How to speed up FireFox - For broadband Internet connections

Edit some critical settings to super charge the Firefox web browser's performance

To jump start the speed of Firefox ability to load pages faster, check out these settings edits.

First, type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. You'll see a bunch of settings. Scroll down and 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.

Next, alter the entries as follows:

• Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" by right clicking on it and choosing "Toggle".
• 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.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages much faster now!

Configure Firefox to release memory back to the system while minimized

Bring upthe about:config page, then right-click on the page itself, and from the popup menu, select New -> Boolean. In the New Preference Name dialog box, enter config.trim_on_minimize and click OK. Next, in the Enter Boolean value dialog box, choose True and click OK. Why this isn't a default setting for Firefox was a mystery me.