What many people don’t know is that in Firefox and other newer browsers, you can also use this trick for .net and .org domains.

For a .net domain, just use Shift+Enter instead, and for a .org domain use Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

Additionally, if you hold the Alt key while doing any of these (ex: Alt+Ctrl+Enter for .com,) the address will open in a new tab.

Quick Reference:

Ctrl + Enter = *.com
Shift + Enter = *.net
Ctrl + Shift + Enter = *.org

Alt + [Any of the above] = Open in new tab

If you’re reading this blog, you probably use Firefox (77% of you, according to my analytics) and have possibly heard about the “pipelining” trick to speed up browsing. But does it really work? Yes…yes it does. But let me show you the right way to use it.

If you aren’t familiar with the trick, it claims to speed up your browsing in Firefox by opening up multiple “pipes,” allowing you to make multiple http requests to a web server, each pipe downloading a different part of the web page, then assembling them correctly at your browser.

Normally, HTTP requests are issued sequentially, with the next request being issued only after the response to the current request has been completely received. Depending on network latencies and bandwidth limitations, this can result in a significant delay before the next request is seen by the server.

HTTP/1.1 allows multiple HTTP requests to be written out to a socket together without waiting for the corresponding responses. The requestor then waits for the responses to arrive in the order in which they were requested. The act of pipelining the requests can result in a dramatic improvement in page loading times, especially over high latency connections.

The Problem

There’s really nothing wrong with the hack if done correctly. The problem lies in the (mis)communication of how to implement it. Most blogs you read are going to tell you to set the “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” value to some huge number like 30, so you can make 30 http requests at once (I’ll let you know what that means later in the post, keep reading.) This is why that’s ridiculous:

• Firefox only has the ability to send 8 requests at once, so altering this value to anything higher than 8 is pointless. Will it hurt anything if you set it that high? No, but it just shows you that the people who told you to do this don’t know what they’re doing.
• Even if it could send 30 http requests at once, you wouldn’t want to set it that high. If everyone made 30 simultaneous http requests to every web server they connected with, the internet would be slow, webmasters would hate you (and Mozilla,) and your IP would probably be banned from many websites. There is a reason that this setting is turned off by default.
• The higher you set this value, the more likely it is that you will break something. But don’t fret about it.

That being said, I love this feature, and use it to it’s fullest. I suggest you do the same, if it works well for you.

The correct way to use the Pipelining feature

Also, if you don’t use Firefox, please download it. You won’t regret it:

In normal Microsoft fashion, Internet Explorer doesn’t support pipelining (even IE7)

1. Open a new tab in Firefox (Ctrl+T) and type “about:config” (without the quotes) in your address bar.
2. In the “Filter:” search box, type “network.http” (again, without the quotes.) You don’t have to hit enter.
   • Look for the “network.http.keep-alive” setting and make sure it’s set to “true”. If it’s “false,” double-click that line and it will change to true.
   • On the same page, look for “network.http.version” and make sure it’s set to “1.1″
3. Now clear out the Filter box and type in “pipelining”
   • Look for “network.http.pipelining” Right-click on that line, and click on “toggle” and be sure the value is set to “true” (or double-click to toggle values.)
   • If you’re on a proxy, look for “network.http.proxy.pipelining” Right-click on that line, and click on “toggle” and be sure the value is set to “true”. If you don’t know if you’re on a proxy or not, just set it to “true” anyway. It won’t hurt anything.
   • Lastly, look for “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” Right-click on that line, click on “modify” and set the value to 8. You can set it anywhere between 1 and 8. If you notice your internet is acting weird after this, try decreasing this value.
4. Keep in mind that this may not agree with some web servers, and therefore break the webpage. I have not personally experienced this yet, but this feature is still in testing, and that’s why it’s not set to “true” by default.

There you have it. Ignore the sites telling you to set the value to “30.” Those same pages will also tell you to create a new value called “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and to set that value to “0″. All this does is start displaying the information on the webpage sooner. nglayout.initialpaint.delay does not make your page load faster. In fact, it can make it load slower; especially on slower connections. If you create this value and set it to “0″ you will notice the page beginning to render right away, but it will take longer to finish completely.

The final word

There are many little hacks in Firefox that you can perform, and I plan on covering many of them in future posts. The Mozilla guys have done a great job in making Firefox fast, and most of the time you will be happy with the default settings. But not all computers are the same, and they can’t predict that. There is a reason that many of these settings are set the way they are by default, and you should only change them if you know what the value actually does. Don’t listen to someone who says “change this random value in about:config, it will make your pages load faster” without explaining to you what the value actually does. That setting may work great for him, but may not work well for you.

Anybody have anything to add?

OpenDNS, a great DNS service that promises faster browsing and other cool features, now offers a new service simply called “Shortcuts.” This new service allows you to define specific keywords to type into your browser address bar that will automatically redirect you to the specified page. For example: you could set it up so that when you type “Cool Dude” into your browser, you automatically go here to egonitron.com

The service offers a lot of cool options, such as setting it up on a corporate intranet so when users type in “time” they go straight to their timecard service to clock in or out. Other features this offers are very cool, but the problem is, you have to be signed in for this to work. If you clear cookies regularly, you have to sign in each time your cookies are cleared.

This creates a problem, because FireFox has a great feature that allows you to type anything into your address bar, and it will take you either to the first relevant result in Google, or to the Google search page. So when I type “Google Calendar” into the address bar, I automatically go to Google Calendar. This doesn’t work anymore, and that sucks. Even if I don’t use the OpenDNS Shortcuts feature, if I’m using them for my DNS settings (which I have been for a long time,) they take me to an OpenDNS page instead.

Is anybody from OpenDNS listening? Is there a way for me to change this?

**Update: I’d like to thank John Roberts from OpenDNS for the quick response to this post. He clarifies that you indeed do not need to be logged in to use this Shortcuts feature, which solves my problems with the service and allows me to use the “google calendar” example above successfully. I’d like to thank OpenDNS for another great service!

Your site was ranked by how many people are using the Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and visit your site. This data was compared to every other site and then given a ranking (a rank of 300,000 meant that your site is the 300,000th most visited site on the internet.) That sucks for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it didn’t count Firefox, Safari, or any other browsers. How fair is that to someone that writes a Mac Blog? Not very, that’s how. Most people that would visit their site are using Safari. You get the point…

Anyway, a great new(ish) Firefox and Mozilla extension is available called SearchStatus. When you install it, it displays the Google and Alexa rankings for each site you visit, and it also reports visits back to Alexa. Hopefully this helps even-out the playing field a little bit, although it only works in FireFox and Mozilla; Safari and other browsers are not supported yet.

As you can see, it also has many useful tools available for webmasters. I personally use it a lot more than I thought I would. Being able to check backlinks, highlight the dreadful “nofollow” links, check whois data and keyword density has proved to be invaluable. The point is, I highly recommend that people use this awesome Firefox extension, and if you aren’t already using Firefox, then shame on you

Even if you are still using Internet Explorer, be sure to go to the Alexa Toolbar download page and install the toolbar. Hopefully this will help get more accurate Alexa results.

If you don’t already, I want to recommend all of my readers to get:

SearchStatus

and