Speed Up Webpage Loading in IE and Firefox

Wishing the top web browsers would receive a tune up from Microsoft or Mozilla? Try this tweak you can do yourself. Version is irrelevant for Firefox as these modifications work with the versions that have been out for a couple years. These modifications are pretty popular, and can be seen throughout the internet. They specifically involve modifying the "internet" part of the programs, not so much the physical memory that it takes from your computer. Simply put, these little tricks will load web pages faster, but wont load the programs themselves any faster. Before each modification, I will describe what is being done just so you get an idea of what you are doing. These tweaks will not cause harm to your computer.

Firefox

Lets start with the up roaring favorite, Firefox. This first step will change the amount of requests sent for a web page. Essentially this is set somewhat low to begin with, to help the website the user will be viewing. If your browser requests the web page like this it will take slightly more bandwidth from the page, for your benefit, these modifications ARE NOT ILLEGAL, so there is no reason to worry about any of this.

1. Open your Firefox browser.
2. In the browser bar, or where the http and www. goes, type about:config and hit enter or make it load as if it was a web page.
3. In the filter bar, type "pipe" and let it search for anything that matches this word.
4. Three results should appear and make the appropriate change per entry
network.http.pipelining -- Right click the "False" and click "Toggle" in the drop down menu so that the value becomes true.
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests -- Right click on the number and click "Modify", then enter an appropriate number, I suggest 35.
network.http.proxy.pipelining -- Right click the "False" and click "Toggle" in the drop down menu so that the value becomes true.

And your done! This tweak will be most noticeable to broadband users, but has a great impact on all internet users.

Our second tweak involves the same field of stuff as the first. Once again,
1. Open your Firefox browser.
2. In the browser bar, or where the http and www. goes, type about:config and hit enter or make it load as if it was a web page.
3. Right click anywhere under the "preference name" tab, and highlight New in the drop down, and select integer.
4. For the name, enter "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" without the quotes.
5. It should then ask for a value, put 0.

What this will do, is change the amount of time the information recieved is processed. It is like changing the amount of time your mailman takes to give you the letter for you to open, the shorter the wait, the faster he delivers.

Internet Explorer

Now, for Internet Explorer. This specific tweak has ONLY been tested for Internet Explorer 7, so although it most likely will not damage any earlier versions, I recommend ONLY using this if you have Internet Explorer 7.

1. Open your basic Notepad.
2. Enter this code

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
“MaxConnectionsPerServer”=dword:00000010
“MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server”=dword:0000010

3. Go to save as, and save this as IEtweak.REG make sure it is .REG at the end, this tells the computer that it is designed to change a setting in the registry. Save this to your desktop. The picture should become something resembling a blue block, but it may vary depending on your OS.
4. Double click this file, and a message should prompt you by default confirming the changes, accept them, and you are done.

What this will do is similar to the first Firefox tweak, edit the connection limit to a sizable amount as compared to the default 2. Remember, this tweak will not speed up the program itself, but rather the web pages it loads. All of these tweaks modify the same basic limits set by default to avoid miscellaneous things. Again, none of these are illegal and they will ONLY affect the speed of the web pages loaded. In the future I will add a list of tweaks and modifications that will allow the programs themselves to load faster. Which of course we all know is really only needed for IE anyway ;).