[tor-talk] Better TBB about:config settings(?); re: browsing and loading speed, etc.

Hello, I just made a new trac ticket for this topic. In case this e-mail does not appear properly formatted on TorTalk list, the trac ticket can be found here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3978 I have been testing the following about:config settings (specific to Firefox 6) for a couple of weeks. I have used very similar settings for TBB since Firefox v3.x.x. These settings do seem to (very noticeably) speed up browsing. The only setting I think may do well with a bit of tweaking is nglayout.initialpaint.delay, I doubled the Firefox default of 250 ms. Doing so seems to (noticeably) decrease total page load time, while (unnoticeably) increasing time to first load on page. I tried to test these settings in TBB vs. vanilla TBB but I don't know how to configure Tor to use the same circuit for all speed tests. I am very open to corrections and suggestions. // Spell check works with all fields user_pref("layout.spellcheckDefault", 2); // defulat is 250 ms, longer wait time means faster total page load time, but slower inital page loading. user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 500); // Stops the display of placeholders while images are loading to speed up the page. Default is True user_pref("browser.display.show_image_placeholders", false); // Sets the maximum number of times the content will do timer-based reflows to 5. After this, the page will only reflow once it is finished downloading. This is a new value. Default is -1 (no limit) user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5); // Sets the minimum amount of time to wait between periodic reflowing of the page to 0.12 seconds – stops Firefox becoming slow by reflowing too frequently. This is a new value. Default is 120000 user_pref("content.notify.interval", 120000); // Sets the maximum amount of time Firefox will be unresponsive while rendering pages – set to 3 times the content.notify.interval above. This is a new value. Default is 360000 user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 360000); // Ensures Firefox does not reflow pages at an interval any higher than that specified by content.notify.interval above. This is a new value. Default is True user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true); // Sets Firefox to interrupt parsing a page to respond to UI (user interface) events to prevent it becoming unresponsive until parsing is complete. This is a new value. Default is True user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true); // Sets the number of microseconds of inactivity that puts Firefox into low frequency interrupt mode. This is a new value. Default is 750000 user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000); // Disables IPv6 DNS lookups to prevent a significant delay with poorly configured IPv6 servers. user_pref("network.dns.disableIPv6", true); // This preference takes values between 1 and 255 inclusive, directly corresponding to the maximum number of HTTP keep-alive connections the application can have open at once to the proxy server. Default is 8. user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16); // Increases the maximum number of persistent connections per server which can help speed up loading of multimedia rich sites. This settings must be equal to, or greater than, "Network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy". Default is 15. user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16); // Amount of time in seconds to keep keep-alive connections alive. Default is 115 seconds. user_pref("network.http.keep-alive.timeout", 600); // [! Not needed: TorBrowser already has correct configuration] Use keep-alive connections whenever possible. //user_pref("network.http.proxy.keep-alive", true); // [! Not needed: TorBrowser already has correct configuration] Stops Firefox automatically prefetching (loading) the contents of pages linked to by the page you are viewing – in most cases you will never visit those links so this time is wasted and it is a security risk because you are unwittingly downloading (possible virus/adult) content only linked to by the current page but which you have not chosen to load. Default is True. //user_pref("network.prefetch-next", false); // [! Not needed: TorBrowser already has correct configuration] Can send multiple requests to a server together in order to speed up loading of webpages. This is not supported by ALL servers – some servers may even behave incorrectly if they receive pipelined requests. Default is False //user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true); // [! Not needed: TorBrowser already has correct configuration] Can send multiple requests to a server together in order to speed up loading of webpages. This is not supported by ALL servers – some servers may even behave incorrectly if they receive pipelined requests. Default is False //user_pref("network.http.pipelining.ssl", true); // [! Not needed: TorBrowser already has correct configuration] Can send multiple requests to a server together in order to speed up loading of webpages. This is not supported by ALL servers – some servers may even behave incorrectly if they receive pipelined requests. Default is False //user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true); // [! Not needed: TorBrowser already has correct configuration] Sets a maximum number of multiple requests that can be pipelined to prevent overloading the server. Higher values will cause a delay before the first request completes but will make the last request complete sooner. Higher values will also cause more of a delay if a connection fails. Default is 4. //user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 10);