How to Make Firefox Faster

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The performance of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser is dictated by a library of preferences in the application's "prefs.js" and "user.js" files. These settings may be altered using the browser's "about:config" menu, allowing you to tweak certain settings related to Firefox's transfer protocol. To make Firefox load webpages more quickly, you must adjust the application's pipelining configurations. The pipelining configurations relate to the way Firefox downloads regions of a website. By increasing the maximum requests, you are enabling Firefox to pull data through more pipelines than are enabled by the program's default settings.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Firefox
• Knowledge of Computers

1. Launch Firefox, type "about:config" in the URL field, press enter and click "I'll Be Careful, I Promise!" on the warning screen. Although Firefox displays a warning regarding the use of the about:config screen, you only put the program at risk if you change settings that you aren't familiar with or that stray from instructions provided by trusted sources.

2. Type "pipelining" in the "Filter" text field.

3. Double-click "network.http.pipelining" to change the value to "True."

4. Double-click "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests," type "8" in the text field and press "Enter."

5. Double-click "network.http.pipelining.ssl" to change the value to "True."

6. Double-click "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to change the value to "True."

Tips & Warnings

• Avoid making additional changes to the about:config menu without a clear understanding of what they do or without instructions from a trusted source. Making certain changes may create bugs or glitches in the software.

References

• Techfragments.com: The 12 Best Firefox About:Config Performance Tweaks
• Mozillazine.org: About:Config