Hot Rodding Firefox & Other Mozilla Based Browsers
This is really my (updated as in now organized!) personal check list and guide to fine tuning the Firefox, Flock, & Iceweasel browsers for speed and a pleasurable surfing experience (in my opinion). [It could still use some editing but to make it readable by the public, but that wasn't its purpose. It was meant as a personal check-list, and if others can make sense of it ... well this would be all good but secondary. And by secondary I mean computer geeks.]
Yes, now there’s an extension (somewhere) that does this sort of thing but I doubt it does it all. Plus, you lose control and, some might say, responsibility over your own “hacking” (ie., What if the installed extension doesn’t work? [and --worse-- you don't notice]). You would also miss out on the fun of hacking things on your own.
This list might be extensive –but you may not need to implement it all– depending on your needs and/or likes. I hope others find this helpful, as I have.
I’ve taken care to quote and give credit to sources.
Personal comments are done within “[]” brackets and are somewhat anecdotal.
So without further adieu, here is my compiled list of Firefox/IceWeasel/Flock tweaks.
Speed Tweaks
Speed Related Tweaks
‘1. In your address bar visit: about:config
2. Find: network.dns.disableIPv6. Set “true” [not in Flock
off. but in Flock 0.8.0.99]
3. Find: network.http.pipelining. Set “true”
4. Find: network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Set “8″
5. Find: network.http.proxy.pipelining. Set “true”’
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com
“Make pages load faster
A. “1. Fetch only pages that you click …
network.prefetch-next … Double click it, and it will turn to false”
[UPDATE: There is some dispute as to whether this slows or speeds up browsing. It is non-intrusive meaning that it prioritizes pre-fetching so that it doesn't take away from your quality of surfing (it does not slow the loading of newer pages just to pre-fetch links on earlier loaded pages). Of course, it doesn't prioritize with other local tasks (ie., other ongoing programs), so I expect your overall computer experience could suffer on MHz challenged boxes. I also assume that if you have the CPU cycles to spare, it'll work "for you" but if you don't and you want pre-fetching enabled, then maybe you're best to perform one power consuming task at a time, else disable it.]
B. “2. Limit the RAM usage” “browser.cache.memory.capacity … or RAM
sizes between 512MB and 1GB, start with 15000. For RAM sizes between
128MB and 512M, try 5000, and you will be happy of the result” [-
doesn’t show up at all in any browser, although
browser.cache.disk.capacity does. **].
C. “3. Reducing the RAM usage even more when Firefox gets minimized”
” … select New and click Boolean. A box will appear and you will have
to enter config.trim_on_minimize as value. The boolean value should be
set to TRUE” [not in Flock 0.8.0.99. **]
D. “4. Make pages load faster”
network.http.pipelining and set it to TRUE
“network.http.pipelining.maxrequests) and change it into a higher value
- 10″ [already did this above]
www.our-picks.com
Speed-up Downloads and Navigation
“Acelerar las descargas y la navegación con Firefox” …
browser.turbo.enabled true [doesn’t show up in my OS X 1.5.0.9 version
of firefox, SeaMonkey or Flock. *]
network.http.max-connections 30 [default was 24]
network.http.max-connections-per-server 8 [already set to 8]
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server 8 [not sure about the default]
Don’t follow the nglayout.initialpaint.delay 100 advice on the sourced page (see below). It’s wrong because “0″ (zero) makes it wait very little before displaying info (the point of this hack), while the suggested 100 would only increase this time span –an undesirable effect. Read further down on how to set this properly.
www.cristalab.com
A Perception Related Speed Tweak
“3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it
“nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″ (zero). This value is
the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it
receives.”
www.freerepublic.com
Mouse Wheel Scroll Speed
“I’ve been using Mozilla’s shiny new web browser Firefox for a few
days, but kept on going back to Apple’s Safari for some odd reason.
Firefox just didn’t feel right. Until I realized that the problem is at
mouse wheel scrolling. Firefox’s scrolling is just too fast
compares[d?] to
system scrolling that I am used to. [Contrary to what this writer
thinks, I think Firefox’s is slow!
But just the same you can use his tip to speed up Firefox's scroll
speed.]
To fix the problem, I did the following:
1. Open up Firefox and type about:config in the URL box.
2. Find the line mousewheel.withnokey.sysnumlines, set it to false by
double clicking on true.
3. Find the line mousewheel.withnokey.numlines, set it to the number of
lines you want to scroll at a time. This controls the scrolling speed.”
[To speed up Firefox's mouse scroll speed, I used 7. The default is 1]
www.earthv.com
“Disable Bookmark Icons [as an attempt to speed up the browser, as far as I'm concerned]
You can disable the display of bookmark icons and
“favicons” by using about:config to set both of the preferences
browser.chrome.site_icons and browser.chrome.favicons to false.”
www.mozilla.org
For more on personalized speed tweaking see,
http://www.users.on.net/~farnik/wikicgi/wiki.pl?FireFoxTweaks
http://ask.softonic.com
Enabling Seamless
Usability for the Power User
Have FireFox Show Plugin Actions
“Download Actions preference in Firefox
The steps are outlined below:
1. Type “about:config” on the address bar to get to
firefox config settings.
2. Do a filter search for “hide_plugins” and double click
on “browser.download.hide_plugins_without_extensions” to change the
settings value to “false”.[not in SeaMonkey]
3. Open up “Edit > Preferences”, go to the “Downloads”
area and click on “View & Edit Actions”.
4. It should now list all the “File Type”. Do a search for
audio and change the “MP3 audio (streamed)” to open up in the external
xmms player.”
http://www.linuxweblog.com/firefox-download-actions
I was looking for m4a file types to be played with VLC because
QuickTime plugin does play them.”
[can’t find file types in Seamonkey’s preferences]
www.our-picks.com
Make All Frames Resizeable and Which to Block
“Force frames to be resizable
Many sites use frames to display their contents, and sometimes the
frames are too small. To force all frames to be resizable, use
about:config to change the value of the preference
layout.frames.force_resizability to true.
Note that this will also make the frames appear with
a fixed-width border and thus, may make the pages look funny.”
www.mozilla.org
“Decide which New Windows to Block
By default, all windows that a web page wants to open will be diverted
to either the current tab/window or a new tab. However, this does not
apply to small pop-up windows (e.g. a poll results window or the ICQ
window in go.icq.com). To change this behaviour so it does divert new
windows that are spawned by JavaScript, use about:config to edit the
preference “browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction”. Values are:
0
Divert all new windows to
current tab/window or new tab
1
Don’t divert any windows
spawned by JS
2
(Default) Don’t divert JS
wi ndows that include size/placement/toolbar info”
I chose “0″.
www.mozilla.org
After Editing
“After this [all or anyone of these tweaks are/] is done, close the
browser (File –> Exit). The new
setting should take effect the next time it’s started.”
www.interpc-solutions.com
Notes
* I’m not sure if it is advisable to add this in as an integer function.
I did this to IceWeasel running Debian testing without apparent problems but I
did not notice any drastic improvements either.
** Same as above but as a boolean function.
Compiled by Maurice Cepeda
This is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License. All brands mentioned are properties of their respective owners. By reading this article, the reader forgoes any accountability of the writer. The reading of this article implies acceptance of the above stipulations. The author requires attribution –by full name and URL– and notification of republications.
