Get the most out of Mozilla Firefox

Do you think your Firefox browser do its jobs slow or you want some cool enhancements to have a better web surfing experiences? If you think so, I'll show you some tricks to improve its browsing speed a little bit. I guess it's worth trying, don't you think? Here we go!!

Firstly, before we start changing the configurations, we should backup the Firefox registry, also we called Settings. You might not know how to do it. It's quite simple you just need to follow this. If you've done with the backup, let's get started. Type in "about:config" in the address bar and hit Enter.

1. Add more suggested URLs in the address bar drop-down lists

When you start typing in the address bar, you can see a drop-down list of suggested URLs. In some cases, you might want to have more than "12" suggestion ( Default is 12). You can easily make it by typing in "browser.urlbar.maxRichResults" in the 'Filter' box. The only one value will pop up then change the value into your desired number. (If you type in "-1", it'll be disabled).

• Preference Name - browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
Default Value       - 12
Modified Value    - any desired number (-1 will disabled the feature)

2. Show/Hide Close buttons on tabs

Sometimes, you might accidentally click Close button while you're working. So, you might wonder you can hide the button. It's easy. Type in "browser.tabs.closeButtons" and edit the value into

• 0 - To show the Close button in the tab you're currently working.
• 1 - To show the Close button in all tabs.
• 2 - To hide the Close button in all tabs. 

3. Lower the Physical Memory usage during Minimizing the browser

This one is for Windows users. When you minimize, this trick will send Firefox process to your virtual memory and free up your physical memory for process to use. During minimizing the browser, about 10 MB of your physical memory will be freed and it’ll be taken back the amount it needs when maximized. The preference name for this trick does not exist so we need to create it.

Right-Click on the search result pane and select 'New' and then 'Boolean'. Type in "config.trim_on_minimize" when the 'Enter the Preference Name' box is popped up. Then, select the value "true" when the 'Enter boolean value' box appears and press OK.

• Preference Value - config.trim_on_minimize
Preference Value - true

4. Open Search Box Results in New Tab

When you use the search box on the top right corner of the browser, the search results will be displayed in the currently active tab. So, you might want the search results not to interfere with your works. You just need to do a trick. You need to change

• Preference Name - browser.search.openintab
Default Value       - falseModified Value    - true 

5. Disable the Session Restore Function

By default, Firefox automatically save your browsing sessions so that if the browser crashes, it can restore all the tabs you've opened. That seems to be a nice feature but sometimes it might find annoying. To disable it, type in "browser.sessionstore.enabed" in the Filter box and change its value from true to false.

• Preference Name - browser.sessionstore.enabled
Default Value       - trueModified Value     - false

6. Adjust the Session Restore Saving Frequency

By default, the interval of the Session Restore Saving Frequency is 10 secs, you want to keep the session restore feature but reduce the saving frequency, you can simply change the value of "browser.sessionstore.interval" to be larger to reduce the frequency or smaller to increase the frequency of session restore frequency.

• Preference Name - browser.sessionstore.interval
Default Value - 10000(in msec, equivalent to 10 secs)
Modified Value - set it to desired value (60000 means 1 minute)

7. Speed up Your Browser

This tweaks require several changes. Firstly, we're going to modify the HTTP Pipelining setting. HTTP Pipelining is the technique that multiple requests will be sent out without waiting from the corresponding responses from the server.Change the following preference setting.

1. Preference Name - network.http.pipelining
Default Value       - falseModified Value    - true
2. Preference Name - network.http.pipelining.ssl
Default Value       - false
Modified Value    - true
3. Preference Name - network.http.proxy.pipelining
Default Value       - false
Modified Value    - true
4. Preference Name - network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Default Value       - 4Modified Value    - Greater than 4 but not more than 8

Then, we're going to increase the number of simultaneous connections to the server.

1. Preference Name - network.http.max-connections
Default Value       - 30
Modified Value    - 96
2. Preference Name - network.http.max-connections-per-server
Default Value       - 15Modified Value    - 32

And, you need to create a new integer Preference entry with

• Preference Name - nglayout.initialpaint.delay
Preference Value  - 0

This will make the browser to response immediately on the information it receives without waiting for any lapse of time. Your Firefox will be faster after those tweaks.

8. Adjust Script Execution Time

In Firefox 3, the scripts are allowed to respond in 10 seconds. After 10 secs, the browser will give an unresponsive script warning. If you normally are a user of slow internet connection, you will end up receiving those warning messages so you would want to increase the script execution time. To increase the script execution time, type in "dom.max_script_run_time" at the Filter box and increase the value.

• Preference Name - dom.max_script_run_time
Default Value       - 10
Modified Value    - any value larger than 10

9. Adjust the Amount of Disk Cache

 When Firefox finish loading a page, it will also cache the page into the hard disk so that it will not need to be downloaded again if you ask for the page again. So, it's simple that the larger the cache size, the more pages it can cache. Before adjusting the cache size, we need to enable the browser disk caching option.

• Preference Name - browser.cache.disk.enable
Preference Value - true
• Preference Name - browser.cache.disk.capacity
Default Value       - 51200 (in KB)
Modified Value

1. 0 - disabling the Disk Cache
2. any value less than 51200 reduces the Disk Cache
3. any value greater than 51200 increases the Disk Cache

10. Adjust the Offline Cache

 If you usually don't get internet access most of the time, you might want to increase offline cache so that you can work offline. In Firefox 3, data from supported offline Web apps can be cache up to 500 MB. You can change the amount of cache to suit your works.

• Preference Name - browser.cache.offline.capacity
Default Value       - 512000
Modified Value    - any value greater than 512000 will increase the cache