Simple Tweaks to make Mozilla Firefox 2-3 times Faster

There are many people out there complaining about the Firefox RAM Memory Bug. Lets get it straight. It’s not a bug. It’s part of the cache feature. This ‘feature’ is howthe pages are cached in a tabbed environment.
To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited less than 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last five session history entries for each tab.
This is a lot of data. If you have a lot of tabs, Firefox’s RAM memory usage can climb dramatically. It’s a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web.
Now a lot of us have found the ’secrets’ on how to manipulate settings in “about:config” to drop the memory usage as long as possible and to increase the speed at which Firefox loads sites. Read on to find out how to do this.
Remember: Firefox (download it here) is the best internet browser available (in my opinion), and these tweaks below will make it even greater and faster. So enjoy!
Reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses for it’s cache feature

Here’s how to do it:
1. Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the adress bar in the browser.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer”
3. Set it’s value to “0“;(Zero)
Increase the Speed in Which Firefox loads pages
1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit Enter.
(Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipeliningit will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.)
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 10.
This means it will make 10 requests at once.
3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“;.(Zero)

This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages faster now.
Optionally (for even faster web browsing) here are some more options for your about:config (you might have to create some of these entries by Right Click –> New– > Interger or String
network.dns.disableIPv6: set “false”
“content.notify.backoffcount”: set “5“; (Five)
“plugin.expose_full_path”: set “true”.
“ui.submenuDelay”: set “0; (zero)
Reduce RAM usage to 10mb when Firefox is minimized:

This little hack will drop Firefox’s RAM usage down to 10 Mb when minimized:
1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

These simple tweaks will make your web browsing with Mozilla Firefox 2-3 times faster and easier. And I think they are fairly easy to apply. Enjoy!

Source: dailytechnoapps.blogspot.com

Mozilla patches 13 Firefox security bugs

Mozilla on Thursday patched 13 vulnerabilities in Firefox, including a re-patch for a bug that was thought quashed in March 2010.

Eleven of the 13 were rated "critical," the threat level representing bugs that hackers could conceivably use to hijack a system or infect it with malware. Of the two remaining vulnerabilities, one was labeled "high" and the second was tagged as "moderate."

The patched versions were designated Firefox 3.6.13 and Firefox 3.5.16 by Mozilla, which continues to provide security updates for Firefox 3.5.

In the past, Mozilla has supported older versions of browsers for approximately six months after the release of the next version; if it had followed that practice with Firefox 3.5, Mozilla would have retired the browser in July 2010, six months after the debut of Firefox 3.6.

One of the 13 patches is a second crack at a flaw in Firefox exposed by Firebug, the popular Web development and debugger add-on.

First patched in March -- when Mozilla said it did not affect Firefox 3.6 -- Thursday's repeat was necessary because the researcher who originally reported the flaw found that that fix could be sidestepped.

The new patch applies to both Firefox 3.5 and 3.6, said Mozilla.

Other patches addressed browser engine memory bugs, buffer and integer overflows, and a location bar SSL spoofing flaw. The update also fixed nearly 70 non-security flaws, including several stability bugs that Mozilla tracked through user-submitted crash reports.

Like Google when it patches Chrome, Mozilla temporarily bars public access to technical details of the critical vulnerabilities it patches until most users have been notified of the update. The company's Bugzilla change and bug-filing database, for example, lets anyone see the listings for the two non-critical vulnerabilities in yesterday's update, but blocks access to the 11 critical flaws.

The next major upgrade, Firefox 4, was to reach Beta 8 on Nov. 30 -- later pushed back to Dec. 9 -- but has been delayed again, according to notes on Mozilla's site. It now won't appear before Dec. 16. In October Mozilla acknowledged that it could not keep to its original development schedule, and announced Firefox 4 would not launch until early 2011.

Firefox has been steadily losing usage share as measured by Web metrics company Net Applications. Last month, the browser's global share slipped to 22.8%, its lowest mark since August 2009.

Users can update to Firefox 3.6.13 by downloading the new edition or by selecting "Check for Updates" from the Help menu in the browser. Firefox 3.5 users can obtain version 3.5.16 with the update tool.