THE ULTIMATE FIREFOX OPTIMIZATION GUIDE

Firefox is almost everyone’s favorite browser and while it’s not absolutely perfect, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be. I’ve compiled a list of the best tips, tricks, tweaks and fixes from the world of geeks.
This guide primarily applies to Firefox 3.5 but most of the fixes should work with older versions.


1. Speed up browsing and tweak Firefox:

Use a Blank Homepage, Default Theme and Minimal Extensions for best performance:
Set your homepage to about:blank. Use only must-have extensions with the default theme. Use Adblock Plus and Flashblock to block unwanted ads and Flash.

Optimize Download Options:
a) In Options>Main, choose a folder for your downloads and save all downloads to it automatically. Tick "close the download window automatically when all downloads are finished".
b) Turn off download history from Options>Privacy, Custom settings for history.

c) In Options>Advanced>General>Accessibility:
• Tick Search for text when I start typing
• Untick Use smooth scrolling
• Turn off the spell checker if you don't need it.
• Untick the "Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup" option.
• Remove Unused Search Engines from the Drop-down list In the search box, select "Manage Search Engines", and remove any search engines that you don't use. Also turn off the "Show search suggestions" option, if you dont need it.

Clean up your bookmarks and avoid Live Bookmarks:
you probably have a lot of bookmarks in Firefox, you might also have a few dead links, or even duplicate bookmarks. Clean them up using the CheckPlaces Firefox extension, and uninstall it after you’re done.
Firefox checks Live Bookmarks for updates, every hour. Use a dedicated RSS Reader like Google Reader instead. Delete the preset Latest Headlines Live Bookmark.


2. Advanced About:Config Tweaks:


The following two sections are advanced Firefox configuration changes that are simple to make. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar in an empty tab. Click ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’.

You can use Firefox’s Safe Mode and select ‘Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults’ to undo any changes you make. Also, entries you change are displayed in bold, and can be reset using the right-click context-menu.

If an entry does not exist, create it by right-clicking on an empty space, selecting New, and choosing the type of entry as listed.

Advanced Browser Settings:
You can use these recommended values or tweak them as per your system, preference, and browsing habits.
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound [Boolean]: Change to False to avoid a sound alert if no match is found when you search for text.
• alerts.totalOpenTime [Integer]: Reduce time to show Download Complete alerts to 2000 (2 seconds).
• browser.bookmarks.max_backups [Integer]: Reduce number of bookmark backups to speed up shutdown from 5 to 2.
• browser.cache.disk.parent_directory [String]: Move your Firefox cache to a disk or partition different from your Windows drive by specifying the folder path here.
• browser.download.manager.openDelay [Integer]: Don’t open Downloads window for very short downloads. Set to 2000 (2 second delay).
• browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo [Integer]: Reduce number of closed tabs you can undo from 10 to 4.
• browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo [Integer]: Reduce number of closed windows you can undo from 3 to 1.
• browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab [Boolean]: Change to False, so that Firefox doesn’t accidentally shut down when you close the last tab.
• browser.urlbar.maxRichResults [Integer]: Reduce maximum number of results in Awesome Bar from 12 to 6.
• dom.popup_maximum [Integer]: Reduce maximum number of simultaneous popups from 20 to 3 or 5.
• security.dialog_enable_delay [Integer]: Reduce delay to wait before installing a new extension to 1000 (1 second). Setting to zero is not recommended because of security risks.

Advanced Network Settings:
These changes are recommended for broadband users with at least a 256 kB/s connection.
• network.dnsCacheEntries [Integer]: Increase number of DNS entries cached from default 20 to 512.
• network.dnsCacheExpiration [Integer]: Increase number of seconds DNS entries are cached from default 60 to 3600.
• network.dns.disableIPv6 [Boolean]: Disable IPv6 if your ISP doesn’t support it (most don’t).
• network.http.max-connections [Integer]: Increase maximum number of simultaneous connections to 48 or 96.
• network.http.max-connections-per-server [Integer]: Increase maximum connections per server from default 15 to 24.
• network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server [Integer]: Increase maximum persistent connections per server from default 6 to 12.
• network.http.pipelining [Boolean]: Change to True to enable HTTP Pipelining.
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests [Integer]: Increase from default 4 to 8.
• network.prefetch-next [Boolean]: This specifies whether Firefox pre-fetches web pages (and associated cookies) even before you visit them. It is most frequently used to pre-load the first result of a Google search. If you want to improve security and don’t want Firefox to load pages you never actually visit, change this to False. See the FAQ for more information.


3. Stop annoying static and flash ads, save bandwidth and speed up the time it takes to load pages:
Install the Adblock Plus Extension and block unnecessary advertisements.


4. Optimize flash video playback:
a) Upgrade to Flash Player 10
b) Increase the cache size, right click on a flash video while its playing, click "settings" then click the folder icon and increase the local storage volume to unlimited (drag the slider to the right).

5. Speed Up Firefox Load (start-up) Times

Firefox can be noticeably slower to load up the first time in each computing session compared with Internet Explorer. This is because Internet Explorer's core files are already loaded up with Windows at bootup. For the most part not much can be done about Firefox's load up time, aside from perhaps reducing the number of Add-ons you have installed. I don't consider it a big deal, but if you find it annoying, you might want to try Firefox Preloader, a program which attempts to preload portions of Firefox into memory at Windows startup so that Firefox is quicker to launch. Microsoft's own Windows Prefetch feature in XP, or Windows SuperFetch feature in Vista also tries to do this to some extent for all applications, but experiment to see if FFPreloader further improves Firefox load times on your machine.