Firefox is a great browser. It is the first to give Internet Explorer a run for its money. According to W3Schools, Firefox has over 40 percent of the browser market. This is due in part to its usability, flexibility and speed. Although Firefox is a fast browser there are ways to make it even faster. We will show you several ways to maximize Firefox’s performance.

Disable History Cache

Every time you visit a page Firefox saves the page so when you press the back button the page will display right away. To disable this type “about:config” in the address bar. Do a search for browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers. Double-click on browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers and change the -1 to 0. Remember that this will slow down how fast pages come up when you press the back button.

Only Keep the Extensions You Need

When you have a lot of extensions in Firefox your computer needs to load the extensions to memory for when needed. The fore extensions you have, the more Firefox becomes. Go to Tools the Add-ons. Remove the extensions that you are not using. There is a possibility that one extension is causing the problem. To see if this is the case, start Firefox in safe mode. Go to the run command in Windows and type “firefox.exe –safe-mode”. Once you click on OK, Firefox will start without skins or extensions.

Change the Number of Connections

The more connections you have going out for information the faster the page will load. To increase the amount of connections Firefox uses type “about:config” in the address bar. Find and change the following:

• content.interrupt.parsing - true
• content.max.tokenizing.time - 2250000
• content.notify.interval - 750000
• content.notify.ontimer - true
• content.switch.threshold - 750000
• nglayout.initialpaint.delay - 0
• network.http.max-connections - 48
• network.http.max-connections-per-server - 16
• network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy - 16
• network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server - 8
• browser.cache.memory.capacity - 65536

When done restart Firefox and check out the difference.

That’s it for this one. With these three tips, Firefox should lean and built for speed. There is a lot more you can do to tweak Firefox. These are a few of the big ones.

Internet Explorer has been in a features arms race with Firefox for a while.  More and more people are switching to Firefox because of its speed and stability.  A big reason people still use Internet Explorer is it is the first browser that a new user will see so they become familiar with it..  If Internet Explorer did not ship with Windows it would not have the amount of users it does.

If that new user wants to use Internet Explorer but wants to give their browsing a speed boost.  Here are a few tips.

If you Don’t Need a Proxy Don’t Use One.

 A proxy server is used if you have a slow connection.  If you have a high speed connection you usually don’t need it.  Here is how you remove it.  Go to tools and select Internet Options. In the Internet Options click on the Connections tab and press the LAN settings.  Just remove all of the check marks, click on OK.

Get Rid of 3rd Party Toolbars

Some software companies have learned that there is money to be made by installing their software branded toolbar.  The problem with these toolbars is when installed they take up bandwidth and computer resources while you browse the internet.  To remove the toolbars you don’t need, just identify the toolbar and remove it for add/remove programs.  If it is not listed in add/remove programs it may be spyware.  You will then need to scan your computer with your favorite spyware/malware software.

Increase the Amount of Connections Internet Explorer uses.

By default Internet Explorer only uses 10 simultaneous connections to download content from a webpage.  Here is how you can increase the amount of connections. Open notepad and paste the code below in it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
“MaxConnectionsPerServer”=dword:00000020
“MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server”=dword:0000020

Save the file by clicking save as, change Save as type to All Files, name the file speedup.reg.

So there you have it.  With these few changes you can really change the performance of Internet Explorer.  If you want a completely better experience give Firefox a try. You won’t be disappointed.