I was tweaking some settings in km after learning about about:config the other day, and managed to crank up the pipelining(16 connections, and I increased the maximum number of connections to a server as well) and disable the disk cache entirely while increasing the memory cache. The result was a browser which absolutely gobbles up bandwidth, resulting in what has to be the smoothest browsing experience I've ever had. I'm wondering, has anyone else tinkered with these settings? Are there any in paticular which make a big difference on very high bandwidth and very low bandwidth connections?

Hi SJ!

Glad you discovered "about:config"! I prefer going in there to do my settings of all places! But one word of extreme caution: Be VERY careful with what you're doing there as the wrong setting can really "bork" your KM. Okie?

Now with that said I set the pipelining to 20 connections myself and server connections to 15. But I'm on a t1. I could set it to 100. ;) I wouldn't suggest the latter though on dialup.

I don't know about "cache" though. I leave mine where it is as my browser screams with the cache as is. But I DO change "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" to "0" (zero). It's not in there so you'll have to add it. What this setting does is immediately paint your page without a delay as the page loads.

The rest of the changes I do in there deal with fonts, layers, windows, etc., nothing dealing with browser speed. So you're on the right track SJ!

Good Luck!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

That -> turn of disc cache, increase memory cache <- really improves performance! Why didn't I think of that (I have 1GB of RAM) !

Nick

pipelining makes things worse for me, try these out and see what you think::

user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 100);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 200);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 128);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 24);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 12);

Eyes-Only - your "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" tweak is excellent, just what I've been looking for, as up to now page loading has not been too smooth. Thanks very much indeed.

"browser.turbo.enabled" ???

No problem Brian! Glad I could help! It was a trick I picked up long ago and was very impressed with it myself! One word of advice though: Sometimes a page will actually load too fast. That's right! And it doesn't get the right to paint properly so images and text may be out of place, along with flash, etc. If this is the case all you have to do is hit the "refresh" button. I forgot to mention that. hehe! Sorry!

To RottweilerKing: You said that this setting actually made things worse for you? Okie, these settings all depend on the type of connection that you have to the internet. Let's say that you have a 33.6k connection---then you wouldn't want those settings as they'd flood your line and slow you down. I can set mine pretty high as I have a t1 line. I hope that you remember what the original settings were and that you can reset to those---or maybe just a little higher, say maybe 10 more (ex: if "4" try "14"---if still too bad back it down by 2's, if good, increase by 2's---always remembering to clear your caches when doing so as you want to start fresh each time!). Let us know how you make out. You "may" have to return to your original settings. I hope you remember them because I don't.

To Rick: "browser.turbo.enabled" is a hold-over from Mozilla and won't work with K-Meleon (or Firebird for that matter as it's in there too). It applies to the Mozilla's "Quick Launch" feature. We already have the much better (IMHO) Loader.

I hope I helped folks! Reminds me of the "Good Ol' Days" when I used to be really good at this stuff. LOL! I would've loved to have been a Gecko programmer... (I used to do chat programming, amongst other things, until I received brain damage, lost it all, and can't relearn. Oh well... "C'est la vie" as we say!)

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Hi again guys.. Eyes-Only, pipelining seems to be a double-edged sword as it does seem to bring up text a bit faster but on some(not all and maybe not most) sites it makes images load at a ridiculuous pace. A site someone else spoke of doing this image-loading delay on another forum was http://news.google.com The tweaks I use for better reflows and more max-connections seems to give me a speed difference that's easy to see. I guess it really comes down to what works for each individual but those settings I recommend (at least)rying for someone looking to boost speed in gecko browsers. :o)

curious,but when you turn off the cache is there a pref to set the memory cache at a specific number?im getting excellent performance on this and mozfirebird,got lots of ram.anyways,if someone could let me know about that id appreciate it.thx

curious,but when you turn off the cache is there a pref to set the memory cache at a specific number?

Yes, it preferences -> cache, funnily enough ;)

I turned off disk cache and bumped memory cache up to 102400Kb (I have 1GB)

Does KM fly now!!

Nick

I don't notice any increase in speed if I disable disk cache. I also have 1Gb of RAM and have the memory cache set at that value.

When you set your disk cache at zero, does that mean there's nothing in there after you close down your computer? If it does, seems like a good privacy feature.

Let me rephrase that; if you set your disk cache at zero, nothing is stored there, and you lose your memory cache when you shut down. Is that correct?

Interestingly, I've found that the "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" tweak gets even better results if I set the value at 1 or 2 rather than at 0.

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm running KM primarily on an old IBM thinkpad(550Mhz, not that old), which has a monstorously slow hard drive. By removing the disk cache, I can make it so KM never tries to access the hard drive. This is important partially because it allows KM to work well while the hard drive is under load, but mostly because every hard drive access on this pig slows down everything. By removing disk accesses, KM remains in speedy memory all the time, so no matter what I do, I know I'll still be running fast. You guys with 1GB of RAM certainly must have faster hard drives than I do, so you probably don't notice the difference.

I just installed K-Meleon today and am looking at pipelining. I did about:config and noticed that "pipeling" is set as "false" and "pipelining.firstrequest" also. Shouldn`t they be :true"? How many of these default settings should be changed from false to true? Also, how does one go about changing these values in about:config? Right click or what?

There is a right-click menu. But the simplest way to modify the value is to double click and fill in a value.
Note that "1" can be used instead of "true", and "0" instead of "false".

In order to FULLY activate Pipelining, which default settings should be changed from false to true. Right now both "pipeling"and "pipelining.firstrequest" defaults are set at false. Also are there any others that need changing? Also, how do I add "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" to the list? Oh, I use 56k dial-up.

Hi,

Can somebody tell me if the following settings increase browsing speed ?
I use a 54K Modem via ISDN.

/* TURN ON TIMER BASED REFLOW MANAGEMENT */
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);

/* SETS THE ALLOWED TIME BETWEEN REFLOWS IN MICROSECONDS */
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 100);

/* SET THE NUMBER OF REFLOWS TO DO BEFORE WAITING FOR THE REST OF THE PAGE TO ARRIVE */
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 200);

user_pref("network.http.keep-alive", false);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.keep-alive", false)

I found this on this page:

http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?id=PageSpeed

Regards
Norbert

I made some changes to the pipelining values through "about.config" , but they aren`t being saved. Is there a special browser exit method required to save the new settings?

Hi realgeorge!

It might be the way that you're adding the new configurations to "about:config". I'm not sure as I'm not standing over your shoulder to watch how you're doing it. ;) But this is why I've been recently converted (since coming here) to using the User.js after about a year of using "about:config" in Mozilla/Firebird. And here's why: When KM starts up the very first thing it does before checking Prefs.js is check User.js to see what the user wants for browser behaviour. In otherwords this over-rides all other settings anywhere.

Now with that being said I'd go to "Edit/Preferences/Settings/User.js" and try adding the following to see how this increases your browser speed:

user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 200);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 100);
user_pref("network.cookie.lifetime.days", 5);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 60);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 15);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.firstrequest", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 100);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

(Note: I'm not sure how this shows in the forum. Due to bad vision I have large fonts set in KM. Make sure that each line begins with "user_pref" and ends with ";" Thanks!)

Press the "Ok" button and a box will come up asking you if you'd like to save the changes. Select "Yes", exit the browser AND the loader (if you use it---I don't as it's buggy), then restart the browser and see what happens. These preferences will ALWAYS over-ride "about:config" and Prefs.js every time.

I'm not sure how fast these settings will make KM run on your modem connection realgeorge, but on my t1 I do notice a big difference as pages load almost instantly compared to several seconds for F-Bird and 3 to 5 seconds for Mozilla.

Good luck and keep us posted!

À la prochaine,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Author: Eyes-Only (---.prexar.com)
Now with that being said I'd go to "Edit/Preferences/Settings/User.js" and try adding the following to see how this increases your browser speed:

user_pref("network.cookie.lifetime.days", 5);

this should increase speed even more:

user_pref("network.cookie.lifetime.years", 5);

YEARS?? You're joking, right? 5 years? I can see it now... unless I manually delete after each session I'd have a cookie file of 20gigs. LOL! Sorry Marc but I really find that one a little hard to swallow without a really logical explanation. ;)

À la prochaine,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Thanks Eyes-Only, Your explanation of the User.js preferences always over-riding the "about:config" and Prefs.js every time really helped. I sucessfully put your suggested settings in the User.js file and have noticed a definate increase in speed. Should any of these settings be adjusted specifically for 56k dial-up for even better tweaking?

It was a joke. Cookies setting doesnt increase speed.
For general surfing it should be:
user_pref("network.cookie.lifetime.days", 0);
Unless you want all world to know your surfing habits.

Well Marc, This is not the kind of joke that we new users need. Trusting what you said, I actually made this change to my user.js files to see if it would help. A more malicious joke could possibly bork someones computer. Give us more helpful suggestions, please.

Sorry bout that. I just assume everyone knows that cookies and lifetime dont mix
in real world.
But KM is a tough cookie, not easily "borkable". Just in case, do second fresh install
on another partition or HD, and you ready to go in minutes.

fwiw, cookies will not allow "the world" to know your surfing habits; only the domain that stores the cookie(s) should be able to read them...

Is it possible to tweak the settings content.notify more then the settings mentioned above?? What if i set the backoffcount from 200 to 100 or the interval from 100 to 50 (just for example). Are these settings the best max. settings for KM, slow 56k modem, DSL or cable??

I am using ADSL (1024/384) and was wondering if I could speedup things still a little more...

Hi Jan!

About all I could offer for a suggestion is this: Remember the settings as you have them now (like write them down somewhere) and then try changing them to see, "Does it go even faster for me? Slower? Do I have problems with page loads now? Or are page loads improved?" Questions like that, you know? Then if you find settings that you think are best, remain with those. One problem is that these listed on the Resource Page are generic settings because let's say you set those on a day when the net is fast for you. Hey, it'll go great, right? Then the next day the net can be slow like honey in winter, yes? Then you'll wonder, "What's the problem here?" So I think those settings on the Resources Page are like, "These seemed to work best for the average net conditions."

Common fallacy #1: "I now have ADSL so the net will always be fast!" The reality of the situation? Depends on how clogged the pipeline is that day. It can still be slow. Oh sure! You'll notice an improvement most definitely! But I have a t1 line and even I notice some days it can be a little slow, see? ;) But K-Meleon sure helps a lot on those days! That's why I use it everyday!

Mazzel!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"