This was posted on the Mozillazine Firefox forum, guy put together some code that changes the way Firefox (or Flock) gets Web content: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=560802

This does seem to really increase the speed of Firefox rendering Web pages. Thought some of the power users here might like to check it out; I wouldn't be surprised if this code gets incorporated into future versions of Firefox. That is, unless there's some problem with it that's not readily apparent...

<edit> Changed the topic heading to reflect the fact that it doesn't really work. <end edit>

Seriously, I don't know if this really does anything at all - but he's got a lot of people convinced that it does make Firefox faster. Is it real, or just the placebo effect?

I thought this sounded unlikely; but when I tried it, it seemed like it helped. However, when I actually tried to compare page loading times, they vary so much that it's impossible to tell. I guess that explains why some users are convinced Fasterfox is great...

So, what do you think? Is it possible that this guy's code really works, or is he just full of **** :hello:

Seriously, I don't know if this really does anything at all - but he's got a lot of people convinced that it does make Firefox faster. Is it real, or just the placebo effect?

I thought this sounded unlikely; but when I tried it, it seemed like it helped. However, when I actually tried to compare page loading times, they vary so much that it's impossible to tell.

I was thinking the exact same thing!

It is possible that the tweak does have an effect which results in performance increasement. I have not tried it, but I believe it would be small enough, that people would not really notice it.

A scientific benchmark would be interesting to see...

Well, he posted his code on Bugzilla and a Firefox dev reviewed it. His conclusion was that it didn't do anything, and he marked the bug "Invalid".

It goes to show, you can't rely on your impression that a performance tweak works - speed is highly variable, and the power of suggestion is strong. Most of those who tried this though it helped, it even seemed like it to me. However, when I timed page loading in repeated trials, it averaged out the same.

Of course, there was one user who thought it slowed down the browser - so you can be fooled either way.