[klug] Speeding up Firefox

[peterd]

Hi all,

I found this little 'gem' on the net while looking for something else.

On dial-up I would estimate the time to load a page in Firefox has 
decreased by a good 50%   ...haven't tried broadband as yet.

*PROCEDURE*
---------------
The Firefox Web browser is quickly becoming one of the most prominent 
Web browsers available. The fact that it is cross-platform makes it a 
comfortable browser for users who have to use more than one OS. There 
are, however, a number of hidden "gems" that you can enable that make 
Firefox even more powerful than it is "out of the box."

To increase the speed of opening Web pages, there are two options you 
can tweak. The first is to enable HTTP pipelining, which allows Firefox 
to request multiple files simultaneously rather than one at a time. To 
enable this, type *about:config* in the address bar. Scroll down the 
list until you find *network.http.pipelining* and set it to *true*. You 
can also enable *network.http.proxy.pipelining* as well (set to *true*).

To speed up rendering speeds, you can tell Firefox not to wait the 
default quarter second before drawing Web content. The option to look 
for here is the nglayout.initialpaint.delay, but it may not be displayed 
in the preference list by default. If not, right-click on the screen and 
select New | Integer. Type*  nglayout.initialpaint.delay * as the 
preference name and the number* 0 *as the value. By default, Firefox 
uses a value of 250 (milliseconds).

Finally, the last gem is not a preference modification but an invaluable 
extension that is extremely useful for anyone doing Web development. In 
Firefox, click Tools | Extensions and a new box will open. Click on Get 
More Extensions. In the new page that opens, click on Developer Tools 
under the All Extensions sidebar. Jump to the last page and install the 
Web Developer extension. Once the extension is installed, restart 
Firefox and you'll see a new toolbar with a number of options that 
include the ability to quickly validate HTML and CSS, view image 
dimensions, outline tables and table cells, and a lot more.

Peter