1.) What entries I am changing in about:config

2.) What these changes are really doing

Step one: find some existing documentation on speading up FF via about:config: Here’s one!

This recommends that I change the value network.http.pipelining .  But what does this do?  The Mozilla wiki’s documentation is pretty verbose on the subject:

In HTTP 1.1, multiple requests can be sent before any responses are received. This is known as pipelining . Pipelining reduces network load and can reduce page loading times over high-latency connections, but not all servers support it. Some servers may even behave incorrectly if they receive pipelined requests. If a proxy server is not configured, this preference controls whether to attempt to use pipelining.

Excellent!  I rarely use a proxy so I am going to go ahead and change this setting to true and start using pipelining.

The next suggestion is to allow 15 simultaneous pipelines to a given webserver instead of the default 4.  Networking.http.pipelining.maxrequests states that this can be any number from 1 to 8 inclusive.  Glad I checked this one!  I am going to give 4 a shot and up it if nothing breaks.  Also networking.http.pipelining.ssl will turn on pipelining for secure websites only, which avoids some common proxy problems.

The next article suggests editing Network.prefetch-next .  This starts downloading websites before you click on them.  This gives a great speed boost to browsing, but it eats ram.  I am running on less ram than I would like, and am liberal with my tabs, so I am going to disable this setting. (wish me luck!)

I don’t spell very well.  So I would like my spellchecker to be enabled for single word or line forms as well as longer text boxes.  This is the layout.spellcheckDefault setting, I set it on 2 for every form.

This article covers several speed tweaks now:

network.http.pipelining false to true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 30 to 8
network.http.max-connections 30 to 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server 15 to 32
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server 6 to 8
network.http.pipelining.ssl false to true
network.http.proxy.pipelining false to true

Some of these are kind of bizarre.  The maxrequests uses the correct number (8), but thinks that it was set to 30 previously.  These instructions also set pipelining on, and then turn it on again for ssl connections, which isn’t necessary.  Network.http.max-connections seems to do exactly what it sounds like and enables you to have more active connections downloading at once.

Next on my list is browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo.  This is the undo closed tab feature.  I've never needed to unclose more than 3 previous tabs.  I am going to set this to 5.  I hope that this will save some ram and I pray 'that god send me no need of thee'.

Browser.urlbar.autoFIll is the next issue I want to fix.  Firefox 2.0 filled in URL’s as I type.  FF 3 doesn’t.  I’ve had two people in my office harrass me about this lack of feature in FF3.0.  Set this value to true and see the glory days of FF2.0 return!

Well that’s all for me tonight, I’m glad that I documented these and I hope that someone else gets some use out of them.

I plan to eat my own head.  Details at 11…

And many many many more photos (and videos) to come.  It was a great event and I look forward to visiting NYC again next weekend.

A couple days ago I wrote a Community Membership proposal for OLPC.  This was merely a draft and I’ve gotten a few good responses from Mel and Cjl .  Tonight I am going to flesh out the proposal some more, and take their comments into account.  I will also be doing some work on speex-for-olpc which is more complicated than it sounds.  I will make updates here and via twitter as they happen.

I’ve run into only one error tonight when setting up MU wordpress.  When I try to login the domain tries to redirect me to "cgi-system/wp-login.php" when it should just be "/wp-login.php".  Apparently this crops up (at Dreamhost in all examples) when you’re running PHP4 instead of PHP5 like you should be.

Move over to PHP5 and you should be ok.

Also, I must mention again that Dreamhost is the coolest web hosting company on the planet.  It was something like 4 AM where I and they are located when I asked them for a wildcard DNS mask.  They replied and had everything setup in ~20 minutes.

They also have a kick-ass referall program where I could make bank if I were link you to them right now.  But I’m not.  I’m just honestly really really in love with Dreamhost.

Hello,
I work with the <snip>; a non-profit organization that
does history presentations on the middle ages for schools, libraries
and museums in the Pacific Northwest.  We do demonstrations and
lectures on historical arms, armor and combat of the middle ages and
renaissance (Western Martial Arts).

I have been hearing about the concept of a sub $200 laptop for
education for quite a while (Ballmer among others) and I find if a
fascinating concept.  So first of all kudos to your group at MIT.

I was wondering if you were planning on having any sort of educational
materials already loaded on the laptops.  Our organization has in the
past been asked to be part of educational materials, and we are
working towards publishing classroom materials of our own in the next
two years.

If your group were interested in a few sample history lessons as
demonstrations of what your laptop could do; perhaps we could supply
you with something both historical and visually interesting.

If you have some interest I can be contacted at <snip>

According to the OLPC Timeline, this email dates to before the XO was announced with Nicholas Negreponte and Kofi Annan Unfortunately, OLPC didn’t have Sj yet, so their response was less than thrilling.

Red Hat is our partner and is working on software. The participating
countries will also provide their own software.

Best wishes,

<snip (name removed)>

I could understand brushing me off at such an early phase in OLPC’s development.  But the reply was a bit silly all the same. :)

Rice Boy is a beautifully drawn webcomic about the adventure of it’s eponymous character, Rice-boy.  Or at least it was.  The final pages of this 411 page epic were posted last week.

Rice Boy is borderline childlike and simplistic, but it’s worthy all the same.  I will be buying the printed books when they are all available.

Goodbye Rice-boy, I’ve enjoyed your journey.