Speed up Firefox
- December 23rd, 2004
- Posted in tech
- By midbach
- Write comment
I came across this tip this evening and it really does help. No, no you’re welcome.
Here’s something for broadband people that will really speed up Firefox:
1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. 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.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
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.
3. 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 recieves.
Go forth and hack.
From David Pouge
Attention to anyone who’s still foolish enough to use Internet Explorer:
As though your Web browser weren’t vulnerable enough to spyware, secret ActiveX controls and other hacker attacks, security experts have now unveiled an even more insidious hole. Phishers (people who try to intercept your Web passwords and private information) can now make any text they like appear in the address bar. They can, for example, make it look like you’re viewing the Web page of PayPal or eBay; when you “log in,” you’ll actually be sending your account information straight into the phishers’ databases.
you’re just learning about speeding up firefox now? sheesh. i thought you knew about this a long time ago…
but here’s a question, why don’t they just put these settings in by default? there must be a reason… its like why do they have ‘extra’ strength tylenol. when i have a fricken headache, i want the strongest, legal medication i can get. whay would ANYONE settle for regular strength???
and on star trek… why is it that the enterprise can always go a little bit faster with ‘a few modifications’? for god’s sake Scottie! make the dame modifications once so it will always go as fast as it can!!!!
but i digress…
You know Biff, if it wasn’t xmas eve I’d slice you apart for that. But I’m going to let it go and walk away.
My gift to you…
My Christmas wish is to get you two twits into a cage match.
Let’s settle this once and for all. I can’t take any more of this trash talking.
Personally, my money is on Mark. He’s smaller, but he’s a wirey bastard… and a little psycho.
I have answers for two questions… the whole different address and phishing… I hate to say it but all browsers are vulnerable to it right now, if we are talking about the same phishing trick that I know about. At least they all were about a month ago. Some of them might have patches for it already.
Secondly, the reason you wouldn’t want to speed it up by default is because some websites will detect the number of simultaneous connections and you will be blocked if you have too many. Many pirate , download and P2P sites will block those users because they want to keep bandwidth down. I’ve never seen a general use site to this though so I’d say you are safe for 99.999% of the websites out there.
Merry Christmas
!!!!
Roger … I want in on this cage match though I think I’d even it up a little by buddying up with Paul to help pummel Mark’s open source butt
Mark, I want a source on your IE “advisory”. The last address bar spoof vulnerability I heard about was in August and it did not affect XP SP2 systems, and frankly anyone running anything other than XP SP2 from MSFT on their daily use internet machines is nuts IMHO.
As Dan mentions, there are a lot of UI spoof attacks with the address bar and status bar (including Firefox’s XUL) that are being used in phishing attacks. This is probably the next security frontier and both “camps” are burning a lot of brain cells in coming up with ways at securing against them.
Instead of spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about IE I would point your users to more useful information and tips. Most of them are pretty saavy, but for the parents and non-technical peeps in the crowd I would say the following:
1. Never follow email links from unknown sources, especially to banking or money related sites. Instead, if you think it is legitimate, open up your browser of choice and actually enter the address to your banking site manually.
2. Because of the security issues banks have generally never communicated via email about online banking issues. Most have a “communication center” right on the site when you log in and you should use that as your primary information source.
3. Even non-technical users should “tune” their systems just like they do their car. Use that auto-update features in your software to ensure you are running the latest (and probably most secure) version.
4. Along those lines, if you are really interested have a monthly glance http://www.microsoft.com/protect to learn more about current security problems and how to protect yourself.
I think Firefox is a good browser with some useful features and I’m sure it will get greater adoption with home users. I’m still somewhat concerned that they are not as secure as they claim to be and I’ve read interesting data to support this, but only time will really tell. They aren’t sitting by idly as MS did with IE for the past 3 yrs so I’m sure more good stuff is yet to come. At the same time, I see they’ve woken up the people at MSFT and they are now actively working on improving their dominant position. If you’re interested have a look at the IE team’s blog … http://blogs.msdn.com/ie. One of the newer articles is all about security threats that really aren’t
PS. I forgot to say thanks for turning on the full RSS feeds. What a treat. Now if you could really help Paul do the same …
Merry Christmas
Oh yeah … a couple more things
1. Thanks for the tips on speeding up Firefox. I’d read something similar a while back but forgot all about it. Yes I do sometimes use Firefox, but never to come to your site as I want to skew your stats
2. I see the new info on IE even with XP SP2. 2 things to note. First, my anti-virus didn’t like the test page at Secunia when I tried it (http://secunia.com/internet_explorer_cross-site_scripting_vulnerability_test). Second, once again, you have to follow a link to bet hit by this stuff and we can easily avoid that by educating users.
3. New link on MSN about phishing that is useful to educate people what phising is all about and how to protect yourself… even has videos! http://safety.msn.com/phishing/
or, you could buy a mac.
(geek on)
….and regarding Paul’s observation about star trek…the mods that Scottie mostly made were to push the engine to 110% or 120%, never to run within limits. *Everyone* knows that you can’t continue to push those engines beyond the limits, do you know what can happen if you blow a warp engine while you’re inside a warp bubble at warp speed? I hear it can be nasty stuff…
(geek off)