Firefox Tips n Tricks

Speeding up Firefox Startup time

The longer startup time is the result of a bug, or more accurately, a lack of foresight, in the implementation of a security feature. Firefox 3.5 requires randomness for security purposes, and on Windows, it gets this by scanning temporary folders. This is a disk-intensive process, and on computers with lots of temporary files and folders, it causes delays in startup.

The first thing that you should do is to get the latest Mozilla Firefox at the Get Firefox Homepage. This is to ensure you get the latest bug fixes and enhancements. Then, you can apply these tricks.

Clearing temporary files and folders generated by Internet Explorer

To do it the quick way

• Open Control Panel
• Go to Internet Options.
• Under Browsing History, press Delete button.
• Ensure that all options are checked and hit Delete.

If you would like, you can manually clear the files by following the instructions below.

In Windows XP

Empty the following folders in Windows XP:

• C:Documents and Settings*user*Local SettingsHistory
• C:Documents and Settings*user*Local SettingsTemporary Internet Files
• C:Documents And Settings*user*Local SettingsTemp
• C:Documents And Settings*user*Recent

where *user* is your username.

Amending the target Path

• Right click on Firefox shortcut
• Select Properties
• Switch to Shortcut tab
• In the target box add /Prefetch:1 to the end of the line so it looks like this: c:pathtoFirefoxfirefox.exe /Prefetch:1
• Click OK. Then open your firefox .

Tweaking pipelining

Normally Firefox 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. Just like the concept of Internet download manager which offer faster file download speed.

1. Type about:config into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

• network.http.pipelining
  • Set its value to “true”
• network.http.proxy.pipelining
  • Set its value to “true”
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
  • Set its value to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

2. Right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer.

• Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay
  • Set its value to “0″.

This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

Related articles

• How To Run Firefox Stable, Beta, Aurora And Nightly Simultaneously (ghacks.net)
• Want a Faster Firefox? Pale Moon 6.0 Can Help (pcworld.com)