OK, so Firefox can be a bit slow on page loads. But the benefits (especially in terms of security) far outweigh the extra lag. But, for those of you with broadband connections looking to speed up Firefox there is a simple configuration solution. If your only using a dialup connection, you can probably still get a bit of improvement, but I would suggest using a number like 8 instead under '
maxrequests' so you don't choke your connection.
1. Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit enter.
By default the browser will make one request to any given web page at a time. By enabling pipelining, it will make several at once (threading), which can really speed up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows by double clicking the appropriate item:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to a larger number. I suggest 25-35. This means it will make that many requests for data at once.
3. Finally, right-click anywhere and select New, then Integer from the menu. Name the variable "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set the value for it to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts upon or responds to information it receives.
That's about it. Using my DSL at home in noticed minor improvements. Using a T1 at work, I noted some dramatic improvements.