Surf The Internet Faster With These FireFox & IE Tweaks

written by John Chow on March 31, 2007

Here’s a video of some tweaks you can do to increase your browsing speed. I tried it in FireFox and noticed a nice speed boost. Let me know if it works for you.

Source: Shawn Knight via IM.

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{ 74 comments }

mubin March 31, 2007 at 1:08 pm

Nice VIdeo.

If anyone wants to download it you can use http://www.youtubedownloads.info to download it directly from Youtube!

I think this is the first time i have gotten the first comment in!

Jauhari April 3, 2007 at 1:01 am: Wow nice tools.. thanks

Michael March 31, 2007 at 1:15 pm

Nice tip! It works great!
My pages are so fast I don’t even see them anymore!

Alex April 1, 2007 at 7:13 pm

Wow, my FFox is flying

Alex April 2, 2007 at 10:07 am: For Firefox, they advise you to increase maxrequests from 4 to 10. Try putting 200, the difference is even greater!

Leftblank March 31, 2007 at 1:20 pm

Nice tips, but I’d personally prefer just a couple of written instructions – a video doesn’t quite make it easier…

Tyler March 31, 2007 at 1:44 pm

Sometimes a video shows something that is left out in words.

*shrug*

Alex April 1, 2007 at 7:14 pm

A picture is worth a 1000 words. How much is a video worth?

blabWire April 13, 2007 at 8:43 am: One million dollars!

blabWire

Johnny March 31, 2007 at 2:12 pm

yea..the video was kinda hard to follow. had to keep on pausing..but i wrote down the directions.

1. type in the URL: about:config
2. type in the filter: NETWORK
3. double click on network.http.pipelining (double clicking will set it to true)
4. double click “network.http.pipelinging.maxrequests (opens up a window with value of 4). Set it to like 10
5.type in google.com and it should be faster!

Gath April 2, 2007 at 4:00 pm: Thanks for this – much faster than watching the video
blabWire April 13, 2007 at 9:23 am: Thanks! Much easier.

blabEditor

Dave March 31, 2007 at 3:34 pm

I didn’t have too much trouble following the video myself…

KidBlogger April 2, 2007 at 3:28 am: yea me 2

Marc March 31, 2007 at 7:48 pm

Yeah but if you write it out then you can’t put it on YouTube and be like all the other cool kids

Shawn Knight March 31, 2007 at 1:33 pm

Hehe, sounds familiar… Didn’t I send you that vid? heh

The Man of Silver March 31, 2007 at 3:27 pm

That might not be the only way it sounds familiar. I made the same exact post yesterday here. Hey John … how about a credit link?

Dave March 31, 2007 at 3:36 pm

I was thinking about this the other day actually, since I am still fairly new to blogging. It’s probably courteous to site your original source.

That being said, John may have found it elsewhere

The Man of Silver March 31, 2007 at 3:43 pm

That is true, it could just be a curious coincidence.

It is an interesting thing to discuss though (I’m pretty new to the blogging game myself). With so many blogs around, it’s pretty easy to be “inspired” by another blogger’s post … but yes, I think a link to the original source is the best way to spread the word, but still be true to the original poster.

Aaron Cook March 31, 2007 at 5:40 pm: Well, there’s absolutely no way to know where he originally came across it; the web is quite vast. Nonetheless, I do strongly believe in giving credit where credit is due and I’m pretty sure (hopefully) John stands by that as well.

Though I have come across a handful people/blogs lately that mention “lack of credit” issues with him, so I kinda have to wonder. And while the application of Occam’s razor says one thing, I’m for now giving the benefit of the doubt. Either way, I there’s definitely a lesson to be learned.

John Chow March 31, 2007 at 5:44 pm

Yep. You sent it to me.

The Man of Silver March 31, 2007 at 5:50 pm

Yep … after he saw it on my site … as you can see by the comment he left on my post (linked above).

It does get complicated when people send stuff around without sources, doesn’t it?

derrich March 31, 2007 at 6:56 pm

The Man of Silver ROXORZ!!!

The Man of Silver March 31, 2007 at 7:04 pm: Heh heh … thanks

Shawn Knight March 31, 2007 at 8:05 pm

hehe yep, got it from Man of Silver, ive been passing it around to my friends on AIM all day heh

Alex April 1, 2007 at 7:18 pm: Speed up your browser articles are all around the blogosphere

Aaron Cook March 31, 2007 at 5:51 pm

LOL, like they always say…The squeaky wheel always the grease! You’re listed as the Source now.

The Man of Silver March 31, 2007 at 6:02 pm

Hmmm … maybe I need to be squeakier?

derrich March 31, 2007 at 6:57 pm

Steel gets squeaky too. Maybe you need a little oil.

The Man of Silver March 31, 2007 at 7:05 pm: John could provide some backlink “oil”
derrich March 31, 2007 at 7:46 pm: That sounds kinda…weird.
The Man of Silver March 31, 2007 at 7:55 pm: … come to think of it, it does

But you know what I mean

Malin March 31, 2007 at 2:00 pm

I didn’t notice anything actually :/

Ronaldo March 31, 2007 at 2:20 pm

Firefox did get faster, but I couldn’t find those Registry keys for IE. Maybe they are for IE 6 only?

MillionDollarJourney.com March 31, 2007 at 2:54 pm

Great tips for Firefox. Definitely noticed a difference.

Marc March 31, 2007 at 7:49 pm: I’ve noticed a decent difference too. It is well appreciated.
KidBlogger April 2, 2007 at 3:30 am: yep! It has a bit diff!

Stephanie March 31, 2007 at 3:14 pm

Oh man, definitely faster! HURRAY! Thanks, John!

Abdul Aziz March 31, 2007 at 3:19 pm

For those who want to increase their surfing/browing speed on their mobile device browsers like minimo, opera, netfront or even the built in web browser for Windows Mobile or Nokia S60 devices may want to try this:

http://thinkabdul.com/2006/08/23/surf-faster-increase-browsingsurfing-speed-on-windows-mobile-and-nokia-s60-browsers/

Please do let us know if it works for you.

Chris March 31, 2007 at 3:20 pm

I haven’t noticed any difference using the Firefox tip :/

DanyO March 31, 2007 at 4:20 pm: it’ll make a difference on pages with a lot of images or javascripts.
KidBlogger April 2, 2007 at 3:35 am: like dany said.. diff on pages with images

Scott March 31, 2007 at 3:27 pm

Sweet. Nice tip.

Dave March 31, 2007 at 3:33 pm

Thanks for the tips, I’ll definitely give it a try.

James March 31, 2007 at 4:00 pm: And Dave pulls even. Will he take the lead?

mao March 31, 2007 at 3:35 pm

As everybody can guess, this trick simply make you browser faster by doing more requests at the same time:
example: for this page you can make a request for the html thing, one for the css, one for each picture you see, etc.. If you can do only 4 connection at a time and you have 200 images, you can easily understand that you’ll have to wait that the first 4 download finish before starting the remaining 198. In a perfect world, it would be better to have 200 connection so you can “parallelize” all. On our world you there are more problems.
- The Server: if everyone is doing it, we’ll have to queue up before seeing a page, just like you queue with ftp transfer. A server cannot handle thousand of people doing 200 connection at the same time.It’s better to load html first and maybe wait to see all the images on the page.
- The client: this shouldn’t have big problems, but you are creating useless peak on your traffic just to see a page a split second before.

I think no one should modify that number, at least not so freely.
This should be some kind of kindness problem maybe.

If you like my comment go to visit my blog. If you don’t like it go to my blog and insult me.

mao March 31, 2007 at 4:02 pm

Well forget my comment and go to read my blogpost:

http://blog.nafurai.com/2007/03/firefox-network-pipelining/

Marc March 31, 2007 at 7:51 pm

That’s some really weird visit baiting…

mao April 1, 2007 at 3:02 am: lol I did some research and I didn’t wanted to post it (only) here. Read it

KidBlogger April 2, 2007 at 3:36 am

You really nailed it down!

Scot April 2, 2007 at 12:43 am

I wouldn’t post this on a high-traffic blog for that exact same reason.

Now all of John’s readers will queue up before the page loads

- S

DanyO March 31, 2007 at 4:19 pm

simple tips, but they work great. it makes a difference.

Piggy March 31, 2007 at 5:27 pm

hm doesnt seem to make that much of a difference for me

Aaron Cook March 31, 2007 at 5:55 pm

BTW, I failed to mention in my previous comment that it does indeed speed up the page load time on FireFox. I haven’t tried it out on IE yet, though. But seemingly good on FireFox.

blogcrowds March 31, 2007 at 6:12 pm

Saw this video on Metacafe 4 month ago now its on YouTube. The video made it to as well.

KidBlogger April 2, 2007 at 3:37 am: is it allowed to do that?

Pallab March 31, 2007 at 7:44 pm

For Firefox : Instead of tweaking it manually download and install Fasterfox.

In General : If you want fast browsing use the fastest browser – Opera. See this comparison of browser speeds.

Also, one service that I had found very helpfull is OpenDNS. It reduces the time taken to resolve the domain name, thus reducing page load time.

If you are on dialup and need to drastically increase speed, use Onspeed. It compresses data to increase loading speed (about 300% faster).

Marc March 31, 2007 at 7:52 pm

“download and install Fasterfox.”

Why bother doing that? There’s nothing wrong with doing it manually. That just sounds cumbersome.

Pallab March 31, 2007 at 7:59 pm: If you want to do it manually, ideally you should apply all these tweaks.
Actually Fasterfox does more than those mentioned in the above website.

Scot April 2, 2007 at 12:41 am