If Firefox has been feeling sluggish for you lately, you might be able to cut down on some of those UI hangs with an about:config tweak.
The Mozilla team is working on a number of performance tweaks for upcoming versions of Firefox, one of which is the use of a new HTTP cache that should fix some UI hang issues. It isn’t enabled by default yet, but will be soon — and you can enable it right now with an about:config tweak. To do so:
-
Enter
about:config
into Firefox’s address bar and press Enter. -
Search for the
browser.cache.use_new_backend
flag and double-click on it. -
Change its value from 0 to
1
to enable the new cache. (You can flip it back at any time by changing it back to0
). - Close about:config and continue browsing — no need to restart or anything.
I enabled it and while it hasn’t been a silver bullet, it seems to have helped decrease the number of times the browser screeches to a halt. Check out the link below for more info, and while you’re digging around in about:config, check out some of our other favourite tweaks.
Mozilla Firefox New HTTP Cache Is Live! [Mayhemer’s Blog via @tarasglek]
Comments
One response to “Speed Up Firefox By Enabling Its New HTTP Cache”
Why have they removed browser.tabs.ontop from v29?
Changing it to false is one of the first things l did to any new Firefox installation.
Now one has to install a plugin and configure it accordingly.
SO frustrating.