Life Begun

We all know that Firefox is the rockingest web browser ever to exist. Well follow these steps to make it even more cool by speeding up its gizzards as well as speeding up how you use it! Now some of these things are easy enough to do like installing addons, while some of them such as messing with the configuration might put you into territory you aren’t familiar with. Press on and you won’t be disappointed because your Firefox will surf at the speed of light after these tweaks!

Everything here is designed to save you time!

Photo by Flod

 

Speed up Common Firefox Tasks With These 11 Sleek Addons

FastestFox – speeds up common tasks like downloading, search, looking at your favourites etc.

Adblock Plus – lets you surf fast by blocking all the popups and ads so you don’t have to scroll through them. This is a must have addon for any regular web user!

Flashblock – blocks Flash movies. If you want to watch them, simply click!

Fireform – so you don’t have to manually fill out another online form. This little addon does it automatically at the click of a button.

SkipScreen – is fantastic if you share a lot of files via sites and networks that force you to sit through their advertising before you can download your file. Install this plugin and you can get to your file straight away. Watch the video demo here.

IMacros – is great if you want to record repetitious actions that you do in Firefox and have it repeat automatically.

AddThis – makes your bookmarking and social sharing of sites easier and faster straight from your browser.

DownloadThemAll – The first and only download manager and accelerator for Firefox – need we say more?

All-In-One Gestures – allows you to use your mouse for common keyboard commands.

Places Cleaner – cleans up your Firefox databases making browsing faster by deleting the browsing history in the memory that you rarely use (you can change the defaults).

Better Cache – alters the caching functionality to make it uniform and controllable by you.

 

Photo by Garrett LeSage

 

Speed up Firefox’s Core With These Config Tweeks

Now let’s take a look at a few ways to automatically speed up Firefox. This involves changing the default configuration settings. Don’t worry, it’s not too difficult and should only take you a few minutes!

Open a new tab and write about:config in the URL window.

In the filter section copy and paste this:

browser.history_expire_days_min 

The number should currently be 90. You need to change it to 7 so that the browser history expires every week instead of every 3 months.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers

The number should be –1. You should change that to 1. This limits how many pages are stored in the memory and means they won’t have to be re-loaded for certain browser functions.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

network.http.max-connections

The default should be 30 so change it to 90. This triples the amount of connections your browser can make.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

network.http.max-connections-per-server

This should say 15 so change it up to 20. That increases the amount of server connections your browser can make. Probably poor form to put it above 20.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server

Should be set at 6 by default. Change it up to 10. No higher.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

network.http.pipelining

Should be set at false by default so change it to true. This allows multiple requests to be sent to a server even if no responses have yet been received. Help with page load times when it is supported by the server.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

network.http.proxy.pipelining

Default is set to false so change it to true. Allows you to use pipelining with a proxy server.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Should be set at 4 by default so double it to 8. Sets request number when pipelining.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

network.http.request.max-start-delay

Change the default from 10 to 0.

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In the filter section copy and paste this:

network.prefetch-next

Change from true to false.

Disables preloading of links on a webpage thus speeding up loading.

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Now this lot should get your installation of Firefox pumping along a lot faster than you’re used to. Certainly these are all things I try to do to any new install of Firefox that I get.