Learn how to make Firefox faster for web browsing

We Mac users are so lucky that we can use Firefox with our Macs. A powerful browser with a lot of features, and some of them hidden. Firefox is the best Mac browser in my opinion but Safari comes close too. This guide will show you how to make your web browsing experience faster. Show you how to reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses and how to reduce the RAM when minimized.

If you have little or no computer knowledge it might be best to skip this guide. This guide will guide you inside the Firefox 3 engine. It is your call. If you destroy something do not come to me and complain ;)

Faster loading of pages
- Type about:config in the address field.
- Do the following changes:

Change network.http.pipelining to true
Change network.http.proxy.pipelining to true
change network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 10.

This makes firefox send out 10 requests to the web server which in turn will load the website faster. The general surfing speed will probably feel a bit faster.

And now, right click (or ctrl-click) in an empty area, select NEW and INTEGER. Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set the value to 0. This value is the time it reacts to information it gets from the web server. If you are using broadband you should already see some good improvement.

Reduce RAM usage when minimized
This will make the RAM usage go down to around 10 MB when Firefox is minimized to the dock.

- Type about:config in the address field.
- right click (or ctrl-click) in an empty area, select NEW and BOOLEAN.
- type config.trim_on_minimize in the popup box. Hit Enter.
- Chose True and click OK.
- Restart Firefox.

The changes we have done in the configuration will make firefox faster when browsing the web. Some will notice a huge speed improvement and some might not notice it so much, but a little bit at least.