While Firefox browser is great right out of the box, as it were, there are some things you can do to get an even better browsing experience. The following are five of the best tricks you should know about.

 

1. Increasing Speed

Firefox is optimized for dial-up connections by default where it loads things one by one. If you are using a broadband connection, however, this leads to an unnecessary waste of time. You may increase the speed at which pages load through the use of pipelining that allows for simultaneous loading of multiple things.

Please note that the about:config tool you will use is very powerful and must be configured with great care. It can wreak havoc just as much as it can improve performance.

• Click on the address bar and type “about:config”, and then press “Enter.”
• In the filter field, type “network.http” and then double-click these settings to change them.
• “network.http.proxy.pipelining” – true
• “network.http.pipelining” – true
• “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” – Set the number of simultaneous requests you want, say 20.
• Right-click on any space while you are still in “about:config,” select New-> Integer, and give it the name “nglayout.initialpaint.delay.” Put its value as zero.

2. Limiting the Amount of RAM Used

• Type “about:config” as before.
• Filter “browser.cache”.
• Select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”.
• Lower the default setting. For example, you may choose 15000 if your RAM is between 512 MB and 1GB.

You may even set Firefox to move to the hard disk whenever you minimize it. Open about:config, and right-click anywhere. Select New->Boolean, and refer to it as “config.trim_on_minimize”, then set the value to true. You must restart your browser to effect the changes.

3. Adding Keywords to Your Bookmarks

Firefox allows you to access your bookmarks faster by adding relevant keywords. Right-click on a bookmark, and select “Properties.” Select the “Keyword” field, type your keyword, and then save the changes. Whenever you type that keyword in the address bar, you will be taken straight to the bookmark.

4. Using Shortcuts

Firefox allows you to use many keyboard shortcuts to help you work faster. Here are some shortcuts and what they do.

• Ctrl+L – go to the address bar
• Ctrl+D – bookmark current page
• Shift-Spacebar – page up
• Spacebar – page down
• Ctrl+T – open new tab
• Ctrl-W – close tab
• Ctrl+F – find
• Ctrl+- – decrease text size
• Ctrl+= – increase text size

You may also use the mouse to access some handy shortcuts.

• Middle-click on a tab to close it.
• Middle-click on a link to open it in a new tab.
• Press Cntrl, and scroll down to increase text size.
• Press Cntrl, and scroll up to decrease text size.
• Press shift, and scroll up to go to the next page.
• Press shift, and scroll down to move to the previous page.

5. Deleting Address Bar Records

Firefox shows previous addresses you’ve visited as you type in the address bar. Although this is a handy feature, you may not want some addresses to show up. When the records show up, scroll to the address you want to delete using the down arrow, and then press the delete button.

These top five tricks will help you stay on top as you use the Firefox browser.