Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,832
26,946
New one found today, browser.cache.use_new_backend

Set the value to 1 to enable.

Also, if you enable this make sure browser.cache.use_new_backend_temp is true.
 

2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
2,240
A few more. I'm not sure if the devtools tweaks do anything, but I don't use devtools so I'm going for it.

beacon.enabled=false
-as far as I can tell, beacon is a way of reporting your visit to a site to other participating sites. The w3c standard says it's used for analytics. I don't like that.

browser.send_pings.require_same_host=true
-disables sending pings to 3rd party hosts, which helps curb tracking a little

browser.chrome.toolbar_style=1
-supposedly makes the toolbar text only instead of text + images. I haven't seen a difference

browser.chrome.toolbar_tips=false
-disables toolbar tips. I'm not sure about this either

dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled=false
-disables telling a site that you have copied something from it to your clipboard

network.dnsCacheEntries=600
-increases the DNS cache to 600 entries. Probably not necessary to raise this because the default of 400 is pretty high.

network.dnsCacheExpiration=300
-sets the DNS cache to expire in 300 seconds instead of 60. DNS queries often take up a lot of time, so caching them for as long as possible is helpful.

images.animation_mode=none
-disables animated images

media.autoplay.enabled=false
-disables autoplaying videos. Not much of a problem without Flash and with NoScript but this will take care of it

keyword.enabled=false
-This disables treating words typed in the URL bar as keywords to search bookmarks

social.remote-install.enabled=false
-Some kind of social media service. I don't want it

social.toast-notifications.enabled=false
-see above

stagefright.enabled=false
-I believe stagefright is an Android library, so it's not necessary to have this enabled

webgl.disabled=true
-disables webgl, which doesn't even work with the nv driver in OpenBSD. You may want to keep this enabled.


Lots of devtools disabled below. I don't know if this does anything because they don't consume RAM unless they are open, but it might help.

devtools.debugger.enabled=false

devtools.inspector.enabled=false

devtools.netmonitor.enabled=false

devtools.profiler.enabled=false

devtools.styleeditor.enabled=false

devtools.tilt.enabled=false

devtools.toolbar.enabled=false

devtools.toolbox.sideEnabled=false

devtools.fontinspector.enabled=false
 
  • Like
Reactions: Altemose

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,832
26,946
A few more. I'm not sure if the devtools tweaks do anything, but I don't use devtools so I'm going for it.

beacon.enabled=false
-as far as I can tell, beacon is a way of reporting your visit to a site to other participating sites. The w3c standard says it's used for analytics. I don't like that.

browser.send_pings.require_same_host=true
-disables sending pings to 3rd party hosts, which helps curb tracking a little

browser.chrome.toolbar_style=1
-supposedly makes the toolbar text only instead of text + images. I haven't seen a difference

browser.chrome.toolbar_tips=false
-disables toolbar tips. I'm not sure about this either

dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled=false
-disables telling a site that you have copied something from it to your clipboard

network.dnsCacheEntries=600
-increases the DNS cache to 600 entries. Probably not necessary to raise this because the default of 400 is pretty high.

network.dnsCacheExpiration=300
-sets the DNS cache to expire in 300 seconds instead of 60. DNS queries often take up a lot of time, so caching them for as long as possible is helpful.

images.animation_mode=none
-disables animated images

media.autoplay.enabled=false
-disables autoplaying videos. Not much of a problem without Flash and with NoScript but this will take care of it

keyword.enabled=false
-This disables treating words typed in the URL bar as keywords to search bookmarks

social.remote-install.enabled=false
-Some kind of social media service. I don't want it

social.toast-notifications.enabled=false
-see above

stagefright.enabled=false
-I believe stagefright is an Android library, so it's not necessary to have this enabled

webgl.disabled=true
-disables webgl, which doesn't even work with the nv driver in OpenBSD. You may want to keep this enabled.


Lots of devtools disabled below. I don't know if this does anything because they don't consume RAM unless they are open, but it might help.

devtools.debugger.enabled=false

devtools.inspector.enabled=false

devtools.netmonitor.enabled=false

devtools.profiler.enabled=false

devtools.styleeditor.enabled=false

devtools.tilt.enabled=false

devtools.toolbar.enabled=false

devtools.toolbox.sideEnabled=false

devtools.fontinspector.enabled=false
Cool. I got a few of these, one or two I had actually covered already (the DNS tweaks). I'm leaving the dev tools alone because those are useful to debug webpages and don't really affect the browser itself as far as ram goes.

Nice digging!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Altemose

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,832
26,946
I go back and forth with prefetching. Right now though there seems to be a speed bump.

So, I will just list these two (they probably are already in the first post). YMMV.

network.dns.disablePrefetch = false
network.prefetch-next = true
 

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
I go back and forth with prefetching. Right now though there seems to be a speed bump.

So, I will just list these two (they probably are already in the first post). YMMV.

network.dns.disablePrefetch = false
network.prefetch-next = true

Should I add these to the "easy installer"?
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,832
26,946
Should I add these to the "easy installer"?
Use them for awhile first. If you notice any speed increase then go ahead.

I'm just guessing right now. I believe in my OP I had them set to be off, so I don't want to say turn them on and contradict myself. That's why I said I go back and forth on them.

Right now I am noticing a speed bump, but I'm not sure if that's placebo or real. If someone else uses them for awhile and experiences faster speed then ok. But I just don't know right now.
 

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
Use them for awhile first. If you notice any speed increase then go ahead.

I'm just guessing right now. I believe in my OP I had them set to be off, so I don't want to say turn them on and contradict myself. That's why I said I go back and forth on them.

Right now I am noticing a speed bump, but I'm not sure if that's placebo or real. If someone else uses them for awhile and experiences faster speed then ok. But I just don't know right now.

I will do some testing and determine whether to add it or not. I just updated it not too long ago when 31.8.0 came out to include all of your new tweaks in the thread since the last file.
 

2984839

Cancelled
Apr 19, 2014
2,114
2,240
I go back and forth with prefetching. Right now though there seems to be a speed bump.

So, I will just list these two (they probably are already in the first post). YMMV.

network.dns.disablePrefetch = false
network.prefetch-next = true

I've gone back and forth as well several times and don't see a noticeable difference either way. I think whatever benefit prefetching might offer when you click on a link with prefetched content is offset by the extra CPU time spent prefetching it in the first place and other links as well. I'm leaving it off for now just for privacy's sake.

I've also backtracked and decided to aggressively cache everything in RAM. I typically have 800-900 MB or so free while running Firefox so there's no real need to be frugal about it. I set it to 128 MB here and it made a big difference.

browser.cache.memory.capacity=128000
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,832
26,946
I hear you. I've also set up the ram cache again on my A1013. Something about not having a failed cache anymore has caused it to work much better using ram instead of either the disk or just downloading.

But it's the only one I've left that way. All the rest seem to perform better with no cache.
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,832
26,946
Here's another:
permissions.default.image
1=Load images automatically
2=Do not load any images from any site
3=Load images automatically except from third party sites.

I set this to 3. Seems to be some sort of improvement.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jbarley

happyfrappy

macrumors 6502
Oct 14, 2007
343
50
Location eh?
An interesting observation, looks like NoScript had some under-the-hood changes of script handling as pages which load lots of scripts(yet blocked) no longer lead to Firefox/TFF error of "Warning Unresponsive Script". That issue had started sometime after Firefox 27.
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,832
26,946
You guys might like this one. Been playing with it today…

gfx.canvas.azure.accelerated true.

I can't find out much about it, but it seems to be graphics acceleration. So, as always, use at your own risk. However, I am noticing pages loading very quickly.

Another trick to try is turning off color management.
gfx.color_management.enabled false.
gfx.color_management.enablev4 false.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Altemose

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
28,832
26,946
The following may or may not speed things up. I am playing with them right now, but they seem to speed things up for me.

Some background. The following settings I have had set to true for some time because T4Fx used the JIT Javascript compiler. Well, it's using ION now so I decided to try turning them off and see what happens.

YMMMV.

javascript.options.baselinejit = true
javascript.options.jit.chrome = false
javascript.options.jit.content = false


EDIT 02.09.2016: Per Cameron Kaiser javascript.options.baselinejit should be TRUE. I won't argue with the dev. Here is his explanation.
By setting it to false, the JIT cannot acquire type inference information and it will thrash recompiling for Ion when its internal assumptions are violated. While this might work okay on pages where it makes a lucky guess, most other sites will be negatively impacted. The only situation where it should be false is for testing purposes, or for disabling the JIT entirely (paired with setting javascript.options.ion to false also).

Note the strikethroughs on the other two options. These settings no longer exist. Per Cameron,
The javascript.options.jit.* options are long gone and you probably shouldn't even add them anymore lest it be confusing.

Leaving them there will not affect anything, but for any new readers changing them will have no effect.
 
Last edited:

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
You guys might like this one. Been playing with it today…

gfx.canvas.azure.accelerated true.

I can't find out much about it, but it seems to be graphics acceleration. So, as always, use at your own risk. However, I am noticing pages loading very quickly.

I am definitely going to add this one to the easy installer file. I have most of your other ones aside from ones that would be enabled more on preference than necessity.
 
  • Like
Reactions: eyoungren

MisterKeeks

macrumors 68000
Nov 15, 2012
1,833
28
I am definitely going to add this one to the easy installer file. I have most of your other ones aside from ones that would be enabled more on preference than necessity.

Where is this file btw? Skimmed the thread and didn't see it.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.