Help me speed up Mozilla Firefox

[xvxdarkknightxvx]

Well, I heeded the warnings of my friends and the US government and stopped using IE. I liked IE, especially the Google toolbar, but that's beside the point. How come Firefox seems so laggy sometimes? The "back" button is slow to work, which is one of the things I liked about IE. It takes a longer time to load up than IE, and it also gives me strange errors. When I go to my "General Questions" bookmark without first having the browser open, it gives me an error saying it can't load the page. It loads it anyway, but I don't need one more step between me and knowledge. It also says that certain sites are down when they aren't; this being verified by me trying them in IE. Also, it seems like it "reloads" things more often than IE. By "reload", I don't mean refreshing, but actually having to load simple graphics that should be stored in the cache. I doubled the cache size, but it doesn't seem like it's helping. Another thing that bugs me is not being able to right click the bookmarks. Why did they do this? Any tips you can give me for improving everything?

[SmackFu]

The error on a bookmark seems like the same problem described here (http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/8536). The solution given is:1. Open Explorer
2. Select Tools and then Folder Options
3. Select the File Types tab
4. Select Extension: (NONE), File Type: HyperText Transfer Protocol
5. Click Advanced toward the bottom of the window
6. In the Edit File Type window, select open and click Edit
7. Clear the DDE message box (which should contain "%1" or similar)
8. Click OK, Click OK

[factorial]

This guy (http://scragz.com/tech/mozilla/build-info) makes optimized builds of Firefox that are supposed to run faster. I have not tried them, myself.

I do know that my virus scanner makes Firefox take a very long time to start while IE starts almost instantly. If you have a virus scanner running this could be adding to the lag.

[xvxdarkknightxvx]

Great, thanks. Now I just need to fix my other problems.

[CurtC]

I'm missing something here. You say:When I go to my "General Questions" bookmark without first having the browser open...How do you select a bookmark before the browser is opened?

[Algernon]

I don't recall where I got the following speed tweak from, but here it is...

Type "about:config" (without the quotes) into the address bar of Firefox. You'll see a bunch of settings in alphabetical order. Scroll down and you'll find the following settings listed, though with different numbers. (If they're are not there, add them as new settings.) Double click on a line to change it. Set them as follows:

network.http.max-connections, 128
network.http.max-connections-per-server, 48
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy, 24
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server, 12

Close and restart Mozilla. Type about:config in the address bar again to make sure the settings changed.

My response time was pretty good to begin with, so I haven't really noticed a difference.

[Algernon]

Ignore that mysterious and inadvertant underscore in my post above. Simply type "about:config" into the address line (without quotes).

[Algernon]

Damn. There it is again. I swear I never typed the underscore. :confused:

[Grey]

Nothing much to add except that you should get the google bar extention. It's just like the IE version.

Go to Tools>Options and select Extentions.

[SmackFu]

How do you select a bookmark before the browser is opened?I figured he meant a bookmark on the desktop, which I think is technically a shortcut.

[xvxdarkknightxvx]

I'm missing something here. You say:How do you select a bookmark before the browser is opened?
Sorry for the ambiguity. I meant that I go to the Start menu > Favorites (you can add Favorites to the Start Menu by going to Toolbar settings) > General Questions. This used to open IE, but sicne I have Mozilla as default, it opens a Firefox browser.

[xvxdarkknightxvx]

I don't recall where I got the following speed tweak from, but here it is...



My response time was pretty good to begin with, so I haven't really noticed a difference.
Awesome. I can tell the difference already. Thanks for all the help, guys.

[Excalibre]

I don't recall where I got the following speed tweak from, but here it is...



My response time was pretty good to begin with, so I haven't really noticed a difference.
I ran into a forum posting including this tweak (with others). Apparently it increases the load on the webservers you're connecting to (I don't know anything about HTTP, so I can't attest to this) and several server owners were quite peeved at the notion. So it may be bad manners.

[factorial]

network.http.max-connections, 128
network.http.max-connections-per-server, 48
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy, 24
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server, 12
If it wasn't evident, the tweak is allowing Firefox to make more connections to each server, thus downloading the site faster. (For example, simultaneously downloading the images and the HTML.)
I ran into a forum posting including this tweak (with others). Apparently it increases the load on the webservers you're connecting to (I don't know anything about HTTP, so I can't attest to this) and several server owners were quite peeved at the notion. So it may be bad manners.I know you aren't necessarily espousing this view, but here is my take on the matter. The server operator can already take advantage of the options in 99% of server software to limit the number of connections provided to any one user of the website. If they are not taking advantage of this option, they are implying "please download the site as fast as you would like." Thus, they should not be peeved when you attempt to do so. This tweak to Mozilla does not circumvent any measures taken on the server side to limit the bandwidth dedicated to a user.