For some reason when a page is loading in Firefox, it doesn't seem to respond to user interaction immediately. For example, say you're loading a very long page (maybe you're using a free Backpack account), and you know that the content you need is half way down the page. By default, Firefox will ignore user interaction in favor of giving all processing power to page rendering. It may well be that Firefox's engineers made this decision for a very good reason, but what if it bugs you that Firefox ignores you when you know exactly what you want to be doing? Well, it turns out there's a hidden setting in Firefox that will allow you to bend it to your will.
Firefox uses two priority modes when rendering a page: a low-priority mode that often checks for user input, and a high-priority mode that prioritizes page rendering over user input. There is a timer that determines how long Firefox will wait for user input before switching to high-priority rendering mode.
The Geek at How-To-Geek researched this setting, and determined that switching the default value from 750000 to 1000000 is a good balance that allows for a more responsive feeling browser, while still giving an adequate amount of time to the high-priority mode.
To make this change yourself, type about:config into your Firefox address bar, then type content.switch.threshold into the Filter field. You will likely not have any results returned. If the setting already exists, simply switch the value from the default 750000 to 1000000. If it doesn't, right click anywhere in the window and choose New > Integer. Use the following setting:
- Key Name: content.switch.threshold
- Key Value: 1000000
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-27-2008 @ 12:32PM
Garry Lacey said...
Sweet, trying this out now. I'd love to quickly report feedback on it but finding it difficult to come across any pages that are fat enough to cause this.
I do know that I've been annoyed by this very thing in the past though so thanks for the tip :)
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4-27-2008 @ 3:14PM
kingkool68 said...
Here is a super fat page to try this tweak out on. 450+ comments on a single page -> http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2008/04/11/the-first-draft-of-history-looks-a-bit-rough-on-bush.html
4-27-2008 @ 5:56PM
Allen said...
This is a great tip, I'm hoping that it will perhaps cut down the time it takes for my downloads to begin also. Most of my d/ls are usually finished before the d/l window even appears.
Fingers crossed. Thanks!!
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4-27-2008 @ 7:46PM
Josh said...
This really is unneeded in Firefox 3 unless you have a really old computer, that is. The performance upgrades in Fx3 are amazing and these tweaks add little to nothing nowadays. Figured I would point this out before people go applying these to their betas and wasting their time with tweaks that won't do much or anything at all.
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4-28-2008 @ 8:28AM
Garry Lacey said...
@kingkool68 thanks for the link, I tried it and found I could scroll very quickly after the page appeared.
@Josh I loved my time spent with Firefox 3 beta but without the 25 or so extensions I rely on, its not really something you can use as a workhorse browser, yet. As far as wasting time on tweaks, I love tweaking, not all tweaks are going to work out but when they do, it validates the whole idea.
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4-28-2008 @ 12:43PM
ronmoses said...
This would come in handy on The Onion AV Club site. Load a few article links in new tabs and Firefox locks up tight, sometimes for minutes at a time.
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