Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Hacks to Make Firefox Faster than Google Chrome

Posted: 15 May 2010 08:11 AM PDT

Google Chrome has now eclipsed Mozilla Firefox in the speed category. However, I still use Firefox as my main web browser because it is still better than Chrome in certain areas.

But just recently, I tried a few tweaks that significantly improved the speed of Firefox making it a little bit snappier than the latest version of Google Chrome when loading webpages.

Here are some of the things that I did that helps make Firefox somewhat faster than Chrome:

1. Type about:config into the Firefox URL/address bar and hit ENTER. You will be warned that you might void your warranty if you change some advanced settings, but just go on and trust me :-)

2. Inside the Firefox configuration page, scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining

Set their values to "true" by double-clicking each one of them.

3. Next up, find this entry:

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Double-click and set the value to 8.

4. Right-click anywhere inside the config page and select New --> Integer. Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set the value to "0″.

5. Right-click anywhere inside the config page and select New --> Integer. Name it content.notify.interval and set the value to "500000″.

6. Right-click anywhere inside the config page and select New --> Boolean. Name it content.notify.ontimer and set the value to "true″.

7. Right-click anywhere inside the config page and select New --> Integer. Name it content.switch.threshold and set the value to "250000″.

8. Right-click anywhere inside the config page and select New --> Boolean. Name it content.interrupt.parsing and set the value to "false″.

That's about it. You should be able to notice the speed improvement immediately after applying the above tweaks.

Disabling Firefox addons that you don't use often, blocking flash content, and using a lightweight theme will also help speed up Firefox.