Speeding Up Your Browser

While we're on the topic of configuring IE6, there are a handful of settings you can adjust to speed up your Web browsing. If you connect through a particularly slow connection, you should consider reconfiguring these settings.

Set a Larger Cache

IE6 uses a section of your hard disk to hold previously viewed Web pages and graphics. This disk space is called a cache, and the bigger it is, the faster your browser will be in reloading older pages. The most significant speed enhancement you can make comes from resizing this cache. The bigger the cache, the faster your browser is when visiting pages you've already been to.

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If you have a large (40GB+) hard disk with lots of free space, consider assigning between 500MB and 1GB to the cache.

Of course, if you select too large a cache, you'll eat up valuable hard disk space. So you have to choose some sort of compromise between size and performance. If you're continually waiting for your favorite pages to load, your cache may be too small. Choose a larger setting and see how that affects performance.

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If your hard disk is getting too full (or if your browser keeps loading old versions of certain pages), you should clear your browser cache. You do this by clicking the Delete Files button on the General tab of the Internet Options dialog box.

To change the IE6's cache size, follow these steps:

1.	From the Internet Options dialog box, select the General tab.
2.	In the Temporary Internet Files section, click the Settings button.
3.	When the Settings dialog box appears (as shown in Figure 8.16), go to the Temporary Internet Files section and adjust the slider to the desired size, in MB. Figure 8.16. Use the Settings dialog box to adjust IE6's disk cache.
4.	Click OK to accept this new cache size.

Don't Check for Updates

Of course, a cache is no good if your browser downloads every single element every time you visit a page. Forcing your browser to use the cache helps faster performance. This way IE6 only checks for new content periodically.

CAUTION

If you turn off page verification entirely, you run the risk of not always loading the latest Web page content.

To configure this Web page verification, follow these steps:

1.	From the Internet Options dialog box, select the General tab, and then click the Settings button.
2.	When the Settings dialog box appears, go to the Check For Newer Versions of Stored Pages section, and make your desired selection. You can choose from Every Visit to the Page, Every Time You Start Internet Explorer (this is the default setting), Automatically, or Never.
3.	Click OK to activate your new settings.

Turn Off the Graphics

Another, more drastic, thing you can do to speed up your browser is to not load graphics. Although this approach definitely reduces the appeal of most Web pages, it can help you cope with an extremely slow Internet connection.

Here's how you prevent IE6 from loading Web-page graphics:

1.	From within the Internet Options dialog box, select the Advanced tab.
2.	Scroll down to the Multimedia section, and uncheck the Show Pictures option.
3.	Click OK.