Firefox 3 tune-up: nglayout.initialpaint.delay

Ok, you probably know about these 3 little secrets for your old-skool Firefox 2, and now our Firefox 3 and Shiretoko have them three “true” by default.

But if you want some nasty speed for your FF3 or Shire, try this:

Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return.

Then right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer.

Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″.
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages 2-30 times faster now, I suppose ^^;

Update (15/10/2008):

Now here are some compiled hacks that can help you double the speed of Firefox beside the above mentioned.

1. Type about:config in the address bar and then press Enter.

2. In the filter search bar type network.http.pipelining. Be sure the value field is set true,if not double-click to set true. HTTP is the application-layer protocol that most web pages are transferred with. In HTTP 1.1, multiple requests can be sent before any responses are received. This is known as pipelining. Pipelining reduces page loading times, but not all servers support it.

3. Go back to the filter search bar and type network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Double-click this option and set its value to 8.

4. In the filter search bar and type network.http.proxy.pipelining. Once opened doubleclick on it and set it to true.

5. In IPv6-capable DNS servers, an IPv4 address may be returned when an IPv6 address is requested. It is possible for Mozilla to recover from this misinformation, but a significant delay is introduced.
Type network.dns.disableIPv6 in the filter search bar and set this option to true by double clicking on it.

6. CONTENT INTERRUPT PARSING
This preference controls if the application will interrupt parsing a page to respond to UI events. It does not exist by default. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Boolean from the pop-up menu. Then:
A. Enter content.interrupt.parsing in the New boolean value pop-up window and click OK
B. When prompted to choose the value for the new boolean, select true and click OK.

7. NO WAIT TILL COMPLETELY DOWNLOADIED

Rather than wait until a page has completely downloaded to display it to the user, Mozilla applications will regularly render what has been received to that point. This option controls the maximum amount of time the application will be unresponsive while rendering pages. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Enter content.max.tokenizing.time in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 2250000 and click OK.

8. CONTENT NOTIFY INTERVAL
This option sets the minimum amount of time to wait between reflows. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window, select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Type content.notify.interval in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK.
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 750000 and click OK.

9. CONTENT NOTIFY ONTIMER
A. This option sets if to reflow pages at an interval any higher than that specified by content.notify.interval. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Boolean from the pop-up menu.
B. Type content.notify.ontimer in the New boolean value pop-up window and click OK.
C. You will be prompted to choose the value for the new boolean. Select true and click OK.

10. Notify Backoffcount
This option controls the maximum number of times the content will do timer-based reflows. After this number has been reached, the page will only reflow once it is finished downloading. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Enter content.notify.backoffcount in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK.
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 5 and click OK.

11. CONTENT SWITCH THRESHOLD
You can interact with a loading page when content.interrupt.parsing is set to true. When a page is loading, the application has two modes: a high frequency interrupt mode and a low frequency interrupt mode. The first one interrupts the parser more frequently to allow for greater UI responsiveness during page load.
The low frequency interrupt mode interrupts the parser less frequently to allow for quicker page load. The application enters high frequency interrupt mode when you move the mouse or type on the keyboard and switch back to low frequency mode when you had no activity for a certain amount of time. This preference controls that amount of time. Right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) anywhere in the about:config window and select New and then Integer from the pop-up menu.
A. Enter content.switch.threshold in the New integer value pop-up window and click OK.
B. You will be prompted to enter a value. Enter 750000 and click OK.

12.  SPEEDIER JAVASCRIPT ENGINE IN FF3.1 (updated on 4/11/2008)
Type “about:config” into the Smart Bar,
Then type “javascript.options.jit.content” into the filter.
Double-click on the preference listed to change the boolean setting from “false” to “true.”
Close the window and you should notice an immediate improvement to the JavaScript rendering speed.

Now you may activate both tweaks as below in your FF3/FF3.1/Minefield, tell me what you noticed!!

image.cache.timeweight integer        1
javascript.options.jit.chrome boolean     true

Happy hacking!!!

Don't bother the posts below, but if you are free, why not?

1. Revive older extentions work with the latest Firefox 3.0
2. FF3.1 Speedier JavaScript engine
3. Kill Firefox extension install delay
4. Firefox windows within Firefox tab
5. Vista: right-click to Flip 3D