18 replies to this topic

[scab_dog]

Ok first of all, i have read through all the Firefox tune-up tutorials on the site, and none of them have mentioned on how to make Firefox load faster like IE. So i thought i should make a easy tutorial on it.

REAL EASY WAY:
Download Firetune: FIRETUNE
And you will know what to do, just muck around with the software’s settings.

COMPLICATED BUT TECHNICAL WAY:
And second of all, all those who are still using IE (Microsoft's infamous Internet Explorer) get Firefox. Why you may ask, read this: FIREFOX vs. IE.

Have you ever noticed on how fast IE loads compared to Firefox? That is because XP preloads IE on its start-up.

After some research i found that Firefox developers have chosen not to tie up system resources before they really need it, but if you want it to load fast it is possible to achieve that by doing the same thing as what IE does.

1. Put your Firefox shortcut onto you start menu. Easier way of doing this is if you have a shortcut on your desktop drag it onto you start button on your button left.

2. Right click on the shortcut in the start menu and then 'Properties'. Find the target section which should contain something similar [ "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" ] , add '/Prefetch:1' next to the address (without the inverted commas). SO the target box should contain what is in the square brackets as follows [ "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" /Prefetch:1 ]



Now by doing this Windows XP should preload Firefox on its start-up, so Firefox loads as fast as IE.
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I thought about making a tutorial on changing the about:config settings but seeing all the tutorials already available, my topic may be considered spamming.

Notice from BuffaloHELP:

Additional articles on making your Firefox run/load faster: Speed up Firefox & Make Firefox run faster & Make Firefox faster & Firefox tricks to boot faster

[truefusion]

For me, Opera loads faster than IE. If you can find a way to make Firefox load faster than Opera, that'd be nice.

[iGuest]

why does firefox freeze
How To Make Firefox Load Faster + Known Firefox Tweaks

What are some user friendly tips for firefox?

Why does firefox take long o load some sites?

-question by Abdoul Conde

[iGuest]

NONSENSEWhy IE loads faster:The internet explorer application itself is very small with most of the work being done by the supporting DLL's. These are loaded at bootup, not to speed a launch of IE, but because they are used by the system itself.Prefetch switch:The switch /prefetch:1 does nothing for Firefox. This switch is used in auto-generated shortcuts to Windows Media Player, but not for what you think. I will leave the description to Ryan Myers, member of Microsoft's client performance team:

Http://blogs.Msdn.Co.../25/421882.Aspx

-reply by Larry Miller

[iGuest]

I am no expert, but I do know that Firefox was taking literally about five minutes (!) to load on my XP computer. (No other programs take such an abnormally long time). I added the prefetch switch, and now it takes less than ten seconds.  As such, I believe that you may be mistaken in your opinion that it doesn't help.

[iGuest]

Firefox used to be good but with every new version it gets slower to load. I regularly have to go into Task Manager and end the firefox process to get it to run... Sadly it's becoming old news. Opera seems to be a better bet!

[frozen.fish]

How to make firefox load faster 100%?

..use k-meleon..

[rayzoredge]

Quote

I suspect that the "add /prefetch:1 to make rocket go now" urban legend will never die, though.

In theory, prefetching makes sense, so it makes sense to add the prefetch switch to make FireFox load faster. Judging from the blogger, I'm going to go out on a limb and agree with him.

However, speaking of prefetching... there is a FireFox preloader that drastically cuts intial load times for FireFox... at the cost of adding some boot time to your startup. I'm using it now on my work computer and it does work (cutting my FF load to 4 seconds)... but one thing that annoys me a bit is that sometimes when the preloader kicks in, it opens up a "windowless" window (only the title bar shows, with no text and just the FF icon), and that sticks around, which means that sometimes it has the tendency to make you lose out on all your previous tabs (if you have that option enabled). If you want, though, you can give it a shot.

[Ash-Bash]

This doesn't seem to make it load faster for me, It already does load fast anyway but there is really no need to tweak firefox you will need to tweak IE though.

[iGuest]

ChromeHow To Make Firefox Load Faster + Known Firefox Tweaks

I hate IE and that is why I changed to FireFox. However, after Google released Chrome, I have been using it ever since. Chrome takes literally 2 seconds to open up and loads pages faster than FireFox or IE. Other advantages are it's clean interface, AJAX technology, and many more. Ofcourse, Chrome is still young and needs more features that are present in FireFox but it has lots of potential. The most annoying thing I find about it is that some sites's applications only work on IE or FireFox (I.E. ESPN 360, TurboTax, etc.). Other than that, I would highly recommend Chrome especially after they get out of 2.0 BETA.

-reply by Ahmed