All things Firefox

[dsouza123]

I use Opera mostly though FireFox sometimes.

I had noticed Prime95 was getting much less CPU time
when the browser was running and pages had flash animations.

In Opera I just renamed the plugin that enables flash (.swf) files.
NPSWF32.dll -> NPSWF32.bll
Now any flash files that get loaded aren't run.

Opera also has an easy way to disable plugins, a check off in the
Tools -> Quick preferences -> Enable plugins
or
The main bar can have a drop down list box placed on it
that allows switching the plugins on/off.

Opera's interface is extremely configurable, almost any part can be
enabled/disabled and placed in different areas.

[Mystwalker]

You can also use F12 to get the Quick preferences.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

The best thing about Firefox is its speed. Webpages that I am used to seeing load in 20 to 30 seconds now take 15 seconds or less!

One minor annoyance I've noticed with FF: I have to shut down the program and restart at least every couple of days, otherwise performance begins to degrade noticeably. Typical complex C++/java app that probably does a less-than-great job of pruning/cleaning-up dynamic data structures created during a session.

At least (in stark contrast to Netscape, which appears to have gotten worse in recent releases) one gets the sense that the FF folks are hard at work at improving performance and actually fixing bugs, rather than just adding all kinds of new "features" with little regard for improving the existing code base.

One other niggle (which I may have mentioned on another thread, but don't recall for sure): there are some features that would be nice to have easier access to via the FF Tools menus, but which are not accessible there, and AFAIK not documented in the help menus (at least not anywhere I found). Example: when I'm browsing I prefer to have image-looping disabled, except for the one or two sites I visit that need it, e.g. the local weather radar loop. In Netscape this was easy to enable/disable, but not so in FF. After a fair amount of online searching, I finally found it: you have to type about:config into the URL bar, which brings up an (apparently) complete list of the available preferences and their current values. For my example, you need to scroll down until you find image.animation_mode, right-click the "value" field and change the value from normal (the default) to none. Pain in the ass. Luckily I only need to check the weather radar a couple times of week during the winter, and almost never in the summer (California).

Not nearly enough to make me miss Netscape or IE, however.

[JuanTutors]

Funny thing is it's not faster on my computer. I tried all the tricks, and none have helped. I'm actually somewhat anti-IE, so I stick with Firefox over it for moral considerations.

[Jeff Gilchrist]

Originally Posted by dominicanpapi82

Funny thing is it's not faster on my computer. I tried all the tricks, and none have helped. I'm actually somewhat anti-IE, so I stick with Firefox over it for moral considerations.

Really? When I now use a machine without the Firefox modifications, it feels like I'm back on dialup again... What kind of Internet connection do you have?

[JuanTutors]

Originally Posted by Jeff Gilchrist

Really? When I now use a machine without the Firefox modifications, it feels like I'm back on dialup again... What kind of Internet connection do you have?

Cable but it's really crappy. There are times when it's fast, so I think it might just not react well with my connection. A lot of internet related things on my computer do that, so I'll wait until I get another new connection and maybe I'll take my comment back.

[ewmayer]

SECURITY HOLE ALERT!!! One more reason to keep JavaScript off except for sites (hopefully few) for which you *really* need it:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/120756

[Fusion_power]

This thread has been out of circulation for several months.

Firefox has a new version out that when installed resets the speedup values.

1.) network.http.pipelining
2.) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
3.) network.http.proxy.pipelining

Type about:config in the url window. Set 1 and 3 to true and set 2 to a value between 8 and 32. Dialup users will probably need 8 and broadband users up to 32.

Fusion

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Firefox has a new version out that when installed resets the speedup values.

1.) network.http.pipelining
2.) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
3.) network.http.proxy.pipelining

Type about:config in the url window. Set 1 and 3 to true and set 2 to a value between 8 and 32. Dialup users will probably need 8 and broadband users up to 32.

Not sure I understand - do you mean that older versions should have similar values set, but for those we'll have to do it manually via the about:config menu? Have you seen any browsing speed improvements from setting the pipelining booleans to true and bumping up the maxrequests value? (On my current v1.1 install, the latter was defaulted to 4).

[Fusion_power]

If you had previously modified the values, then installed the most recent version of Firefox, they will be reset to standard values.

If you want to use the speed up tricks, then you will have to set the parameters as above. Note that setting max requests to 32 seemed to slow down my computer. I currently have it set to 16. I'm only using a 1.5 dsl line though.

Fusion