James Clement

  I was looking through your browser speed test results and was curious
about something:

  While using Firefox (In windows, my native environment), there is an
ability to enter the base config options of the browser by entering
"about:config" in the address bar.  Mainly I was curious if your tests for
Firefox were using it's default values, or if you performed the proper
configs to optimize the browser for broadband (I'm just assuming here) use.

  By default, the Firefox browser is designed compatible with Dial-up users,
for obvious reasons.  This limits certain abilities by the browser by
limiting the pipelining max requests to only 4.  (For broadband, anywhere
from 10-30 max requests is acceptable), this is set by adjusting
"network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to an interger within the range of
10-30 based on your connection.  Also by default "Network.http.pipelining"
is set to "False" and "Network.http.proxy.pipelining" is as well.  Setting
these values to "true" and increasing the max requests has a very large
effect for browser speed and loading.  Setting an interger named
"nglayout.initialpaint.delay" to "0" also tells the browser not to wait
before responding to a user navigation request.  By default the browser
delays before response.

[Ed. that is not what a repaint delay does - it says how long to wait
before attempting progressive rendering during initial loading of the page]

  Also, it is no doubt that Firefox is an extreme memory hog in it's own
right, caching data to memory and leaving it there, even after respective
tabs are closed and the user moves on.  Setting a Boolean named
"config.trim_on_minimize" to "true" tells the browser to dump all memory
cache back to the HDD when Firefox is minimized.  This seems a little
counter-productive towards what I mentioned in the last paragraph, but
overall the effect of all configs I mentioned results in a smoother and
faster browsing experience without the massive system load that Firefox is
normally known for.

  This is all, of course, just my two cents.  I'm not that familiar with
other browsers, so I can't say what they do and do not have available to
them to affect the same kinds of changes.  I just know Firefox, and only
decided to send you this E-Mail to see if you had considered said options
that are available for your tests.

[Ed. Most other browsers also have similar settings]

Sincerely,
James Clement