What do you think of these Firefox tweaks?

[Berryracer]

Are they really useful or don't bother?

I have tried them and want to make sure that I haven't been cursed by teh placebo effect that they made my browser faster

Tips for Faster Firefox Page Loading

 

[lxskllr]

I think they fall under the YMMV category. They can make a noticeable difference with particular setups/conditions, but won't make a big difference for everyone.

 

[MontyAC]

My FF is fast enough. Don't need to tweak it.

 

[Spungo]

Are they really useful or don't bother?

I have tried them and want to make sure that I haven't been cursed by teh placebo effect that they made my browser faster

Tips for Faster Firefox Page Loading

Some of these are good and some of these are bad. I'll do my best to explain them.

Enable pipelining

Most people won't notice any difference. Pipelining is useful when your connection has very high ping such as satellite internet or internet that goes through a proxy. My work computer is a lot faster when pipelining is enabled.

'Increase maximum connections'

This would actually decrease perceived performance because opening a lot of connections causes the page to load in parallel instead of load in series. Having 1 connection to a server loads the alphabet like this:
-request A (ask for 1 item at a time)
-receive A
-request B
-receive B
-request C
-receive C
The first part of the page loads first then everything loads in order. This makes sense because usually the important stuff is at the top of the page. Notice where the forum controls and navigation are located - the top of the page. Pages will lots of images (a thread where someone posts a bunch of pictures) will load the images in the correct order so it's loading images as you're scrolling down. Enabling pipelining might look like this:
-request ABC in this exact order (request several things at one time)
-receive ABC in this exact order
Pipelining loads things in the same order but it makes several requests at the same time.

Increasing the number of connections causes it to load everything at the same time. Suppose you are looking at a thread with a lot of pictures. Your browser with lots of connections does this:
-request ABCDEFGHIJKLM and it doesn't matter which order
-receive image M
-receive image D
-receive image K
-receive image B
etc
Having a lot of connections can use all of the bandwidth available but it still looks slow as hell because you're still at the top of the page waiting for image A to load. Then you might be waiting for B to load even though C and D are already loaded.

no comment on DNS cache, IPv6, or paint delay

browser.cache.check_doc_frequency and change the value to 0 (See important notes below!)

Do not do this. What this does is completely turn off dynamic content. You could look at the forum tomorrow and it would look exactly the same as today. Not a single person has posted anything in the last day?? That's what the forum looks like if you do this tweak. It doesn't update until you hit the refresh button.

Right-click on browser.cache.disk.capacity and change the value to 76800

Changing the caching behavior depends on what your biggest problem is. People on slow networks see the best performance when the cache size is huge. People on fast networks might have the best performance with no cache at all. I have mine set to 1024mb because internet through a proxy is slow.

 

[ninaholic37]

Do not do this. What this does is completely turn off dynamic content. You could look at the forum tomorrow and it would look exactly the same as today. Not a single person has posted anything in the last day?? That's what the forum looks like if you do this tweak. It doesn't update until you hit the refresh button.

Interesting idea. More often than not, I do not want a page to keep updating without my permission. I'll usually have like 6 tabs open, and will be trying to read some links/stories from one tab in a new tab, and I don't want the original page to change in the background when I come back! If I wanted that, I would hit the refresh button (Shift-F5 I guess, if set to 0). Might try this tweak out tonight and see if I like it better, can't think of any "dynamic content" I ever care to see/have at the moment.

 

[Berryracer]

Do not do this. What this does is completely turn off dynamic content. You could look at the forum tomorrow and it would look exactly the same as today. Not a single person has posted anything in the last day?? That's what the forum looks like if you do this tweak. It doesn't update until you hit the refresh button.

so do u think I should remove this Cache Tweak or the entire Cache tweaks section from my guide?

 

[lxskllr]

so do u think I should remove this Cache Tweak or the entire Cache tweaks section from my guide?

I'd keep it, but add that it's of niche use. ninaholic37 seems to like the idea, but I don't think it's at all mainstream. I wouldn't like it.

 

[Berryracer]

Right, so I did the tweaks (all of them) and I must tell you, now Firefox seems to be as fast as Chrome I love em!

Pages load much faster now

 

[TheRyuu]

Right, so I did the tweaks (all of them) and I must tell you, now Firefox seems to be as fast as Chrome I love em!

Pages load much faster now

What you mean to say is it feels more responsive like chrome. In actuality your page load times might even be longer but it's all about the perception (I'm not saying this is a bad thing).

Breaking it down:
Network Pipelining
On a relatively fast connection this probably makes stuff slower. The cost to open up the new connections will likely be too great so it won't be able to make up the time with getting the data faster (it also breaks a few sites although they're few and far between).

Increase maximum connections
Firefox increased their default maximum connection value to something sane already, depreciated 'tweak'.

Cache DNS queries
The 'tweak' is likely old and depreciated.

Disable ipv6
Maybe if I disable ipv4 as well then it'll load even faster.

Reduce page loading delay
What I currently use:
content.interrupt.parsing = true
content.max.tokenizing.time = 100000 (defaults to 3x notify interval IIRC).
content.notify.backoffcount = -1
content.notify.interval = 100000
content.notify.ontimer = true
content.switch.threshold = 2000000
nglayout.initialpaint.delay = 0

YMMV, mine are pretty low values, slower computers probably wouldn't like it very much if you used them. Perception is such an evil thing.

Probably the only remotely useful thing in your original post on the other site is in this section. You did chose conservative values though (and didn't list them all) which is interesting I guess. I really don't know what to think of all this shit even after messing with it for years.

Cache Tweaks
Mostly depreciated (I guess). Firefox isn't retarded with RAM usage anymore and their on disk cache defaults to 1GB on most systems.

Some other useful firefox stuff:
http://waterfoxproject.org/
Slower javascript (not by much), feels more responsive (fuck yea intel compiler?).

 

[Berryracer]

Reduce page loading delay
What I currently use:
content.interrupt.parsing = true
content.max.tokenizing.time = 100000 (defaults to 3x notify interval IIRC).
content.notify.backoffcount = -1
content.notify.interval = 100000
content.notify.ontimer = true
content.switch.threshold = 2000000
nglayout.initialpaint.delay = 0

Are these the only tweaks you use?

why did that guide state to disable IPv6? What is the benefit of that?

And yes you are right, maybe the page isn't actually loading faster but what's the perception to meh as a user....because it loads the first bits first...it feels as snappy as Chrome

 

[ninaholic37]

Some other useful firefox stuff:
http://waterfoxproject.org/
Slower javascript (not by much), feels more responsive (fuck yea intel compiler?).

I get a "This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor" error when trying to use your link here. I'm guessing this is because there is no 32-bit version of Waterfox? (there's only one download link, and it never asked or showed a "requirements" list)

 

[TheRyuu]

I get a "This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor" error when trying to use your link here. I'm guessing this is because there is no 32-bit version of Waterfox? (there's only one download link, and it never asked or showed a "requirements" list)

64-bit only.

 

[lxskllr]

I get a "This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor" error when trying to use your link here. I'm guessing this is because there is no 32-bit version of Waterfox? (there's only one download link, and it never asked or showed a "requirements" list)

Try Palemoon. I've never used it, but it's supposed to be optimized for modern machines. They remove compatibility for older systems, and they claim it speeds up operation. You can get it here. Be sure to read the release notes, and system requirements. It won't work on everything the way Firefox does...

http://www.palemoon.org/

A tweak you can use on GNU/Linux is putting the Firefox cache in ram. It should make things faster, but honestly I don't notice a difference. I do it because I have plenty of ram, so why not?

 

[Berryracer]

Try Palemoon. I've never used it, but it's supposed to be optimized for modern machines. They remove compatibility for older systems, and they claim it speeds up operation. You can get it here. Be sure to read the release notes, and system requirements. It won't work on everything the way Firefox does...

http://www.palemoon.org/

A tweak you can use on GNU/Linux is putting the Firefox cache in ram. It should make things faster, but honestly I don't notice a difference. I do it because I have plenty of ram, so why not?

Do you think the IETAB add on works with Palemoon?
I know it doesn't work with Waterfox which is a major let down for me as I use it to view a few sites that ONLY work on IE

 

[lxskllr]

Do you think the IETAB add on works with Palemoon?
I know it doesn't work with Waterfox which is a major let down for me as I use it to view a few sites that ONLY work on IE

No idea. I don't use Windows, Palemoon, or IETab, but it should be easy enough to try.

 

[Berryracer]

No idea. I don't use Windows, Palemoon, or IETab, but it should be easy enough to try.

Just tried it, same exact problem that happens with Waterfox

The IETAB Addon installs fine, but when you got to a page using IETAB it always says on the top "an additional plugin is required to display this page" when you click install, it searches for that necessary plugin but never finds anything

what a shame, I am stuck to a 32 bit browser I guess because I play a cards game called "Spades" all the time and that only works on IE since it's a Microsoft game!

I hate microsoft

 

[ninaholic37]

Try Palemoon. I've never used it, but it's supposed to be optimized for modern machines. They remove compatibility for older systems, and they claim it speeds up operation. You can get it here. Be sure to read the release notes, and system requirements. It won't work on everything the way Firefox does...

[URL]http://www.palemoon.org/[/URL]

Yup, that's what I've been using for the last month, and I'm quite liking it. Was just curious to see how Waterfox compared and what was different (as I've been hearing a lot about it on here), but since I can't run it I guess that makes my decision of which browser version to use easier. Whenever I hear the name "Waterfox" I think of a watered down Firefox, like buying cheap beer, for some reason. Or one of those floodings where everyone is trying to swim through their town and their houses are all destroyed. Not sure why.

Do you think the IETAB add on works with Palemoon?
I know it doesn't work with Waterfox which is a major let down for me as I use it to view a few sites that ONLY work on IE

IE tab puts a window in a new tab, or something like that right? Wouldn't you just be able to open a new tab, and copy the url of spades into it? I haven't tried this, does it work? Not sure, I might have a membership to Microsoft games, maybe I'll play around with this later too.

 

[Berryracer]

IE tab puts a window in a new tab, or something like that right? Wouldn't you just be able to open a new tab, and copy the url of spades into it? I haven't tried this, does it work? Not sure, I might have a membership to Microsoft games, maybe I'll play around with this later too.

Please do try, IE TAb is an addon that enables you to right click onany page and have it rendered as if it was in IE

you can also go to its settings, and tell it what websites to always open in IETAB by default

So I put my MSN Games - Spades URL http://zone.msn.com/en/spades/default.htm which I usually do in Firefox, but now when you launch that page with IE Tab, it tells you there is a missing plugin, if you try to have it search for the missing plugin, it never finds anything

IE Tab isk nown not to be compatible with Waterfox

same thing I discovered with Pale moon today and that is a deal breaker for me

 

[Spungo]

so do u think I should remove this Cache Tweak or the entire Cache tweaks section from my guide?

I'm not sure. You can refresh the page just by hitting F5. I should turn off cache checking for a day just to see how it feels. It makes pages load a lot faster if you're looking at things that don't change much (reading old articles)

 

[Berryracer]

I'm not sure. You can refresh the page just by hitting F5. I should turn off cache checking for a day just to see how it feels. It makes pages load a lot faster if you're looking at things that don't change much (reading old articles)

well I've been using these tweaks for 3 days now and I must tell you, Firefox has never been faster

 

[TheRyuu]

To be honest I'm not sure Waterfox is really all that much better.

With good old vanilla Firefox and:

content.interrupt.parsing = false
content.notify.ontimer = false
content.notify.backoffcount = -1
nglayout.initialpaint.delay = 0

It might actually be faster.

Busy being trolled by our subjective views.