I’m adding this information here mostly so I won’t have to search for these configuration options again. Every time I install a major version of Firefox I have to go back into about:config and change these settings. I know these work in Firefox 3 and 6. They should work in most other versions. To access these options just type about:config into the address bar, press enter, accept the warning, and then type the name in the search field to filter down to the individual parameter.

Always Get Newest Page

browser.cache.check_doc_frequency: 1

Open New Tab At Far Right

browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent: false

Updated 11/03/2011: I added a few more items for loading pages faster, which I found in an external article titled 18 Firefox Tweaks to Improve Speed and Performance, in addition to various other Firefox tip articles, etc.

Increase Page Load Speed

network.http.pipelining: true
network.http.proxy.pipelining: true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: 10
nglayout.initialpaint.delay: 0 (must be added by creating a new setting of the Integer type)