Mozilla Firefox Users

[Gilly]

Not sure if any of you have tried this but I found a tweak for those of you who are using Firefox, basiclly it speeds up how fast the pages load, making them load even quicker  I've tried it and it works.
Must admit after using Firefox and Thunderbird (email) I'd struggle to go back to IE & Outlook Express 

Anyway here's the tweak:

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" (by double clicking the line until it changes to true)
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" ( as above)

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.


If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages 2-3 times faster now.

[ReadingSteve]

Hmmm interesting.  I very much rate the http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/ plug-in for Firefox, as well. I have found that this really speeds up downloads. Interestingly, most of the tweaks you mentioned were already active on my system, so I guess Fasterfox may have set them up already.

I do agree with you about Firefox, although I do find some pages that still insist on IE!

[Gilly]

I agree IE is always there for back-up for sites that won't accept Firefox. I must have missed that plugin  not much point in me downloading it is there if I've already set the tweaks??

[ReadingSteve]

I'm not sure if Fasterfox may have also made some other changes, so it may be worthwhile getting it as well. It certainly won't do any harm.  I certainly get BLINDINGLY fast downloads these days, which I had partially attributed to Fasterfox, and partly to the improved performance of our Broadband (NTL Cable modem) connection.  I'd say give it a go! You may even squeeze a few more drops of performance out of your system!

[Miss Poohs]

What's the difference between that and IE?

Keep it simple mind 

[Gilly]

Theme's, smilies, tabbed browsing ie; instead of having to open a different page for every page your browsing (say 3 at once) you can open them as tabs within one page, so you just click the tabs, much easier and quicker. I don't seem to get half as many pop-ups with Firefox either. You still keep IE installed on your PC, you can also import all your Favourites from IE to Firefox so you don't lose anything either  It's worth a try in my opinion, you can always go back to IE if you don't like it 

[Miss Poohs]

Think I'll have a bash.

Thanks Gilly 

[Sheila]

I changed over to firefox just a couple of weeks ago, when my son insisted it was much better.

I really like it, but will give these tweaks a go and see if it is faster.

[Mollycuddles]

Hmmm.......Still all gobbledegook to me!!......

[Gilly]

Good Sheila, let us know if it works 

Lyn, Firefox is an alternative web browser to IE  you can download it from here http://www.mozilla.com/ You just download and install like any normal program, and use it surf the web instead of IE 

[ReadingSteve]

The biggest selling point of Firefox is that it is supposed to be less susceptible to viruses etc than Internet Explorer.