Firefox 2.0

"A web browser fully customisable to your online life"

That's the firefox marketing mantra, and I think to a certainb extent it is true.   Beyond the extensive options available in its menus and dialogs, there's a lengthy set of advanced Firefox preferences that can customize the browser to your specific needs.

Here is a good one to speed up webpage load times if you are using broadband:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

• network.http.pipelining
• network.http.proxy.pipelining
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which massively speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages loads faster now..