Kazehakase on steroids

All right, if you’re still using Firefox, you need to put down the mouse right now. Just put it down. Let go. Relax your index finger for a few minutes.

Most of the about:config tweaks that work for Firefox also work for Kazehakase. Which means all those speed gimmicks that you can find around the Web are easy to apply to Firefox’s redheaded stepchild, and the results are better than you’d expect.

I spent a few hours last night culling and testing settings, and so far, these work great. I can’t say that any one in particular is wonderfully effective, but that’s because I applied most (if not all) of them in one shot, so I only saw the before-and-after of the entire list. And like I said, it was fantastic.

user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", "5");
user_pref("network.dns.disableIPv6", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.prefetch-next", false);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenu.delay", "0");

You can add these manually to your about:config page, but you’ll have to create about six or seven of them from scratch. You should be able to cut and paste these into your ~/.kazehakase/mozilla/kazehakase/prefs.js file while Kazehakase isn’t running; I haven’t tried that, so don’t yell at me if it doesn’t work.

For the record, I’m using version 0.4.7 out of the Arch repositories 😳 ; I tried 0.4.3 out of Gutsy 🙂 yesterday and it worked the same. (The 0.4.2 version in Feisty has a submission form bug; I believe that bug was solved in 0.4.3, but you’ll have to recompile it yourself or beg and plead for a backport on the forum.)

And don’t forget that there are some simple ways to work around a few other Kazehakase shortcomings, like it’s failure to clean up after itself. And if you need a decent download mechanism, since Kazehakase’s onboard downloader is a bit … crude … well, think about grabbing axel, to which I can personally testify to ungodly speeds.

So what do you get for your effort? A GTK-only Gecko-based browser that can handle Flash and Java, and is faster, cleaner, lighter and more interesting than Firefox, The Slug. 😈

P.S.: If you know of any other tweaks that seem to work, let me know. I think I got most of the big ones.

P.P.S.: If you’re a server admin, please don’t tell me pipelining is evil. I know all about the increased server load and yadda yadda yadda. I’m sure my $200 1Ghz Inspiron 8000 is such a huge drag on your $5000 Poweredge 1955 Blade server. Give it a rest. Go find a Microsoft server that needs rebuilt.