More and more of people’s daily operations on a computer are being spent on the internet these days rather than applications on the desktop. with so much time now being spent in the browser it has almost become more important that you have a fast browser rather than a fast PC.

Now, if you feel your browser is sluggish in performance and limiting your browsing experience, read on to try out some tricks and tweaks for optimizing the Firefox browser. We will provide tips for optimizing other browsers in coming days.

Optimizing Firefox for best performance using Firefox settings and Addons:

Tip 1. Starting Firefox faster: Right-click the Firefox shortcut and choose properties. Now add /Prefetch:1 at the very end of the target path and click on OK. (Like so “C:\Program Files\Firefox\firefox.exe” /Prefetch:1)

Tip 2. Make sure you are using the latest, stable release of Firefox by checking for updates.

Tip 3. Set your homepage to blank, use a basic theme and keep the add-ons/extensions to a minimum. (Tools > Options) and (Tools > Add-ons)

Tip 4. Clean up your bookmarks every now and then. (Bookmarks > Organize)

Tip 5. Set default applications to handle different file types like .jpg, .zip etc. (Tools > Options > Applications)

Tip 6. Save your downloads to one folder automatically and turn off the Downloads history. (Tools > Options > Main / Privacy)

Tip 7. Reduce history size to about 10 days or choose to clear it every time you exit the browser. (Tools > Options > Privacy)

Tip 8. Remove search engines that aren’t in use. (Go To the Search Engine bar on the top right of the browser, click the search engine icon, click ‘Manage Search Engines’ and then remove the search engines you do not use)

Tip 9. Use performance enhancing extensions like FasterFox and add-ons to block annoying pop-up or flash ads on websites.

Tip 10. Turn off smooth scrolling and spell check. (Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Accessibility)

Optimizing Firefox for best performance by modifying the Firefox core settings (advanced):

Tip 1. Basic optimization techniques:

In the address bar type “about:config”(with no quotes),click on “I’ll be careful,I promise!”.

Create an Integer by right clicking on anywhere of the window,and select New/Integer.The name is”content.notify.backoffcount” (no quotes) and value is 5.

Create another Integer:

Name: nglayout.initialpaint.delay

Value: 0

Tip 2. Optimize browser history: In “about:config” window, search for “browser.history_expire_days” in Filter area. Change its value to 7. This will change how many days history will be stored.

search “browser.history_expire_days_min”, change its value to 7 (or an other number).

search “browser.history_expire_sites” , change its value so the max number of sites stored in history will be changed.

Tip 3. Enable speed menus: Create new Interger(in “about:config” window):

Name: ui.submenuDelay

value: 0

Tip 4. Disable IPv6: In “about:config” window ,search “network.dns.disableIPv6″ in Filter and change its value to True.

Tip 5. Enlarge browser cache space: Assuming you have a 2GB RAM, you can enlarge your cache.In “about:config” window, right click on anywhere of the window,navigate to New/Integer. Type in name : browser.cache.memory.capacity,value:32768.

Tip 6. Use TraceMonkey JavaScript engine: In “about:config” window,search “javascript.options.jit.chrome” and “javascript.options.jit.content”, change their values to True.

Tip 7. To reduce Firefox’s memory consumption :

Step 1. Open a new tab. Type “about:config” without quotes into the address bar and hit enter/click Go.

Step 2. Right-click anywhere, select New, then Integer. In the dialog prompt that appears, type: browser.cache.memory.capacity

Step 3. 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.

Tip 8. Optimizing Firefox for broadband connections: By default, Firefox is optimized for dial up connection. You can change the browser settings so that it can be used to browse with DSL or cable or other broadband links. In order to change the settings, you first need to edit the configuration file. Type about:config in the address bar and press enter. Then enter network.http in the filter field and enter the following changes.

Step 1. Double click on ‘network.http.pipelining’ and set the value to true.

Step 2. Double click on network.http.pipelining.maxrequests’ and in the dialog box enter a higher value than the default value 4. 15 is an ideal value.

Step 3. Double click on ‘network.http.proxy.pipelining’ and set the value to true.

Step 4. Right click on the page and select New->Integer. Enter nglayout.initialpaint.delay and then click ok. Set the integer value of this to 0 and click ok.

This article listed a large number of tips that you can chose to try to make Firfox run faster. You can chose to try them all or you can just try a few. They should all help.

As always, please feel free to give us feedback on our articles and give us recommendations on articles you would like to see.

The ReviverSoft Team