0 works on this too… because the internal development Gecko being upgraded to 1.9 therefore they are using the same engine… just that 1.9 have numerous fixes that resolve memory leaks and improve alot of security issues… + stability
July 1st, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Ding ding dang a-dang a-long ling long! Jesus built my hotrod!
I checked my speed on that stopwatch site before doing the tweaks, and afterwards it was TWICE as fast. The difference is VERY noticeable as I browse around. Now I feel like the price I pay for DSL is justified. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!
July 4th, 2008 at 11:07 am
thanks 1000 times. its 1000 times faster.
very noticeable, without stopwatch, , ,
click>boom.ready
July 13th, 2008 at 1:17 am
WOW thank-you so muck, It worked for me like a charm
July 13th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Does these tweaks still work for Firefox 3?