For normal daily work Firefox requires from the user minimum settings available in the main panel. Fine tuning of your browser settings on the “about:config” page. In this piece, our experts provide the most useful options for browser configuration tweaks.
About:config
Described below operations are made on Firefox service page “about:config” to fine-tune browser’s behavior.
Enter the command to access the configuration panel in the address bar. Press the button marked “2” and take the risk of the consequences of the actions you perform.
The panel can operate in selective or full parameter display mode. The first uses the search box marked with a one. The second is activated by clicking on the bordered button.
Disabling operation animation
Animation that accompanies performed actions looks nice, but increases reaction time. On computers with discrete graphics card or more than 8 GB of RAM the user does not pay attention to it. On PCs with weaker hardware it can slow down the performance of the browser.
Enter the name of the key “toolkit” in the highlighted field.cosmeticAnimations.enabled”. Click the mouse on the marked “2” icon, changing the value of the parameter from “true” to “false”.
Disable site animation
An animation on websites full of media content is a factor that significantly slows down their opening. In most cases it is used in ads that contain no useful information for the visitor.
Type “image” in search field.animation_mode”. The opened parameter is a string parameter with the value “normal”. Click on the pencil icon in the screenshot, which is marked with a dotted line.
Manually type “none” in the editing area. Write the new value by clicking on the check mark to the right of the input box.
Docked tabs loading mode
The pinned tabs in the browser are refreshed immediately on launching the browser, even if they are not currently in use. The next setting sets them to the mode of downloading information on demand. The tab will be in a sleep state, not consuming memory until the user clicks on it.
Find the logical parameter “
owser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand”. Click on the icon marked with a double and change the default value from “false” to “true.
Cancel auto play
By default browser automatically starts playing video and audio content on the page. This behavior increases memory consumption and affects overall performance. In addition, as in the case of gif-animation, the clips included without a request are mostly of an advertising nature.
Looking for the parameter “media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed”. Clicking the radio button at the end of the name line changes the “true” variable to “false”.
Reducing number of pages to be loaded
When you click a search query or a link on a webpage, the browser saves the previous step in your computer’s memory. The “Forward” and “Backward” buttons allow to navigate through sites cached in this way, quickly returning to the starting point. By default Firefox keeps 50 consecutive moves. If you never go back fifty steps, you can reduce this value to a reasonable limit.
Type in the search box in the panel “
owser.sessionhistory.max_entries”. Clicking on the icon with a pencil opens the area for editing the string parameter. Set a new desired value manually.
Our experts recommend to reduce the default number set by Mozilla by a factor of five. Ten steps to backtracking should be enough for most users. The arrow at the end of the line, marked with a two on the screenshot, allows you to quickly return to the base value without opening the edit box.
To sum up
Using these tips you can reduce memory usage and make Firefox react faster to user actions.
