Firefox - Even Faster

28 April 2005

My browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox which I've been using for some time now. It's fast, easy to use, secure (well more secure than IE at least), supports tabbed browsing, popup blaocker, and much more. I really am impressed by how good the browser is. It even renders pages designed for the features that IE had added in an attempt to break the web standards. There are very few sites it doesn't work with, those that don't work with firefox is normally because they test for the browser and don't let you in (although if you can get passed the browser detection you'll often find it renders fine anyway). If I find a site that doesn't allow me in then 99% of the time I just go elsewhere. After all if they can't follow some basic principles on web design then why should I trust them to give me a good service or give them my money.
To join the other 30 million (or so) users then go to: www.tryfirefox.com, it's free so you've got nothing to lose. No banners, it's not a trial version, no restrictions, it's just great free software.

Anyway the reason I'm writing this today is that I have been reading Linux Format which I subscribe to, and it had some useful tips on making the browser even faster. The way that this is done is by using http pipelining. This allows firefox to request multiple files simultaneously. Whilst I haven't done any scientific tests to prove a performance increase it feels faster. To do this enter about:config in the address bar. Find the entries network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining and change their values to true (double click). Another technique makes the pages feel faster by loading the page immediately rather than delaying loading for 250 milliseconds. Again in about:config look for the entry nglayout.initialpaint.delay , it may not exist so you may need to create it by right clicking and choosing New -> Integer. The value is the number of milliseconds before displaying the page, setting it to 0 will cause the page to load instantly.
Despite coming from a linux magazine these tips work for Windows as well. Just another example of allowing the user to make changes to how the browser works.