Speed Up FireFox and UltraSeeker...

I'm taking this from the JollyBlogger, Mr. David Wayne. It works, and I highly recommend you do it. If you aren't using FireFox, get with the times and join the bliss of tabbed browsing and control over your browser. The new FireFox 1.5 completely rocks. Get it, and never look back!

As a second comment, it's great to hear Call for Help is back on the air. I was a long time fan of the show, and learned tons through watching it. Since being in Seminary I have not had cable (and my wife and I agreed to no cable for the first year of marriage) so I haven't seen the show in a long time, and did hear a while back that it was taken off the air. So to see it's return is great news, even though I won't get to watch it for a while. I always subscribed to the show notes, and gained enormously from them, and reccomend that to you as well.

Speed Up FireFox

If you haven't seen it yet, Call for Help is back on G4 Tech TV here in America. Leo Laporte is back hosting the show along with Amber MacArthur. Browing the show notes one evening over Christmas I found the following on how to speed up firefox. I tried the following and it definitely works - I've noticed a good deal of increased speed after doing this.

Link: G4techTV.ca > Call for Help > Extreme Tips: Speed Up FireFox.

To jump start the speed of Firefox ability to load pages faster, check out these settings edits.

First, type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. You'll see a bunch of settings.

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 really speeds up page loading. Next, alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" by right clicking on it and choosing "Toggle".

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.

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 much faster now!

Thanks to viewer Bill Alkis for this tip.

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Also, this helpful tool comes from a link found on the JollyBloggers site: UltraSeeker.

Ultraseeker Technorati Tag Builder

I wanted to tell you about a new Technorati tag builder I have discovered and have been using called Ultraseeker - but before I do I want to talk for a minute about technorati tags.

For some time now I have been hearing using Technorati tags is a great way to attract more readers to your blog but I really haven't understood how they work. I finally got the idea that posting technorati tags gets you listed on technorati, so if anyone is searching for a phrase that you have tagged, it will show up there.

However, as I looked over how to insert technorati tags it looked like a hassle. A good thing about my Typepad service is that, if you use categories, they will automatically be recognized by technorati. But beyond that, from everything I had seen it looked like you basically had to insert a bunch of .html into your post. And since I am not an .html wiz I have no desire to spend extra time doing that. This is why I chose Typepad - it's Movable Type for dummies like me. With Typepad when you post you can pretty much get in, get out and get on with your life.

But this past week I discovered Ultraseeker - it's an online service that will generate Technorati tags for you. It's great - it has a window where you list the words you want to use for tags, hit a button and it automatically generates some .html that you can copy and paste into your post. I have enjoyed using it - at most it adds 2 to 3 minutes to my posting.

So this is why I am now putting these tags at the bottom of my post. I am not sure if it is helping with traffic yet, I think I'll need a few weeks to judge. But so far this week my traffic has been about 15-20% higher. It may be because my posts have been absolutely scintilliating and I'm hitting my Pulitzer Prize winning form. Or it may be because people are reading blogs again now that the holidays are over. I have only checked my links and referrers a few times this week but I only remember seeing a handful of technorati links, so at this point I am just not sure what's causing the jump. And who knows, my readership may crash next week.

But, adding the tags may be helping, and like I said, with Ultraseeker, you will only need to add a couple of minutes per post to your blogging time, so you can do it quickly and get on with your life. So, I'd recommend it.

Now, if someone could explain the value of del.ici.ous tags to me!


Related Tags: firefox, firefox browser, speed up firefox, Call for Help, JollyBlogger, David Wayne, Leo Laporte, Amber MacArthur, UltraSeeker