Speeding up Netscape Communicator 4.X on Older Macs

There are two ways to speed up Netscape Communicator 4.X. First, set your disk cache to zero (0). To do this:


1.Launch Netscape.

2.Go to the Edit menu and select Preferences.

3.On the left side of the preferences window, you'll see a list of catagories; select "Cache," which is near the bottom. You'll see a field labeled "Disk Cache:"; change the value in that field to zero (0), then click on OK.

4.Close Netscape and proceed to the next step.

The next step is to add a preference value to the Netscape preferences file, which is located in the following folders on your computer:

[Your Hard Drive Name] -> System Folder -> Preferences -> Netscape Preferences -> [Your Name] -> Netscape Preferences

1.Make a copy of the preferences file before starting this phase of the operation just in case something goes wrong. You can never be too careful.

2.Open the Netscape preferences file with a text editor, such as TeachText, SimpleText ,or BBEdit. Do not open it with ClarisWorks, AppleWorks, or Microsoft Word. (The Netscape preferences file is a simple text file, and opening it with one of those programs will change the format of the document and render it unreadable by Netscape Communicator.)

3.After you've opened the preferences file, note that there is a warning on the first line, a blank line, and then a series of preference definitions. Point to the blank line, click at that point to insert the cursor, hit return to insert another blank line, and type in the following line: user_pref("browser.cache.memory_cache_size", 4096);

4.Save the change, close the editor, and launch Netscape. It should look and feel much faster.

Note: This solution works best for computers that are connected to the Internet via DSL or RoadRunner, since these take advantage of faster network connections.

Categories: macs