This trick may be known to some, but it's definitely worth posting. I got a noticeable speed improvement loading web pages by changing these settings in Firefox

1. Type "about:config" in the adress field.
2. Set the value of network.http.pipelining to "true".
3. Set the value of network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to "100".
4. Set the value of network.http.proxy.pipelining to "true"
5. Set the value of nglayout.initialpaint.delay to "0"

(found in http://www.computerbb.org/about150.html)

For those who want to dabble with the config file even more, there's some good info at the Mozillazine forum in this thread.

cool. what exactly does this do? why don't they just make it this way by default?

Maybe these changes are incorporated into Firefox 1.0. Somebody who is running the RC will be probably be able to tell us.

In the Firefox 1 RC some of these are enabled, while others are not.
I don't know why they don't enable all the features that make the browser faster by default, but maybe it is to do with compatibility on all computers?

--Ian

I couldn't find the "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" , is that a problem?

I don't have it either. If you really want, you can add it manually, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes.

You could check what it does with the link I posted at the start of the thread and decide if you want to add it or not.

If you do want to add it, open "about:config" and right-click anywhere on the open page.
Select New - Integer(in this case) and write "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" for preference name, then enter the value "0"

Is there an equivalent view for thunderbird?

well THAT made a true difference...very cool.
now i like firefox even better...but like the others said...why didn't they just ship it this way?
hmmm.....