If you type about:config into the URL bar of FireFox, you will be able to see and change the internal configuration settings. There are many, and here we highlight the ones that will affect the speed with which FireFox finds and displays pages.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. This is the advanced configuration for FireFox.
- Scroll down and find the entry called network.dns.disableIPv6. Double-click it to change the value from "false" to "true". This stops the browser from searching for IPv6 website entries (which are only used in special circumstances, and currently only waste time waiting for a response to time out).
- Next, look for the following entries:
- network.http.pipelining
- network.http.proxy.pipelining
- network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser 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.
- Alter the entries as follows:
- Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
- Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
- Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
- Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. In some cases this behaviour may lengthen the overall time it takes to display a complicated or badly-designed page, but it will appear more responsive.
If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages 2-3 times faster now.