Yes, firefox is already pretty damn fast but did you know that you can tweak it and improve the speed even more?
That's the beauty of this program being open source.
Here's what you do:
In the URL bar, type “about:config” and press enter. This will bring up the configuration “menu” where you can change the parameters of Firefox.
Note that these are what I’ve found to REALLY speed up my Firefox significantly - and these settings seem to be common among everybody else as well. But these settings are optimized for broadband connections - I mean with as much concurrent requests we’re going to open up with pipelining… lol… you’d better have a big connection.
Double Click on the following settins and put in the numbers below - for the true / false booleans - they’ll change when you double click.
Code:
browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs – true
network.http.max-connections – 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server – 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy – 8
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server – 4
network.http.pipelining – true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – 100
network.http.proxy.pipelining – true
network.http.request.timeout – 300
One more thing… Right-click somewhere on that screen and add a 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. Since you’re broadband - it shouldn’t have to wait.
Now you should notice you’re loading pages MUCH faster now!
Everybody’s favorite open-source browser, Firefox, is great right out of the box. And by adding some of the awesome extensions available out there, the browser just gets better and better.
But look under the hood, and there are a bunch of hidden (and some not-so-secret) tips and tricks available that will crank Firefox up and pimp your browser. Make it faster, cooler, more efficient.
Get to be a Jedi master with the following cool Firefox tricks.
1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View – Toolbars – Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.
2) Smart keywords. If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.
3) Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):
- Spacebar (page down)
- Shift-Spacebar (page up)
- Ctrl+F (find)
- Alt-N (find next)
- Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
- Ctrl+T (new tab)
- Ctrl+K (go to search box)
- Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
- Ctrl+= (increase text size)
- Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
- Ctrl-W (close tab)
- F5 (reload)
- Alt-Home (go to home page)
4) Auto-complete. This is another keyboard shortcut, but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there – like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.
5) Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:
- Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
- Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
- Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)
6) Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:
- Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
- Shift-scroll down (previous page)
- Shift-scroll up (next page)
- Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
- Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
- Middle click on a tab (closes tab)
7) Delete items from address bar history. Firefox’s ability to automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just don’t want those URLs to show up (I won’t ask why). Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited with those letters in them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.
8) User chrome. If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit complicated to get into here, but
check out this tutorial.
9) Create a user.js file. Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder (see
this to find out where the profile folder is) and see
this example user.js file that you can modify. Created by
techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of the things you can do in its comments.
10) about:config. The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s address bar. See Mozillazine’s
about:config tips and screenshots.
11) Add a keyword for a bookmark. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.
12) Speed up Firefox. If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:
- Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
- Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
- Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
- Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
- Also, 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.
13) Limit RAM usage. If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.
14) Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized. This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it’s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.
15) Move or remove the close tab button. Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:
- 0: Display a close button on the active tab only
- 1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
- 2:Don’t display any close buttons
- 3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)
Use the Firefox browser :
If you type about:config in address bar of firefox, it will open its configuration page, that allows to change a lot of settings.
Here I'm presenting some settings, that can be configured. These tweaks have been tested on high speed networks and cable, they might need to be tweaked for slower connections.
You can follow any of these two steps to config your browser:
- Use the about:config screen which lets you add, modify or reset values or
- Manually add all of these hacks to the prefs.js.
Option 1:
Type about:config at the location/url bar, this will list all current references, and you can change the settings listed below.
Option 2:
-
Exit out of the browser completely, because if you don't close the browser, it'll overwrite the settings to default.
-
Find your prefs.js file (usually in Drive:\Documents and Settings\USER_NAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\... directory in Windows XP).
-
Backup your prefs.js file.
-
Ccopy and paste the hacks listed below at the BOTTOM of the file.
-
Save the prefs.js file and restart your browser .
<---- Begin copy selection Below this line ----> // Performance
// This will allow Firefox to maintain it GUI memory so that the browser window
user_pref("config.trim_on_minimize", false);
// Specify the amount of memory cache:
// -1 = determine dynamically (default), 0 = none, n = memory capacity in kilobytes
// If you have the memory to spare, enabling this will run things a little smoother
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536); //<-- thus equal about 64 megs, drop down to less if you can't spare the RAM
// Remove painting delay when loading pages
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0); // Default is 250
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true); // Turn on timer-based reflow management
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 100); // Sets the allowed time between reflows in microseconds
// Set the number of reflows to do before waiting for the rest of the page to arrive
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 200);
// Other Tweaks
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 8191);
// Enable Improve pipelining:
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.firstrequest", true); // Default is false
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8); // Default is 4
// Increase Multi-Threaded Downloading performance
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 96); // Default is 24 <-- Use this for modems
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 32); // Default is 8 <-- Use this for modems
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 24); // Default is 4 <-- Use this for modems
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 12); // Default is 2 <-- Use this for modems
// Other Tweaks
user_pref("network.dnsCacheExpiration", 86400);
user_pref("network.dnsCacheEntries", 256);
user_pref("network.ftp.idleConnectionTimeout", 60);
user_pref("network.http.keep-alive.timeout", 30);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);
// Shows an error page instead of an error popup dialog, have been using this for a long time now
// found this useful if you load multiple pages at the same the dialog box actually holds up the browser
// using this will allow the other pages/elements to load for the rest of the pages
user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);
// Searching & Type Ahead
// Change to normal Google search:
user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=");
// Find As You Type Configuration:
// Set this pref to false to disable Find As You Type:
user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind", true);
// If you set this pref to true, typing can automatically start Find As You Type.
// If false (default), you must hit / (find text) or ' (find links) before your search.
user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart", true);
// Set this pref to false if you want Find As You Type to search normal text too:
user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly", false);
// Set this pref to true if you require that the link starts with the entered text:
user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind.startlinksonly", false);
// This is the time in milliseconds for the Find As You Type to stop watching for keystrokes:
user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout", 3000);
// User Interface
// Enable Bookmark Icons (I love this feature)
user_pref("browser.chrome.site_icons", true);
user_pref("browser.chrome.favicons", true);
user_pref("browser.chrome.load_toolbar_icons", 2);
// Do not Reuse Active Mozilla Browser, create a new one for email links etc.
user_pref("advanced.system.supportDDEExec", false);
// Disable Smooth Scrolling (found it faster to have this off)
user_pref("general.smoothScroll", false);
// Allows for faster mouse scrolling
user_pref("mousewheel.withnokey.numlines", 6); // Adjust this accordingly - Default = 1
user_pref("mousewheel.withnokey.sysnumlines", false); // This must be set to false in order to read previous line
user_pref("extensions.disabledObsolete", true);
user_pref("browser.display.show_image_placeholders", true);
// 1.0 Preview disables dynamic theme switching, this re-enables dynamic theme switching.
user_pref("extensions.dss.enabled", true);
// Mail & News
user_pref("mailnews.start_page.enabled", false);
// always send messages in MIME format (both plain- and HTML-formatted)
user_pref("mail.default_html_action", 3);
// The follow two are disabled for security reasons
user_pref("mailnews.message_display.allow.plugins", false);
user_pref("javascript.allow.mailnews"),
user_pref("alerts.totalOpenTime", 7000);
// Disable this for performance and security issues when reading emails
// Security issues? Yes especially with zlib, jpeg, png and all kinds of new attacks coming out,
// displaying images inline can no longer be taken for granted. This only affects attached graphics.
user_pref("mail.inline_attachments", false);
user_pref("mailnews.show_send_progress", false);
// Security
// Just to make sure, disable windows shell: protocol
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.shell", false);
// Show full path for plugin file on about:plugins page
// the full path was removed for security purposes, please keep that in mind
// Note: showing full paths can be a security risk only use when debugging.
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", false);
<---- End copy selection Above this line ---->
There are Three files, that can be edited to configure Firefox! user.js :-
Used to change various preferences.
userChrome.css :-
Used to change the appearance of the browser.
userContent.css :-
Used to change the appearance of web pages.
All these files are plain text files stored in your profile folder, and can be edited using a standard text editor, such as Notepad on Windows and gedit or kate on Linux.
The Profile Folder :
The profile folder is where Firefox saves all your settings and refers to a location on your hard drive.
On Windows XP/2000, the path is usually
%AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\, where xxxxxxxx is a random string of 3 characters. Just browse to
C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ and the rest should be obvious.
On Windows 95/98/Me, the path is usually
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\ .
On Linux, the path is usually
~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/ .
On MacOS X, the path is usually
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/ .
Firefox is capable of handling more than one user and thus, more than one profile. The path examples above refers to the default profile that is automatically created when you start Firefox for the first time. You can manage any number of profiles by using the Profile Manager.
%AppData% is a shorthand for the Application Data path on Windows 2000/XP. To use it, click Start > Run..., enter %AppData% and press Enter. You will be taken to the "real" folder, which is normally C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data.
user.js :-
This is the main preferences file for Firefox and is located in you profile folder. The file does not exist by default, so you need to create it before you can start adding your preferences.
userChrome.css :-
This file sets the display rules for various elements in the Firefox user interface and is located in the sub-folder called chrome in your profile folder. As with user.js, this file does not exist by default, so you need to create it before you can start adding your preferences. There's actually an example file that exists by default, called "userChrome-example.css". Basically, you can just rename that file by removing the "-example" part.
userContent.css :-
This file sets the display rules for web content and is located in the sub-folder called chrome in your profile folder. As with user.js, this file does not exist by default, so you need to create it before you can start adding your preferences. As with userChrome.css, there is an example file that exists by default, called "userContent-example.css". Basically, you can just rename that file by removing the "-example" part.
Mozilla Firefox Optimizer
To avoid getting timeout when viewing any web site in firefox:
Get this Mozilla Optimizer, it keeps the connection alive....
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Browser...Optimizer.shtml
Mozilla Optimizer improves the browsing speed in all browsers based on the
Gecko Rendering Engine (GRE) like Mozilla, Phoenix, Mozilla Firebird and
Mozilla Firefox as well as Netscape 6 and Netscape 7. All optimizations can be applied manually, this tool simply automates this procedure!
You can also do the same manually, by adding following lines (replace if they already exist) in
prefs.js file:
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 100);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 100000);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 4);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 2);
Firefox Tabbed Browsing Tips and Tricks
- Trick to Reveal More Tab/Window Options :
There are some hidden options for the Tabbed Browsing that will allow you to force links that open new windows to open in the current or a new tab. First, add the following code to your user.js file:
// Reveal more tab/window options:
user_pref("browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs", true);
Restart Firefox and go to Tools > Options... (Edit > Preferences... under Linux and MacOS X), select Advanced and click on Tabbed Browsing.
2.
Remove the close button from the tab bar :
You can remove the close button from the tab bar by adding the following code to your userChrome.css file:
/* Remove the close button on the tab bar */
.tabs-closebutton {
display: none !important;
}
You can still close tabs by right clicking on them and select Close Tab, or by pressing Ctrl+W
3.
Remove items from the main menu :
Some people like to place all their toolbar items on the same row as the menu. In order to save horizontal space, you can remove top menu items that you don't use. Add the following code to your userChrome.css file:
/* Remove the Go and Help menus
(These are just examples. Try changing "Go" to "Edit" or "Bookmarks") */
menu[label="Go"], menu[label="Help"] {
display: none !important;
}
Firefox Change Cursor Tips and Tricks
1.
Change the cursor for links that open in new window :
This neat trick will change the mouse pointer when you hover it over links that will open a new window. Add the following code to your
userContent.css file:
/* Change cursor for links that open in new window */
:link[target="_blank"], :visited[target="_blank"],
:link[target="_new"], :visited[target="_new"] {
cursor: crosshair;
}
2.
Change the cursor for JavaScript links :
This tip will change the mouse pointer when you hover it over links that will perform a JavaScript command. Add the following code to your
userContent.css file:
/* Change cursor for JavaScript links */
a[href^="javascript:"] {
cursor: move;
}
Firefox Some Advanced Tips for Tabbed Browsing
Home Page as tabs :
Instead of just one web
page as your homepage, you can make your home page several pages. This process can be just as easy as installing
printer ink into your printer. First , select your favorite web sites and open them in a set of tabbed windows. Go to Tools -> Options and select 'General'. Under 'Home Page', press the 'Use Current Pages' button. Now when you hit the Home button on the Navigation toolbar, your favorite web sites will load with just one click.
Bookmarking a set of tabs :
You can bookmark a set of tabs when selecting 'Bookmark This Page' or Ctrl+D Check the 'Bookmark all tabs in a folder' checkbox to store all the tabs in the current window into a Bookmark Folder.
More shortcuts :
While it's easy to select tabs with a mouse, you can also cycle through tabs using the keyboard: use Ctrl+PgUp (or Ctrl+Tab) and Ctrl+PgDn (or Shift+Ctrl+Tab). You can also select the first tab by pressing Ctrl+1, and so on up to the 9th tab with Ctrl+9. If you have a middle mouse button, click it on a tab to close the tab.
Firefox About URLs Tips
Guys! There are a few special URLs, which begin with about:, that you can type into the Location Bar of Firefox.
- about: — The same page as "Help -> About".
- about:about — Lists all these about: URLs (Mozilla Suite only).
- about:blank — A blank page. Useful for setting as your homepage.
- about:buildconfig — Reveals details about your Mozilla build options.
- about:cache — Displays cache statistics.
- about:cache?device=memory — Lists memory cache entries.
- about:cache?device=disk — Lists disk cache entries.
- about:cache-entry — Shows information about a cache entry. Used in about:cache links. Requires parameters.
- about:config — GUI for modifying user preferences (prefs.js).
- about:credits — The list of contributors to the Mozilla projects.
- about:logo — Displays the Mozilla logo (Mozilla Suite only).
- about:license — shows the Mozilla Public License and the Netscape Public License for the piece of software. ( Only in products based on Gecko 1.8 ).
- about:mozilla — The famous Book of Mozilla.
- about:plugins — Lists all your plugins as well as other useful information.
Some more Tips about Firefox
-
We always backup our Favorites in Firefox, so that whenever we reinstall the browser we can safely restore them without ne problem. (If u don't know how to backup favorites? Goto: Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks..., It'll open Bookmarks Manager. Then goto: File -> Export... & save them.)
Now come to the point.
The thing is that whenever we reinstall firefox we have to restore them by applying same process as we do 4 backing up them (use Import instead of Export). And one more thing we HIV to also backup our current bookmarks when we r planning to reinstall the browser.
So the trick is that we can define our custom Bookmark path in firefox , so that we don't need to import or export them.
Type about:config in address bar of browser, right-click & create a new String value, named browser.bookmarks.file and set its value to the path where u have backed up your favorites. Now firefox always update it automatically whenever u add or delete your bookmarks, so no need to continuously take backup.
-
Second trick is very useful. Many times u have noticed that when u minimize the firefox windows & again restore it, it takes some time to restore. This trick reduces this delay.
Same thing, type about:config in the address bar of firefox, right-click & create a new Boolean value, named config.trim_on_minimize & set its value to false. It'll prevent delays when restoring the window.
Mozilla Firefox Shortcuts
- Ctrl + Tab or Ctrl + PageDown: Cycle through tabs.
- Ctrl + Shift + Tab or Ctrl + PageUp: Cycle through tabs in reverse.
- Ctrl + (1-9): Switch to tab corresponding to number.
- Ctrl + N: New window.
- Ctrl + T: New tab.
- Ctrl + L or Alt + D or F6: Switch focus to location bar.
- Ctrl + Enter: Open location in new tab.
- Shift + Enter: Open location in new window.
- Ctrl + K or Ctrl + E: Switch focus to search bar.
- Ctrl + O: Open a local file.
- Ctrl + W: Close tab, or window if there's only one tab open.
- Ctrl + Shift + W: Close window.
- Ctrl + S: Save page as a local file.
- Ctrl + P: Print page.
- Ctrl + F or F3: Open find toolbar.
- Ctrl + G or F3: Find next...
- Ctrl + Shift + G or Shift + F3: Find previous...
- Ctrl + B or Ctrl + I: Open Bookmarks sidebar.
- Ctrl + H: Open History sidebar.
- Escape: Stop loading page.
- Ctrl + R or F5: Reload current page.
- Ctrl + Shift + R or Ctrl + F5: Reload current page; bypass cache.
- Ctrl + U: View page source.
- Ctrl + D: Bookmark current page.
- Ctrl + NumpadPlus or Ctrl + Equals (+/=): Increase text size.
- Ctrl + NumpadMinus or Ctrl + Minus: Decrease text size.
- Ctrl + Numpad0 or Ctrl + 0: Set text size to default.
- Alt + Left or Backspace: Back.
- Alt + Right or Shift + Backspace: Forward.
- Alt + Home: Open home page.
- Ctrl + M: Open new message in integrated mail client.
- Ctrl + J: Open Downloads dialog.
- F6: Switch to next frame. You must have selected something on the page already, e.g. by use of Tab.
- Shift + F6: Switch to previous frame.
- Apostrophe ('): Find link as you type.
- Slash (/): Find text as you type.
FIREFOX add ons LINK
