Gaming [GUIDE] Speeding up Firefox

[shamiko_]

GUIDE:HOW TO SPEED UP FIREFOX


Most of us use firefox because of its huge library of ad-ons. not becuase it is fast. because of this, some of us had switched to using google chrome or opera
if you are temped to using another browser but are worried that your favourite add-on might not be avalible on another browser, follow this guide first and after some optimization if your still not impressed with the speed improvements then you are free to switch to chrome. (authough some of you might stick to firefox, after the speed improvements)
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Faster surfng
Speed DNS
This add-on does DNS pre-resolution of all the links on a web page and hence saves the extra second that it takes to lookup this information when you click on a link. No more starring at your web pages till it loads.

Fasterfox lite
Fasterfox Lite: Performance and network tweaks for Firefox. just select one of the profles such as "Courteous" (Rydian recemends not selecting any other profile other than courteous.

I don't recommend heavy pipelining, it's murder on servers for a small amount of speedup.

Flashblock
If you just want to browser your favourite website, but are faced with numerous flash adds flying on your screen. instal this and it stops all flash content.
you have the power to chose what flash content is allowed.

Faster start-up
SpeedyFox
It's not a add-on, but a small program that defrags your firefox profile, which increases firefox start-up times dramaticly.

Morning coffee
Most of us like to open up a few sites on our first browsing session daily-Facebook, your email gbatemp ect.
with Moring Coffee this makes it a one-click process by opening all your chosen sites in seperate tabs.

faster downloads
DownThemall
it's no surprise this has become a popular add-on for firefox- promising to increase download speeds by up to 400 percent vs the normal; download manager built-in to firefox. but have you ever found yourself labourously right clicking images to download? DTA makes this a one-click process.

Tweak Network
Tweak Network will speed up the loading of web pages and increase the maximum number of simultaneous downloads from a site.

Further enhancements

Memory Fox
Firefox isn't great at memory management. with this add-on, it will clean-up memory after a tab has closed. reducing the amount of memory firefox uses.

IE Tab 2
there are some sites that firefox isn't compatible yet, (like chinese websites as an example) with this add-on you don't need to open up Internet Explorer just to view that website.

ReloadEvery
How much time do you waste each day having to click the refresh button on a news site?
with ReleadEvery, it refreshes pages at different intervals. ie 5sec, 10sec random ect

so there you have it, a list of add-ons (or programs) that speed up the way you use firefox.

 

[Satangel]

Thanks, some things in here I didn't know before.
My Firefox is pretty clogged with all sort of add-ons, this may help me.

 

[shamiko_]

Thanks, some things in here I didn't know before.
My Firefox is pretty clogged with all sort of add-ons, this may help me.

yeah, i didn;t know there were add-ons like these. so i just listed some from a magazine i bought yesterday

 

[Matthew]

Its funny that there are only guides like this for firefox



Flame on!

 

[ProtoKun7]

Nice tips; I'll come back to these is I get around to needing any of them.

 

[Rydian]

I don't recommend heavy pipelining, it's murder on servers for a small amount of speedup, please take fasterfox out (or tell people to only use the courteous setting).

 

[Terminator02]

Only thing I wish chrome had is Downthemall, It's so awesome, and this isn't the first place i've heard of it

I know Chrome already does Speed DNS and there is flashblock for chrome

I tried fastestchrome, but I found it's advantages insignificant, but what Rydian says would make me not use it if I still was. It looks like Tweak Network also does heavy pipelining, so I guess don't use that either

 

[Rydian]

I know of some servers that IP ban users found to be pipelining, let's put it that way.

 

[Deleted User]

I agree with Rydian, heavy pipelining does kill... Remember to do research based on your internet speed and ISP too.

Thanks for the guide "Dter ic".

 

[jalaneme]

take it from me, memoryfox is completely useless, it does not improve the ram use whatsoever, no difference at all, i also have AFOM installed aswell but that doesn't have any affect anyway, my browser crashes 4-5 times a day due to huge amount of memory use, i am starting to migrate to google chrome because it is much much lighter and faster too.

 

[Delta517]

Thanks for the guide.

 

[DaRk_ViVi]

Thanks for the tips, it's actually working a little better.

 

[shamiko_]

do you think i should remove "Tweak Network" and "fasterfox"
after what Rydian said?

also i do personaly recememd speedyfox. to me it does make a difference before i used it.

DTA won't be comming to chrome acording to the developers website

 

[Infinite Zero]

Nice stuff. I might do them later on to improve FF's speed.

 

[Rydian]

take it from me, memoryfox is completely useless, it does not improve the ram use whatsoever, no difference at all, i also have AFOM installed aswell but that doesn't have any affect anyway, my browser crashes 4-5 times a day due to huge amount of memory use, i am starting to migrate to google chrome because it is much much lighter and faster too.

The only time a program will crash due to memory use (under normal circumstances for the OS) is when you're on a 32-bit system and a program tries to use more than 2 gigs of RAM. If firefox is doing that I recommend installing a flash blocking plugin like in the first post. That makes web browsing in general a hell of a lot better.

 

[Originality]

take it from me, memoryfox is completely useless, it does not improve the ram use whatsoever, no difference at all, i also have AFOM installed aswell but that doesn't have any affect anyway, my browser crashes 4-5 times a day due to huge amount of memory use, i am starting to migrate to google chrome because it is much much lighter and faster too.

Interesting, Firefox is actually taking up far less memory with memoryfox enabled. Before: ~138KB. After: 7-60KB, depending if I'm watching a full-screen streamed video or not (it seems when Firefox is not "active", it no longer takes so much memory). Unfortunately I don't notice any difference in the other add-ons I've tried - websites load as fast as before, although certain elements (usually those associated with ads) make certain websites still slow to load.