Speed Up Firefox: Ways and Tricks

The Firefox browser is the third most popular in the world. Users love it for its simple interface, high speed and expandability. For him, almost 200 thousand various add-ons have been released, which make it possible to increase functionality. However, not everyone knows about the presence in it of an editor that allows you to configure settings that are not represented in the standard settings. In this article, we'll talk about how to speed up Firefox, using its hidden capabilities.

About: config

The system of addresses starting with about: and based on the URI specification is used in different browsers to display version information, functions and settings not included in the graphical user interface. Quite widely known about about: blank . Its indication in the settings as the initial result leads to the fact that when you start the browser will always display a blank web page.

Mozilla supports the use of about thirty pages with the identifier about:. The configuration editor of the Firefox browser is invoked using the internal address about: config . It is entered, like any other URI, in the combined address bar. The first thing you will see after entering it will be a warning about the consequences of the changes you make. Agreeing, you will press the button "I take the risk!".

The next window contains several hundred settings that are responsible for all aspects of the browser, including how to speed up Mozilla Firefox. All the parameters given in this section are divided into three groups:

• Logical (boolean);
• Numeric (integer);
• String (string).

Double clicking on the selected configuration line opens the edit form for numeric and string values, or for changing the logical to the opposite. Below we will consider specific examples that allow improving the interaction of the "fiery fox" with the hardware of the computer and working with network protocols for transferring information.

Working with memory

New pages in the process of Internet surfing can be opened both in a new window or tab, and in the current one. The browser remembers the last page transitions and caches them into memory. In other words, in the main memory of the computer, "snapshots" of the visited Internet pages are created, which, when you press the "Back" button, are loaded back. Thus, it is possible to quickly navigate.

Let's see how to speed up the work of Firefox, changing the parameters of its work with the computer's RAM. The settings for the history of the current Internet session are governed by two numerical parameters in the browser.sessionhistory block:

• Max_total_viewers is responsible for caching previously visited pages. If you have broadband Internet access with the default "-1", you can change it to "0". The page will not be saved in RAM, but thanks to a quick connection, pressing the "Back" button will open almost immediately.
• Max_entries stores the successively visited sites in memory. By default it stores 50 pages. It is enough to reduce it to 5. In this case, five successive transitions are made in the memory by internal links of the site.

Work with the disk

The presence of a fast solid-state drive in the computer allows you to redefine the location in which the cache will be stored. Thus, we accelerate Firefox, while removing the load from RAM when the browser window is inactive. Speed of operation SSD compensates for the time delay when extracting open pages from the virtual hard disk memory. This parameter will require the creation of a new logical variable config.trim_on_minimize . There are two possible values for this parameter:

• True . In this case, the data when the browser is minimized is transferred from the RAM to the hard disk in the virtual memory sector.
• False . All data is stored in RAM.

The following setting allows you to reduce the amount of data that the browser constantly writes to the hard disk in case of a sudden shutdown. The parameter is called browser.sessionstore.interval , and its default value is 15 seconds. At the end of this time interval, the current session data is saved, and the contents of the recovery file are overwritten. The volume of recorded information depends on the saturation of the site with "heavy" design elements and can reach tens of gigabytes per day.

This parameter is numeric and is specified in milliseconds. It is possible to increase it to 30 minutes, which in the accepted measurement units is 1800000. As a result, we speed up Firefox by reducing the data flow that it constantly exchanges with the hard disk.

Network Protocols

The above methods dealt with the interaction with the hardware of the computer. Let's see how to speed up the Mozilla Firefox browser by changing some parameters of working with the network. The logical configuration of network.prefetch-next is responsible for preloading the site most likely for a user to click on a link from the page being viewed.

Firefox automatically loads the data of the forecasted transition into the cache, thereby causing unnecessary traffic consumption. This function is disabled by replacing the default value of True with False. In this way, you reduce the current network load, while the speed of the page display with a fast connection will practically not change.

Animating tabs

Animating the tab bar when you open or close new items looks nice, but does not carry any payload. The logical parameter browser.tabs.animate is responsible for enabling and disabling this visual effect. By default, each new tab causes a "slip" effect on the panel that contains it.

By switching the value from True to False, you speed up Firefox by instantly displaying new tabs. After application, the setting works immediately, without requiring the browser to restart. Even a few open tabs allow you to evaluate the effect of changing this parameter, and if their number is large enough, it becomes even more noticeable.

Gif-animation

When surfing from useful content can be distracting presence on the gif-animation page. Constantly playing looped videos attracts attention. Speed up Firefox by changing the rules for the behavior of hyphas on visited sites. For the display mode, the string parameter image.animation_mode answers .

The setting has three fixed values:

• Normal - is set by default and corresponds to the constant playback of the animation;
• Once - the animated picture is shown in motion only once;
• None - a complete turn off effect, hypha looks like a static photo.

Changes appear instantly, without restarting the browser.

Scrolling Pages

Speed up Firefox by changing the scrolling parameter of web pages. In comparison with other browsers, the scrolling of the "fiery fox" looks rather slow. For its speed is responsible for setting mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount . This numeric parameter is set to 5 by default. By increasing it, you can adjust the number of lines scrolled while moving with the mouse wheel.

Changing this setting does not require restarting the browser, and you can quickly find a convenient value. As a result, you adjust the speed of scrolling pages to your requirements and make their browsing more convenient.

Final Recommendations

In this article we told how to speed up the Firefox browser using configuration settings. Do not apply all the recommendations in a row and hope that this will be an ideal option. First you need to determine what exactly is the limiting factor on your computer, and only then adjust the necessary parameters. In this case, making minimal changes, you can achieve the maximum performance increase.