How to Speed Up Mozilla Firefox
Posted on June 11, 2008 at 5:29 am
SlowFirefox-Itis. n. The thing that happens to Firefox over time. Symptoms include decline in speed and efficiency.
So, you’ve turned on your computer, clicked on Mozilla Firefox, and then….you waited. “Why,” you say, “Is firefox slower now?”
Well, we’re here to fix that problem! Whether it’s just because you want to make Firefox faster than it already is (which is wickedly fast anyway), or because you want to fix your declining speed, you’ve come to the right place.
Please note that if you do not have firefox as your default browser, I advise you to get it immediately. It is faster and more efficient than every browser out there. It is obtainable at mozilla.org/firefox.
If you use all the methods put together, you should be able to see a speed increase of at least 50% on Firefox.
Method 1:
Okay, well. To begin with, I will tell you how to increase your bandwidth speed by 20%.
Windows actually reserves 20% of your bandwidth for purposes I will never know. I’ll show you in a few easy steps, how to reclaim it.
Step 1:
Click “Start“, and go on “Run“, and type in “gpedit.msc“. You should see this:
Step 2: You should see a thing called ‘Group Policy’ open.
Step 3: Double-Click on “Computer Configuration”.
Step 4: Double-Click on “Administrative Templates”
Step 5: Double-Click on “Network”
Step 6: Double-Click on “QOS Packet Scheduler”
Step 7: Double-Click on “Limit Reservable Bandwidth”
Step 8: Check the box that says ‘Enabled’ and change Bandwidth Limit (%) to 0.
You got 20% increase on your bandwidth speed! Easy, was it not?
Method 2:
The next way is to modify the amount of requests can accept at once. By changing it to a very high number (30+), you should see a massive rise in speed.
So, to this, I’ll put it in a few easy to follow steps.
Step 1: Load up Mozilla Firefox. Now, in the address bar, type “about:config” (Without the ” ” of course). You should see this:
Step 2: Scroll down the page until you find browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs, and then double-click it. This will set it to “True”.
Step 3: Next, scroll down look for the line that says network.http.pipelining, and double-click this. This will set this to “True”.
Step 4: Now, scroll down and look for network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Once you have done this, double-click it, and a box will pop up. Change the number to 60.
Close Firefox. You will now experience a 10% to 40% increase in speed.
Method 3:
Finally, the last way to increase your speed, is by using an add-on for Firefox, called FasterFox. It’s increased my speed greatly. Although, my friend, who owns a weak computer, said it doesn’t work well for him, so if your computer is weak, you may want to stop here.
FasterFox basically increases your speed by recycling all the idle bandwidth not doing anything, and makes it load your pages faster.
You can get FasterFox at http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/.
Install it, and your done! Hopefully, you now have a faster running Firefox! Any other ideas, post a comment!
This is a guest post by Anthony Duong, a tech enthusiant.
» Filed Under Computer Tips
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Comments
34 Responses to “How to Speed Up Mozilla Firefox”
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Gary S Says:
Thanks for the tips, my Firefox browsing is definitely faster. Much appreciated!
January 10th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Forget all these tweaks…just wait for a few more days…when FF is to release its brand new FF3…with super amazing features…that can make browsing so lovely! Dump IE!
There is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.
Neither mine shows it!
There is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.
other ideas = 1.increase cache. 2.Uninstall unwanted addons.
It’s funny that we have to tweak in order to speed up firefox. I didn’t upgrade to Vista nor did I upgrade from IE 6 to IE 7 and IE 6 loads faster than firefox on my PC.
XP works, don’t for Vista
ya iam using xp but here is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.
Cool! I thought the only way to speed up is to add more RAM.
There is no such file named “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
I believe that on some versions of Firefox, instead of “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs” there is “network.http.proxy.pipelining”.
So instead, set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true” instead.
Sorry I did not specify this.
AnthonyD.
I use this only
network.http.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
thanks
I tried step 4 for speeding up Firefox and found an immediate improvement. Thanks for the tip. However, I could not find the other two paths :
browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs
network.http.pipelining
Any idea why they are missing ?
Gads
Most of this information is wrong.
The QOS reservation does not affect the speed or available bandwidth unless you are actively using a QOS aware application (like VOIP) and the server and network is also QOS aware (in which case you need it).
http://support.microsoft.com/d.....6&
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests controls the number of requests FireFox will queue at one time to a server and has nothing to do with accepting requests. Also, FireFox only accepts a maximum of 8 and increasing it up to 8 may actually slow you down or break some web sites:
http://newtechheroes.com/node/18
Turning on pipelining may help some sites, how much depends on a lot of variables.
I think i like this article, at least i learnt something from this site
if you can’t find “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs” in about config, just right click to any area of config page then select new>boolean.. you are then prompted to enter the name, just put “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”.. enter then select yes..DONE!
This to increase surfing speed using mozilla firefox:::
Type about:config on addr bar;
set
network.http.maxconnections=60
network.http.maxconnectonperserver=30.
network.http.pipelining=true
network.http.pipeliningmaxrequest=60.
NNNNNNNNNNjoy!!
We’ll needs speed.
theres no browser.tabs.showsinglewindowsmodesperfs
but im enjoying my speed
xD
browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs does not exist on my Firefox config. Assume I would need to add it somehow?
How do you do this in XP HOME ?
gpedit.msc = NOT HTERE :’(.
THanx
There is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.
There is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.
Win XP Home doesn’t have the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc), only XP Pro has it.
It is true that if you do these things your firefox will be faster, but it will slow your animation games, like in Facebook and you can’t play well… I recommend fasterfox.
Yes, I’ve tried fasterfox and it has sped up my browsing in Firefox overall! Thanks!
Awesome! I was surprised to see that Firefox actually loaded web pages faster!
Please send me process to increase my Internet and Firefox speed! I need more tips because mine is very slow.
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.
just make one, right click -> new -> string -> browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs set value to true
browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs was not there !!!!
There is no appearance of line:- “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs” in my “about:config” list???
if you can’t find “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs” in about config, just right click to any area of config page then select new>boolean.. you are then prompted to enter the name, just put “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”.. enter then select yes..DONE!
I will be sharing your website on Twitter – many thanks! Firefox is running a lot faster now.
I really do not like when you close of Firefox then you need to open it again quickly, you get that pop-up saying you cannot. Hope this helps that!