AdBlockPlus did make a difference, it now loads my home page much faster. Now with the config tweaks and AdBlockPlus, I think we have now a better and faster browser than chrome.
speeding up firefox
- Thread starter oraclewizard77
- Start date
People argue all day about the merits of the various browsers. In my recent experience, on Windows, Chrome has been best all-around.
A close second is Opera10, which has several nice features and is tight and stable. A handy feature - you can optionally devote a bit of real estate at the top of the browser to thumbnails of currently-open tabs, as in this screenshot from my machine - http://i33.tinypic.com/2d2c0fc.png
Longstanding complaints about Ffox are: crashiness and memory leakiness. Also IE8 is an atrocious memory pig. Safari on Windows is better, but I've had some odd crashes - not sure if my machine, or a general problem.
True but it is offtopic. The question was how to speed up a certain browser. The fastest version is having it on Ubuntu*, end of story.
P.S.: Chrome doesn't exist for Linux,yet. (but will be called Chromium)
* You don't even need to install it, if you use the Ubuntu CD and run it from there, it is STILL faster than running it on Windows.
Without too many "add-ons".... and with Adblock, FlashBlock, Firetune, SmarterFox, SpeedyFox... Firefox is almost instantaneous for most websites. (No Squint slows rendering down a bit, as each page has to be rescaled.... fraction of a second is all.)
Having tweaked FF as per the suggestions, also using Adblock and Flashblock, I can't see any browser being quicker than my FF is right now. Pages are loading instantly. Any improvements from now on will be very hard to notice. I have tried it on lots of websites, especially ones that I know are normally slow to load and it is pretty much the same across the board. 
Thanks to the thread starter for the tweaks.
Thanks to the thread starter for the tweaks.
Quote from Pekelo:
If you really want to speed up your internet browsing experience, dual boot Ubuntu. Here is FF on Ubuntu:
..and on Windows XP:
..on the same laptop.
That's pretty amazing. Although, I assume if you are already getting close to what your provider advertises (via XP), there won't be such a significant improvement.
Well, special note: I don't think speedtest.net is very accurate but I guess we can use it for comparison of the same computer or household.
Here is FF on Vista with a newer faster laptop.(With Adblock. Without it it is 1 Mbps slower):
As you can see it is faster than the older, slower laptop with Ubuntu. Now the same laptop with Opera 10:
Here is FF on Vista with a newer faster laptop.(With Adblock. Without it it is 1 Mbps slower):
As you can see it is faster than the older, slower laptop with Ubuntu. Now the same laptop with Opera 10:
Quote from macal425:
Having tweaked FF as per the suggestions, also using Adblock and Flashblock, I can't see any browser being quicker than my FF is right now. Pages are loading instantly. Any improvements from now on will be very hard to notice. I have tried it on lots of websites, especially ones that I know are normally slow to load and it is pretty much the same across the board.
Thanks to the thread starter for the tweaks.
me too! works better! thanks to the OP!