How To Speed Up Firefox Optimization Guide

     If your Firefox is slow or misbehaving, here are some tweaks to speed it up. Firefox 17.0.1 has just been released These initial steps are a basic requirement to keep Firefox running smoothly and safely – there is little point trying to improve performance if you are using outdated and insecure components…

       1. Update Firefox – if you’re not running the latest version you are more at risk from unfixed vulnerabilities and will not benefit from the latest technical improvements: Select Firefox (or Help from the menu bar) then ‘About Firefox’ and press the ‘Check For Updates’ button. Apply updates if available then retry – the Check message should confirm ‘Firefox is up to date’.

       2. Remove extensions you do not need – the more extensions you have enabled, the slower and less stable Firefox may become: Select Firefox (or Tools from the menu bar) then Add-ons to open the Add-ons Manager. Click on Extensions and, if you no longer need an extension, Remove it – if in doubt, at least Disable it.

       3. Update extensions – the easiest way to always keep extensions up to date is to open the Add-ons Manager and click the Tools ‘cog’ at the top then select (tick) ‘Update Add-ons Automatically’. To perform a manual update, click the Tools ‘cog’ then select ‘Check for Updates’ and apply any that are found.

       4. Disable plugins you do not need – as with extensions, the more plugins you have enabled, the more problems Firefox may encounter: Open the Add-ons Manager. Click on Plugins and, if you do not need a plugin, disable it. If you disable a specific plugin and ever do visit a site that needs it, just re-enable it. [The only plugins enabled on my system are Shockwave Flash and Silverlight for streaming videos. Amongst my disabled plugins are Microsoft DRM x 2, Quicktime, VLC, Windows Media Player and Google Update - none of which I have ever needed].

       5. Update plugins – plugins from third parties such as Adobe and Oracle are often targeted by malicious websites so it is important to keep them up to date (and new versions often include performance benefits): Now that you have Firefox, extensions and plugins optimized and up to date, progress to the next section.

Backing Up
      The next section tweaks Firefox configuration by changing or adding preferences in about:config. You should make a note of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ values of each tweak and (highly recommended) backup the Firefox preferences file that contains all these options first – in case you want to revert back to your original settings:

        The configuration file is called prefs.js and is located in the system partition (usually C:\ drive):

        In Windows XP \Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\.default\ 
        In Vista and Windows 7 \Users\\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\.default\ 

        You may need to show hidden files to view the folder. Close Firefox first and then copy the prefs.js file to another location on your hard drive for backup.

        Tweaking Firefox Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar then press Enter. Click the “I’ll be careful I Promise” warning button to reveal a long list of preferences. 

        To change a preference – if it is an integer (number) or a string (text), double click on the preference name and you will be prompted for the new value. If it is a Boolean (true or false) value, double click the entry to switch from true to false or vice versa. 
        To add a preference (if the preference name is not already listed in your about:config page) right click on an empty space in the about:config window and choose New followed by String, Integer or Boolean depending whether the value of the preference is text (String), a number (Integer) or true/false (Boolean) 

    Tip: The quickest way to find the right preference is to type part of the preference name into the Filter bar at the top of the config page – this automatically reduces the list to show only those preferences that include the text you typed. 

       Change or add the following preferences to the new values shown. If the preference is already set to this value then skip it and move on the next. If the preference does not exist then you need to add it: 

browser.display.show_image_placeholders: false

       Stops the display of placeholders while images are loading to speed up the page. Default is True

 browser.tabs.animate: false

       Disables all tab animation features (e.g. when you click the ‘New Tab’ (+) button) to make the tab interface feel quicker. Default is True network.

prefetch-next: true

       This setting can automatically prefetch (load) the contents of pages linked to by the page you are viewing e.g. to load the homepage in the background, making it quicker for you to view next if you want to. 
    
       To take advantage of increased speed when browsing websites which use prefetch, keep this setting at the Default which is True. 

       [Some view prefetch as a possible security risk and disable it. My current view is that it isn’t a major concern – if a site is bad, it will just load bad stuff on the current page anyway without needing to prefetch it from elsewhere] 

 network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 8

        Increases the maximum number of persistent connections per server which can help speed up loading of multimedia rich sites. Default is 6 

network.http.pipelining: true 

       Can send multiple requests to a server together in order to speed up loading of webpages. This is not supported by ALL servers – some servers may even behave incorrectly if they receive pipelined requests. Default is False 
 Optional: if you want Google searches in the address bar to search by name and go straight to the right website (e.g. ‘New York Times’ would go straight to the nytimes.com website) rather than just perform a standard Google search, change the value of the keyword.url preference as shown below below: 

keyword.url: https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= 

(Note: this is for google.com – you may want to change it to your own country version e.g. for UK just replace the google.com bit with google.co.uk) 

Now close Firefox and re-open it to apply all the tweaks.

  Personalizing The Tweaks 
  
      The above tweaks improve speed and responsiveness in my own tests but your mileage may vary depending on your exact network configuration, sites visited and other software installed. One of the best things about Firefox is the variety of add-ons available but it does mean that there is an endless variety of possible configurations… 

      In particular the three ‘network.’ preferences may not be a ‘one size fits all’ solution for you – you may need to experiment to achieve the best settings for your particular installation e.g. by changing them one at a time to different values or back to the default setting. I provided the default settings above in case you wish to revert to them.

       Enable Click To Play  
       Plugins (e.g. Flash Player) can consume significant resources and slow down page loading. Click to Play configures all plugins to only load on click which can dramatically increase the speeds of media rich pages. Don’t Load Tabs Until Selected If you have set the option to ‘Show my windows and tabs from last time’ (in Options \ General) when Firefox starts, it may have to load multiple tabs – keen users may have dozens of open tabs which Firefox has to load in full each time it starts. This can really slow down the time it takes to open Firefox – a common complaint. To greatly speed up the loading process: In Options \ Tabs tick the 

‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ box and press OK – this menu option will still open all your saved tabs when Firefox starts but will only load the current tab which can save a lot of time:

Finally, consider whether your expectations are reasonable – I read of people complaining about performance when they have 100+ add-ons installed or 100+ open tabs or are using very old hardware – they may be simply overloading Firefox beyond its realistic limits and would face the same issues with any other modern browser.