Tweaks To Speed Up The Portable Firefox Browser

Contributor Icon Contributed by shamanstears Date Icon August 8, 2006  
Tag Icon Tagged: Windows networking

Portable Firefox web browser is intended for use on portable media such as a USB flash drive but it can also be used on any hard disk drive. The browsercan run quite slow, but there are hacks/tweaks to make it run faster.


First we need to eliminate the amount of RAM Firefox uses for it’s cache feature
Here’s how to fix it:
1. type “about:config” (no quotes) in the browser address bar
2. Find browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer
3. set it’s value to “0″

Increase the Speed in Which Firefox loads pages
1. stay in about:config
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30 (this might piss off some website owners as it will request the page 30 times)
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″.
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

Reduce RAM usage to 10mb when Firefox is minimized
This little about:config hack will drop the RAM usage down to 10 Mb when Firefox is minimized
1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox

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Viewing 3 Comments

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    <font color="red">
    WARNING! INFO ABOUT TORPARK, PLEASE READ

    *******************************************************************************
    THE ABOVE ARTICLE IS ENTIRELY INCORRECT, PLEASE DISREGARD
    *******************************************************************************
    </font>
    Greetings, I am the developer of Torpark. The person who wrote this did not read any of the multiple warnings I said about modifying Torpark, that Torpark is already optimized, and does not understand the Tor network. Further, if you make one of the modifications he suggests, you are likely to completely lose your anonymity.

    1. Torpark does not use a disk cache, only a memory cache. If you reduce the memory cache, that DOES NOT increase your speed or performance, it lowers it. It should be noted that this information is universally true: using less memory makes an efficient program slower, not faster.

    2. Torpark is using the Tor network, not a direct internet connection. If you try to enable pipelining, you will reduce your performance over the tor network, as it operates by inline multi-node circuits. You can't just take rumored tips that speed up firefox for a normal internet connection and apply it to something sophisticated like onion routing.

    3. Torpark Switch Proxy Extension is a very bad idea, and entirely redundant. Torpark has been using a proxy button for a while now. All you had to do was look at the manual, that is what the onion button is. I might note that if the writer had actually used the software or read the manual he/she might know this. When you click the Tor onion button, it conveniently lets you know if "Tor enabled" or "Tor disabled" in the status bar of Torpark.

    4. Redundant as above. Further, I've developed a new software called Torbird, which is thunderbird and tor combined. Further, it links between Torpark and Thunderbird for email and web handling.

    Regards,

    Steve
    Torpark Developer
    http://torpark.nfshost.com
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    Thanks for your comments. I'll add a link and warning to the original recipe to direct users to your remarks.
    • ^
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    References to torpark removed by author's request.
 
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