Quick Tip: Turn off Prefetching in Firefox
Firefox has a spooky feature called "Prefetching" that downloads pages that it thinks you are going to click on. (note: this is a good excuse for how those pages ended up in your history). It's also a waste of CPU and bandwidth that slows Firefox down.
To turn off this behavior, type about:config into the address bar, and then type the following into the Filter bar:
network.prefetch-next
Just double-click the item in the list to change it to false.
The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 06/8/07 and tagged with: Firefox, Firefox & Internet
Thanks for the tip but how does one show the "filter bar"
There is no entry in Firefox Help
Peter: The filter bar will appear automatically when you type about:config into the address bar. It will show up at the top of the browsing area.
How-to Geek: Do you have a source to cite for the comment that prefetching slows Firefox down? My understanding is that only links that are explicitly designed to be prefetched ( or ) are going to be accessed via this mechanism. I'm pulling my knowledge from http://developer.mozilla.org/e.....tching_FAQ
I, personally, turn off prefetching because of the prefetched cookies. I have Firefox configured to ask me about whether to allow a cookie or not, and prefetching definitely slows my browsing when I have to choose whether to allow or deny cookies for pages I haven't yet visited! (This is what usually reminds me to turn it off, when I set up Firefox on a fresh system. That's why I'm here today, in fact!)