Firefox Tweak Guide
[Page 13] Neat Stuff & Conclusion
This section brings the guide to a conclusion, but not before providing a few more tips which may be of some help to you.
Speed Up Firefox Load Times
Firefox can be 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. The latest versions of Firefox have improved startup time, however if you still find Firefox's startup time annoying, you can 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 built-in Windows Prefetch feature in XP, or Windows SuperFetch feature in Vista or 7 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.
Other ways of improving Firefox's initial startup time which you can try include:
Ultimately there is no magic trick for speeding up Firefox's startup time. If you set it up to preload during Windows startup for example, you are simply making a tradeoff between slightly faster Firefox startup time in return for slightly slower Windows boot-up time. The best way to speed up Firefox is to firstly tweak it with some thought and effort as per this guide, and then, most importantly, reduce the number of active add-ons you have. The more Extensions you have, the greater the number of active Plugins, the more graphically intensive your selected Theme is, and the more tabs you have opening at the start of a session, the more data Firefox will have to load when it starts, the greater the chance for instability, and the more system resources it will have to use while running.
Portable Firefox
If you want to use Firefox on other PCs, but don't want the hassle of installing it wherever you go, or you don't have permission to install it on other machines, or you just don't want to leave any personal data on other machines, then you can use Firefox Portable Edition. This application is the same as the full version of Firefox, however it has been reconfigured so that it works entirely from a portable device such as a USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod/MP3 player, etc. The way it does this is by disabling disk caching and relying entirely on RAM caching and storing all your personal information only on your portable device - it does not put any traces of your information on the drive(s) of the computer on which you use the portable application.
Firefox Prefetching
Google Prefetch
A feature introduced by Google and used by Firefox is called Google Prefetch. This is not the same as the application prefetching used by Windows - this feature tries to load up what Google believes is the most likely page you will want to view as a result of certain Google searches you initiate. It does this in the background without informing you. You may notice your browser cache may have web elements from pages you haven't visited yet - this may be because of Google Prefetch. A few websites may also use this prefetch feature to speed up loading of the 'Next'/'Previous' pages of an article for example. It is not a "bad" feature, and can speed up browsing, but if you wish to disable this feature in Firefox, go to About:Config, find the network.prefetch-next setting and set it to False. This will improve security, but may slow down browsing, particularly in Google searches.
DNS Prefetch
Another form of prefetching which Firefox uses is to proactively seek out and resolve DNS results for web links and objects on a page in advance of a user clicking them. This is called DNS Prefetching and is once again designed to speed up browsing. Whenever Firefox encounters a web address, it needs to convert that text address into an IP number before it can use it. It does this by looking up the name and IP number through a DNS server. By using a small amount of bandwidth to resolve the IP addresses in advance, when a user eventually clicks on any one of them they will load up more quickly. There should be no real reason to disable this functionality as it will not breach your privacy in any significant way but will aid in improving browsing speeds. However if you wish to disable it in Firefox, go to About:Config, create a new network.dns.disablePrefetch setting and set it to True.
See the Advanced Tweaking section for details on how to use About:Config to change either of the above settings.
Google Customization
Not specific to Firefox as such, but potentially of interest if you frequently use Google Search - if you're interested in customizing the appearance and functionality of Google Search, refer to this Google Customization Guide which details how to fix various potential annoyances such as removing the Google 'Everything' sidebar, disabling personalized search results, and stopping the fade-in effect.
View Source Code for Web Pages
If you're interested in website design you may already regularly right-click on a page and select 'View Page Source' to see the source code for certain pages. You can also highlight only a portion of a web page with your mouse, then right-click on this highlighted selection and select 'View Selection Source' - the source window will open and only show the coding related to the portion of the web page you've highlighted. Firefox introduces the Web Console, found by clicking the Firefox button and selecting 'Web Console' under the 'Web Developer' menu - this allows you to get into even further detail about the dynamic interactions of Firefox with web pages as you browse them.
I Need More Help With Firefox!
Unfortunately I can't provide tech support for this or any of my other guides, so please don't email me asking me for help or advice. In general all the information you need is right here in this guide, as long as you are patient and read it carefully, and supplement it with some thought and research. However if you need help with a particular issue, you should check out the Official Firefox Support Site.
Of assistance when undertaking troubleshooting, click the Firefox button then under the Help menu select the 'Troubleshooting Information' item. This screen presents a quick summary of the major components of Firefox which you have altered, including your installed plugins, extensions and modified preferences. If you wish to allow others to give you assistance, click the 'Copy all to clipboard' button and then paste the information into an email or forum post.
Since add-ons are a common source of problems in Firefox, also refer to the 'Troubleshooting Add-ons' area at the bottom of the Add-ons section of this guide for more details.
Conclusion
That brings this Firefox Tweak Guide to a close. I hope you've found the tips and tweaks herein useful and informative. Just like all my other tweak guides, I have made sure this guide remains updated based on user feedback and as new official versions of Firefox are released. It's already been significantly revised for every major version of Firefox since 1.5. To help me keep the guide as accurate as possible, please Email Me if you believe there are any errors or serious omissions in this guide. Once again though, please don't email me for personal tech support or tweaking advice.
As a final note, since the release of this guide in early 2005 I've had a fair few people email me telling me about all sorts of Firefox tweaking utilities. My opinion of these types of utilities is that no software, however well designed, can tweak an application or game for you - it simply isn't possible. Most tweaks and tips require that you make an educated choice as to what suits your particular tastes, your hardware and the uses to which you will be putting Firefox. There is no "right" setting for every machine. While reading this guide may be tedious, I strongly suggest you actually take the time to read through it in detail because not only will you find out how to optimize Firefox, the information will also help you better troubleshoot problems and also take full advantage of all of Firefox's features.
Until next time, take care!
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