Submit your breaking news stories and original articles to us by contacting us
- No categories
Make Firefox Faster
Sunday, Dec. 26 2004 | Author: derek
After you get past the “beginner”:http://forevergeek.com/open_source/a_beginners_guide_to_firefox.php stage with Firefox, try this “power-user” trick to make it download pages faster by allowing multiple connections so it can download more than one file at a time. It’s only useful for broadband users, so if you’re still on dial-up you can just skip this one for now.
Here’s something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:
1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!
More Firefox Tips
- Firefox Optimization Tips
- Fix Firefox Slowdowns
- A Beginner’s Guide to Firefox
- Duplicating your Firefox Profile
- Recently Closed Tabs Feature on Firefox 2
- When Downloads stop Working
Related posts:
Google Optimized For Firefox
Firefox Quick Tip: PDF Download
Firefox Optimization Tips
Firefox Quick Tip: When downloads stop working…
Firefox Quick Tip: Another way to use the tabs
Hope you like that post!
Forever Geek is a resource for all things geek. You can stay tuned by having the latest FG news delivered to you for free via RSS.
Category: General
Tags: Firefox, Optimization, Software, Tuning
Latest Features
10 Cool Sony Walkman photos – celebrate Walkman’s 30th birthday
27 weird and cool pool balls and accessories
Latest Commentary
iPhone 3.0 GM, still a crippled device
Does Apple want to be exclusive, niche again?
iReddit: iPhone users charged for privilege of accessing Reddit
78 Responses for "Make Firefox Faster"
December 26th, 2004 at 3:50 pm
1There’s an extension called “Tweak Network” that takes care of this.
December 26th, 2004 at 5:49 pm
2except for the last tweak.
December 26th, 2004 at 5:50 pm
3Also, if like me, you are near always downloading things and using most of your bandwidth, it isn’t really worth doing a tweak like this.
December 26th, 2004 at 6:22 pm
4http://users-guide.org/index.php?c=text&id=29
ilustrated.
December 26th, 2004 at 6:39 pm
5Is this going to hammer the websites with requests or bandwith usage
December 26th, 2004 at 6:39 pm
6It’s true that the last tweak isn’t included in “Tweak Network”. It is after all not a network tweak ;).
December 27th, 2004 at 8:38 am
7So now I fucked up. I have a swedish version of FireFox and I made a new string instead of a integer (fucked up the translation). How can I erease the string I made?
December 27th, 2004 at 12:54 pm
8Magnus: Just delete the setting and create it anew.
Wow, this is definitely faster.
December 27th, 2004 at 5:34 pm
9Geof F. Morris of course I want to delete it. But how? I can’t mark it and then press “delete” (nothing happens), on the “rightclick menu” there’s no “delete” option.
If anyone know how to delete a string, please describe it here like you would do to a threeyearold. :D
December 27th, 2004 at 9:24 pm
10No right-click on a Mac Powerbook. What’s the keystroke equivalent of a right click? I tried just about everything, no luck.
December 27th, 2004 at 10:39 pm
11Ctrl+Click is the equivalent of right clicking on a mac.
December 28th, 2004 at 11:51 am
12Derrrr this tweak kicks ass. I knew there was a reason Ive been using this browser for the past 2 years.
December 28th, 2004 at 12:04 pm
13Great little tips, but only one problem, and that’s that you’re breaking servers by doing this. 3-5 requests is fine, but trying to do 30 requests at once puts some strain on the server. If two people try to access the same page at once with this set, that’s 60 connections. Most httpd’s are set to cut off after there are 100 connections made. So, 4 people with this set could not access the same site. I urge you to think things through before setting something like this and killing the websites you browse.
December 28th, 2004 at 2:05 pm
14Re: #13, Robert’s comment.
Thirty connections at once is too much, I agree. Four or five is a friendly number. The benefits of pipelined requests can still be enjoyed with fewer simultaneous connections however.
December 28th, 2004 at 3:57 pm
15Firefox Speed enhancement
December 28th, 2004 at 6:30 pm
16This was already turned on in my Firefox, except for nglayout.initialpaint.delay
Also connections was only set to 8.
This made several slower sites like Orkut.com much faster.
December 28th, 2004 at 9:22 pm
17The “Tweak Network Settings” plugin sets the max connections to 16, which seems to work well. 30 does seem a bit high, and while it’s true that httpd daemons terminate at 100 connections generally, there’s generally multiple httpd daemons running. The box should handle it just fine, but I think going down to 16 is still high enough to reap speed benefits without being overbearing on the server. Besides, unless the site is seriously image-heavy, there’s no reason 30 simultaneous connections would be made.
December 29th, 2004 at 7:09 am
18fork it. im setting mine to 500,000,000 connections. next ill need sharks with fricken lazer beams on their heads. then i can rule the internet……
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!
AJ
December 29th, 2004 at 9:34 am
19Appears to work as well on Mozilla 1.7.x. Thanks
/can’t get into that Firefox thing yet
//be kind, I drive an antique Harley
December 29th, 2004 at 10:45 am
20wow.. this is awesome..
December 29th, 2004 at 12:37 pm
21You should have only the config page open in firefox. and see this one on another browser. Otherwise Firefox might crash
December 29th, 2004 at 1:45 pm
22I believe that Internet Explorer defaults to 4 sessions at once. From your article, it appears that Firefox only opens one session by default. Is this correct? The default setting doesn’t seem very logical to me.
December 29th, 2004 at 7:57 pm
23Regarding “Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.” and the subsequent comments regarding server spam, this is not correct. Pipelining makes consecutive requests on a -single- connection, hence “maxrequests” as opposed to “maxconnections”. Normally the browser would request one object (such as an image) and then terminate the connection, repeat, and repeat until all of the needed objects had been downloaded. Pipelining simple causes it to take the same behavior using only one connection.
December 30th, 2004 at 5:42 am
24To further add info: as #23 states (somewhat incorrectly), pipelining DOES NOT add more connections – the original post is utterly wrong, but is a way of streaming data on single connection.
There is AFAIK an in-built limit of 10 to network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – so setting it as 30 is ignored by Firefox anyway! That is for a GOOD reason – higher values are not better – they can cause complete page-loading failure and thus a longer loading time! Leave it at 4-6.
The above comment #23 is neither fully correct – pipelining is different from persistent connections he describes. Connections are persistent (don’t close between each request) on a HTTP/1.1 compliant server irrespective of pipelining. Pipelining allows that single persistent connection to work more efficiently:
http://www.w3.org/Talks/9704WWW6-WebPerf/slide7.htm
NOTE: Opera has had this “tweak” for years, partly responsible for its reputation of being the fastest browser around.
ALSO: setting nglayout.initialpaint.delay to 0 will increase page-loading time – especially on older machines or slow connections. It causes the page to be redrawn earlier (so perceptually seems quicker), but the extra CPU load will slow the rendering down (potentially increasing total load time). Set it to 750 or 1000 on older computers or slow connections. The default of 250 is just fine IMO as a fair average.
December 30th, 2004 at 5:46 am
25Sorry to double-post – but some more info for those interested in what pipelining actually is:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/Performance/Pipeline.html
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/http/pipelining-faq.html
December 30th, 2004 at 10:05 am
26i wanted to follow up on magnus’ question and see if there is any way to delete a string from the config page? highlight/delete doesn’t work and there isn’t a remove or delete option from the right click and/or tools menu.
December 30th, 2004 at 11:06 am
27about:config is just a rather inofficial interface to prefs.js open it with any text editor while Firefox isn’t running and delete the appropriate line.
December 30th, 2004 at 12:38 pm
28The limit for network.http.pipelining.maxrequests is 8. Anything higher than 8 has the same effect as setting it to 8.
As others have said, changing this stuff is not guaranteed to make your Firefox faster. Making some things faster (e.g. the initial paint) slows other stuff down, and the ideal settings depend on the speed of your computer, the speed of your connection, and what web sites you are using. The defaults are set to strike a balance which should be ok for everyone. If you’re going to change them, you should understand what they do, and see what settings work best for you.
To remove a pref from about:config, you can delete it from your prefs.js file manually as Frank said. Alternatively, if you choose “reset” in about:config, then quit Firefox, it won’t be saved, so when you run Firefox again it will have disappeared.
December 30th, 2004 at 3:22 pm
29These settings violate the HTTP protocol, and give you a speed boost by flooding the web server with 20-something connections for every single image and page request. There’s a reason that they’re not the default.
These settings will not only cause many web servers to have problems, but they can also make your web browser be mistaken for a flood attack, which will make the server add your IP to an “ignore” list. Stay away from these “optimized” settings, unless you know exactly what they do and how they work.
December 30th, 2004 at 4:12 pm
30concerned: You’re confusing pipelining with the number of requests. As several people posted above, pipelining just changes how a single connection is used. You certainly won’t “[flood] the web server with with 20-something connections for every single image…”. It may not speed things upm it may tickle server side bugs cause pages to fail to load, but it won’t flood the poor server. This change is generally safe and shouldn’t cause any problems.
December 30th, 2004 at 5:01 pm
31these settings don’t stick
once you change everything then close firefox it all resets back – or at least it is for me using pc version 1.0
any help would be appreciated
December 31st, 2004 at 5:32 am
32On my Linux box it flies at the 8 setting.
I reduced this from 20 and cant see any difference in speed. setting this really gave a speed hike.
December 31st, 2004 at 6:52 am
33Just go download the extension “configuration mania”, which gives you a GUI interface to many of the options in about:config without having to go through the manual crap. I’ve used it for quite awhile and love it. :)
December 31st, 2004 at 7:28 am
34I typed in “about:config” and got shown the following warning by my Spy Stopper-
Blocked
Resource: Default
This page has been blocked by SpyStopper due to security
and Privacy concerns. Some Possible Reasons:
# Tracks or Profiles you.
# Gathers Private and Confidential Information from you.
# Installs software on your machine without your approval.
# Has Unsafe Content.
# No Content other than Advertisements and Popup windows.
If you are sure you want to visit this site, , please remove
the URL from the blocking list.
December 31st, 2004 at 8:24 am
35Ooops, I just copied and pasted “about:config” instead of inserting it as about:config that is what caused the problem :)
December 31st, 2004 at 9:08 am
36with reference to the original post, i have conferred with the designer of firefox(my dad) and he says if these settings violate the HTTP protocol, and give you a speed boost by flooding the web server with extra connections. this can be overcome by spreading peanut butter on the monitor of the networked machine then running and hiding. This is whats calle the standard modulus default.These defaults are set to strike a balance which should be ok for everyone. tatty bye!!!
December 31st, 2004 at 3:10 pm
37“Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.”
This setting violates the HTTP protocol, and gives you a speed boost by flooding the web server with multiple connections for every single image and page request. There’s a reason that they’re not the default.
January 1st, 2005 at 3:02 am
38What kind of peanut butter?
Doug
January 1st, 2005 at 4:41 am
39Someone posted the pipelining thing on a forum along with this:
network.http.max-connections : 64
network.http.max-connections-per-server : 21
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server : 8
and this:
browser.tabs.showsinglewindowmodeprefs : true
Can anybody please tell me what that stuff does?
January 1st, 2005 at 6:09 am
40Yo, which mod do i need to make, to alow me to download more then 2 files from the same server @ the same time? currently firefox only lets me download 2 @ 1 time
Thx
January 1st, 2005 at 5:59 pm
41@41:
I think it’s a setting from the webservers you’re downloading from, i don’t think it has anything to do with firefox,
if I’m wrong,pls let me know, bcause Icould use the “fix” too :)
January 1st, 2005 at 7:33 pm
42hey this is amazing thanks guys
January 1st, 2005 at 8:06 pm
43Before doing these changes, read: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007164.html
January 1st, 2005 at 9:01 pm
44After making these tweaks, I noticed Firefox timing out consistently on a good amount of the websites I visit. After un-tweaking the tweaks, everything was back to normal.
January 3rd, 2005 at 12:04 pm
45r.e. #45
It has been the case that support for pipelining has been dropping across the web. The most likely culprit are the recent load-balancing mechanisms which may not respect the order of the requests and thus break pipelining.
It seems that few newer software developers really bother to test their full compliance to HTTP/1.1, as IE and Firefox have pipelining disabled by default – the vicious circle completes and support for this advantageous mechanism is dropping not improving…
This has forced Opera to rewrite the heuristics for how they toggle pipelining per server for their V8.0 – they have observed more problems with pipelining than ever before.
The only hope is that as Firefox market share increases, developers may start to realise the advantages to finally supporting something that should have been implemented MANY years ago. Pipelining can clearly reduce the amount of packets per connection, and thus allow servers to handle more concurrent connections (it is ironic that a mechanism that should help load-balancing is being broken by that very class of software…)
January 3rd, 2005 at 3:30 pm
46welcome to like 8 months ago! hahah!
January 3rd, 2005 at 4:12 pm
47For a non-techie medical writer who sticks his head into a lot of websites for research, this Firefox speed-up trick works nicely. So what’s the bottom line on the value? Can I leave it on 30 and sleep at night, or do I set the value down to 8. I don’t want to contribute to destruction of cyberenvironment. Thanks. Marty
January 3rd, 2005 at 7:47 pm
48http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks/firefoxtweak/4.html
January 4th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
49Wow, amazing how many stupid comments are made by people who don’t know what the fark they’re talking about. HAHAHA!
January 6th, 2005 at 7:16 am
50You can also download this which changes more settings:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Browser-Tweak/Mozilla-Optimizer.shtml
January 7th, 2005 at 3:58 am
51I have all kinds of tips here:
http://tinyurl.com/5csxt
You’ll find a link to my extensively commented user.js file that you can just download and pop into place.
January 8th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
52Okay, I did the tweaks, but how do i make everything back to the default settings again??
January 11th, 2005 at 6:32 am
53Regardless of what any of the comments say, this enhancement works. I use a cheesey dial-up through a no-name ISP and my pages load much, much faster (except https://... pages for some reason).
Some of the previous pages which used to take close to a minute to load are now finished in less than 5 seconds.
January 11th, 2005 at 11:01 am
54Hi everyone, i tried ALL these tips for making FIREFOX faster, but when i close the browser down and open it up again, ALL the settings are back to normal!
how do i do it so they stay to the new faster ones ?
January 11th, 2005 at 11:02 am
55forgot to say i have 2 MEG Broadband DSL modem etc
January 14th, 2005 at 7:35 pm
56bah, fire fox sucks… get opera
http://www.worstluck.com
January 25th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
57I fiddled with the setting of Firefox (about:config) and now it doesn’t work well. How do I restore default setting
January 25th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
58MSN // FIREFOX ??
Alright my MSN messenger will NOT open FIREFOX to get my Hotmail? AND YES my Firefox is my default and NOO I do NOT want to buy MSN plus!!! CAN anyone figure this one out?
January 27th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
59Opera??? Sure, if you want to PAY for a browser. Tard….
January 27th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
60Daniel, MSN just uses IE automatically because it’s also made by MS. It bypasses the default browser.
January 29th, 2005 at 5:40 am
61MSN Messenger opens hotmail on IE because of it’s integration of both, some of the things aren’t very usefull like the status icon next to the person that sent you the mail, but the alerts and calendar are quite helpfull.
February 1st, 2005 at 12:57 pm
62The BEst HYIP Guide
February 5th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
63how to surf faster with firefox
February 10th, 2005 at 12:46 am
64hi,
I set this, and when I restarted my comp, the settings were erased!! How do I get it to remember the settings????
February 12th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
65me too
Now I’bve lost all my bookmarks
pain in the arse
February 13th, 2005 at 2:45 am
66Comment 18 by AJ, – i almost wet me knickers hahahahahah!
February 14th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
67If this isn’t supposed to work on dial-up then there’s something wrong with mine tonight. I’m usually in bed by now, but the speed increase has been so great i can’t believe my eyes!!! I just had to stay up to test as many pages as possible to make sure i’m not dreamin’!!
February 16th, 2005 at 9:26 am
68wow, I’m on a university ResNet connection which has got stupidly high bandwidth and websites now download literally two or three times faster! Fantastic!
February 20th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
69Here is a better tweak guide:
http://workingbath.com/archives/2005/01/04/firefox-speed-tweak/
February 25th, 2005 at 11:18 pm
70man this is friggin fast!
March 4th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
71to get rid of an entire line thats not suppose to be there (i.e something you added) in about:config, just right click on the line and select “reset” then close all firefox windwos (ALL OF THEM) and wheny ou restart they should be gone.
by the way, i didn’t notice any speed enhancement with this trick. ahh welll…
March 8th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
72Instead of you lot trying to get faster browsing by ‘tweaking’ you borwsers i ask, why are you trying to get better things for free? Why not just get a faster connection and PAY for faster internet rather than f***ing up servers?
*Cough Freelancers Cough*
March 14th, 2005 at 6:46 am
73Instead of you lot trying to get faster browsing by ‘tweaking’ you borwsers i ask, why are you trying to get better things for free? Why not just get a faster connection and PAY for faster internet rather than f***ing up servers?
*Cough Freelancers Cough*
HAha..Ballers..
March 26th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
74Oprea still rocks once you figure out it.. it free well if you know how to look for registioon codes at an Warez site. I tried firefox dont care for it.
April 2nd, 2005 at 9:38 am
75‘lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″.’ can’t do it.right click acts on the entries.so not able to name it nglayout.intialpaint.delay to 0.
can anyone tell how they have done.
thks in advance
April 26th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
76#41 & #42 > I guess it’s network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server. I just set it to 10, and now I’m able to download more than 2 at a time.
:-)
April 26th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
77#37 > Anyways, (almost) every firewall violates the TCP/IP protocol by not answering hackers, rules exist to be broken. At least some of them do.
May 2nd, 2005 at 8:39 pm
78how can i delete one string if i set it wrong instead for integer? pleasy explain clearlyer!!!
please!