Install BleachBit
The first tip involves installing BleachBit. This
software is included in Ubuntu and Debian repositories, and there is
also
an installation package available for Windows.
BleachBit deletes junk to recover disk space, improves
start up times and maintain privacy. It offers both a simple PyGTK GUI
and a command line interface for automation.
The software eliminates old junk from your system
including cache, Internet history, temporary files, unused locale files
(better than localepurge), logs, and cookies. It wipes clean 50
applications including Firefox (as well as OpenOffice.org, Opera, Real
Player, Skype, Adobe Reader, Google
Chrome and Chromium, Google Toolbar, Sun Java, and more). Besides
improving
Firefox's responsiveness it also shreds files so that they cannot be
recovered, wipes free disk space to hide insecurely deleted files.
It is a handy utility that performs a number of
different tasks for Firefox. In particular:
 Cache: Web cache
reduces time to display revisited pages.
Cookies: HTTP cookies contain information such as web site
prefereneces, authentication, and tracking identification
Download history: List of files downloaded
Form history: A history of forms entered in web sites
and in the Search
bar
Passwords: A database of usernames and passwords as well
as a list of sites that should not store passwords
Places: A database of URLs including bookmarks and a
history of visited
web sites
Session restore: Loads the initial session after the
browser closes or
crashes
URL history: List of visited web pages
Vacuum: Clean database fragmentation to reduce space and
improve speed without removing any data. Since Firefox 3.0, bookmarks,
history and most storage is kept in SQLite databases. As any other
database, SQLite databases become fragmented over time and empty spaces
appear. Over time the fragmentation causes a performance hit.
Render pages faster
Here we have a really simple tip that gives an
immediate improvement in how quickly web pages are displayed.
In Firefox each setting, or preference, is given a
name and stored as a string (text), integer (number) or Boolean (true/false)
value. Firefox stores these preferences in a file called prefs.js. The easiest
way to edit prefs.js is by entering about:config in Firefox's address
bar and press Enter. The settings are then listed in alphabetical
order.
New integer values are created by right clicking in the
listing, and then click New
> Integer.
To improve page rendering, enter about:config in the
address bar (accept the warning that comes up) and perform the
following:
Create a new integer value named
content.notify.backoffcount and set
the value to 5
Create a value named nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set its value to 0
The first line stops Firefox waiting for the entire
page
to download before rendering. The second improves speed rendering
further by making sure Firefox does not
wait for the page layout information to be fully downloaded before
displaying the page.
When you restart Firefox, you should notice an instant
improvement.
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