A while ago I complained about FireFox which became extremely slow and resource hungry. I then switched to Google Chrome as my default browser. Although Chrome is much faster in standard form it is a bit frustrating working on it since it lacks some basic functionality.

Today I found a cure for the slow and resource hungry FireFox. I implemented the changes and I am glad to report that FireFox is working like the speed of light again and I am using it as my default browser again.

This is what I have done:

Open FireFox and in the address bar type the words about:config and then hit enter.

Your browser will now display a list of setting which you can change (if you know how to). Note the “filter” box at the top.

In the filter box type (or copy and paste) the following text: browser.cache.memory.enable

You will note that as you type the words the filter will filter the settings. So you do not need to hit enter after you typed the words. Once you can see this setting the last column should display the word “true” if it does not display the word “true” just double click on the setting and it will change to true. Firefox doesn’t use memory cache and uses system memory by default. Above mentioned  is a good way to assign a fixed memory cache to reduce the usage of memory.

Now in the white area below the current setting right click your mouse. A little menu bar will pop-up with some choices.  Go down to “New” and then select “Integer”

A window will pop-up, in the field available type (or copy and paste) the following: browser.cache.memory.capacity

Then click OK and next another window ill pop-up asking you for a value.  The value you enter will depend on the amount of RAM your machine has.

For 256MB RAM – Enter “4096“, 512MB RAM – Enter “8192“, 1Gig enter “15000“. See the following two images:

Enter the correct value and click OK.

Next up you will force FireFox to release memory when it is minimized:

Still in the same screen right click in the white area again and this time select “New” and then “Boolean”.

In the following window that pops up (similar to the above mentioned one) you enter the value config.trim_on_minimize

When you hit OK the next screen will present a  list where you must select the value “true” and then hit OK again.

This will force FireFox to release some memory when it is minimized.

The next thing we will tell FireFox to only fetch what you click. FF has this silly function which is costing you zillions of bandwidth. It predicts which link you will click while browsing (like no1 search result in Google) and then it starts to download that web site’s details in the background even though you have not clicked the link. This is just in case you click the link the next page can open faster. This slows your connection down and costs you bandwidth.

To get rid of this, in the filter box type (or copy paste) the following: network.prefetch-next

You will note the default setting is “true”. Double click on the setting so that it change to “False”.

And that is it. You can now close FireFox and restart it. Your browsing experience should be on turbo boast now.

Some people asked me why I don’t just use Internet Explorer like the rest of the world?. Well that is because I think Internet Explorer sucks. I am doing a bit of web development and I can see how many functions in web sites IE cannot handle. A good example is, look at this blog in Internet Explorer and then look at it in Chrome or FireFox. In Chrome and FireFox it will look great, all the boxes have nice rounded corners. Even IE8 do not understand the border-radius function in CSS. If you are reading this and you are still using Internet Explorer I would like to encourage you to try our FireFox or Chrome. You will be amazed how your browsing experience will change. All of the sudden web sites will look better and have more functionality.

4 Responses to “Speed up your FireFox Browser”

1. John says:

   February 25, 2010 at 17:55

   Thanks Pieter it is fantastic. I was pulling my hair out at the low low low speed of Firefox 3.6. It was taking ages. Now it simply flies along, speed of light. These guys should pay you a royalty or something. You are a genius!!! Thanks matey.

   Reply
2. Herman says:

   January 29, 2010 at 19:00

   Thanks, it makes a huge difference

   Reply
3. Quinn says:

   January 20, 2010 at 10:34

   Thanks, works like a charm

   Reply
4. noname says:

   December 15, 2009 at 17:58

   made the changes. let u know soon about performance

   Reply