The Firefox browser is the third most popular browser in the world. Users love it for its simple interface, high speed and extensibility. Almost 200 thousand various add-ons have been released for it, allowing you to increase functionality. However, not everyone knows about the presence of an editor in it, which allows you to configure parameters that are not presented in the standard settings. In this article, we will talk about how to speed up Firefox using its hidden features.
About:config
A system of addresses starting with about: and based on the URI specification is used across browsers to display version information, features, and settings not included in the GUI. The about:blank address is fairly well known. Specifying it in the settings as the initial one causes the browser to always display a blank web page at startup.
Mozilla supports about thirty pages with the identifier about:. Firefox browser settings configuration editor invoked using internal addressabout:config. It is entered, like any other URI, in the combined address bar. The first thing you will see after entering it will be a warning about the consequences of the changes being made. By agreeing, you will press the "I accept the risk!" button.
The next window contains several hundred settings that are responsible for all aspects of the browser, including how to speed up Mozilla Firefox. All parameters given in this section are divided into three groups:
- boolean;
- numeric (integer);
- string.
Double clicking on the selected configuration line opens the editing form for numeric and string values or changes the logical ones to the opposite ones. Below we will consider specific examples that improve the interaction of the "fire fox" with the computer hardware and work with network protocols for information transfer.
Working with memory
New pages in the process of Internet surfing can be opened both in a new window or tab, and in the current one. The browser remembers the last page transitions and caches them in memory. In other words, "casts" of visited Internet pages are created in the computer's RAM, which, when the "Back" button is pressed, are loaded back. This ensures quick navigation.
Let's see how to speed up Firefox by changing how it works with your computer's RAM. Settings for the history of the current Internetsessions are governed by two numerical parameters in the browser.sessionhistory block:
- Max_total_viewers is responsible for storing previously visited pages in the cache. If you have broadband Internet access, you can change it from the default "-1" to "0". The page will not be saved in RAM, but thanks to a fast connection, when you press the "Back" button, it will open almost immediately.
- Max_entries stores consecutively visited sites in RAM. Saves 50 pages by default. It is enough to reduce it to 5. In this case, five successive clicks made through the internal links of the site will be stored in memory.
Working with the disc
Having a fast solid-state drive in your computer allows you to override the location where the cache will be saved. In this way, we speed up Firefox, while simultaneously removing the load from RAM when the browser window is inactive. The speed of the SSD compensates for the time delay when retrieving open pages from the virtual memory of the hard drive. This option will require the creation of a new boolean variable config.trim_on_minimize. Two values for this parameter are allowed:
- True. In this case, when the browser is minimized, the data is transferred from RAM to the hard disk to the virtual memory sector.
- False. All data is stored in RAM.
The following setting allows you to significantly reduce the amount of data that the browser constantly writes to the hard drive onsudden shutdown. The setting is called browser.sessionstore.interval, and its default value is 15 seconds. After this time interval, the current session data is saved and the contents of the recovery file are overwritten. The amount of recorded information depends on the saturation of the site with "heavy" design elements and can reach tens of gigabytes per day.
This parameter is numeric and is specified in milliseconds. It is allowed to increase it to 30 minutes, which in the accepted units will be 1800000. As a result, we speed up Firefox by reducing the amount of data that it constantly exchanges with the hard drive.
Network protocols
The above methods de alt with interaction with the computer hardware. Let's see how to speed up the Mozilla Firefox browser by changing some network settings. The logical setting network.prefetch-next is responsible for prefetching the site most likely for the user to click on the link from the page they are viewing.
Firefox automatically caches predictive click data, causing unnecessary bandwidth usage. This feature is disabled by replacing the default True with False. Thus, you will reduce the current network load, while the speed of displaying the page on a fast connection will hardly change.
Tab Animation
Tab bar animation when opening or closing new items looks nice, but no payloadbears. The boolean parameter browser.tabs.animate is responsible for turning this visual effect on and off. By default, each new tab causes a "slip" effect on the containing panel.
By switching from True to False, you speed up Firefox by displaying new tabs instantly. Once applied, the setting works immediately without requiring a browser restart. Even several open tabs will allow you to evaluate the effect of changing this parameter, and with a sufficiently large number of them, it will become even more noticeable.
When surfing, useful content can be distracted by the presence of gif-animation on the page. Constantly playing looped videos attracts attention. We speed up Firefox by changing the behavior of gifs on visited sites. The string parameter image.animation_mode. is responsible for their display mode.
The setting has three fixed values:
- normal - set by default and corresponds to the constant playing of the animation;
- once - animated picture is shown in motion only once;
- none - complete disabling of the effect,-g.webp" />
Changes appear instantly, without restarting the browser.
Page scrolling
Speed up Firefox by changing the webpage scrolling setting. Compared to other browsers, the scrolling of the "fire fox" looks quite slow. The mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount setting is responsible for its speed. This numerical parameterthe default value is 5. By increasing it, you can adjust the number of lines scrolled when moving the mouse wheel.
Changing this setting does not require restarting the browser, and you can quickly find a convenient value. As a result, you will adjust the speed of scrolling pages to your requirements and make browsing more comfortable.
Final recommendations
In this article, we talked about how to speed up the Firefox browser using configuration settings. You should not apply all the recommendations in a row and hope that this will be the perfect option. First you need to determine what exactly is the limiting factor on your computer, and only then adjust the necessary parameters. In this case, with minimal changes, you can achieve maximum performance gains.
