Last updated 5/9/2006.
Mozilla Firefox is a web browser based off of the Mozilla code base, which in turn is based off of Netscape. It is an increasingly popular web browser, slowly usurping market share from the antiquated Internet Explorer 6. It features many modern browsing enhancements, such as tabbed browsing and an excellent level of extensibility.
Configuration Tips
-Advanced Configuration-
Firefox (and other Mozilla browsers) has a lot of hidden configuration options that are not in the Options window. You can access these by typing "about:config" into the address bar.
-Search Keywords-
Search keywords are a handy tool for quickly using the search engine on sites you frequent without even having to visit the site. You use them by typing the keyword in the address bar, followed by the search query.
There are two ways to add search keywords. The simplest is to right click on the search text field of the site and select "Add a Keyword for this search..." This will bring up a window asking for a name for the site, the keyword to use, and where to save it. There is a Quick Searches folder included by default, which is a good place to save them. I like to keep the keywords as short as possible for ease of use (eg: "w" for Wikipedia and "g" for Google).
The second way to add search queries is to manually create a new bookmark in the Bookmarks Manager. For the Location, you would type in the URL for the search page with "%s" (minus the quotes) in place of the search text. The "%s" part will be replaced with everything following the keyword in the address bar when you use that keyword. You can make use of this to create more complex searches, such as a search keyword that uses Google to search on a specific domain. The following Location will add a site specific parameter to the Google search query to limit results to the php.net domain:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aphp.net%20%s
The "%3A" is ASCII code for a colon, and "%20" is a space. This search will mimic typing the following string into the Google search box:
"site:php.net %s"
If you created it with the keyword "php," you would then be able to search the php.net domain for PHP information on arrays by typing this in the address bar:
"php array"
-Memory Management Tweak-
Firefox can use a lot of memory sometimes. There are various ways to tweak memory usage in about:config. One of the only ones I have found to actually work is one that is not present by default:
config.trim_on_minimize
You have to manually add this boolean value, then set the value to true. Now, when you minimize Firefox, it will put a lot of its memory pages into virtual memory, freeing up physical RAM for other applications.
-Set Multiple Homepages-
You can set multiple home page tabs easily by having the pages opened and clicking on "Use Current Pages" in the General tab of the Options window. The URLs of all open tabs will be added in the Locations field, separated by pipe ("|") characters. You can change this setup manually, of course. I find it easier to paste into a text editor, change what I need to change, then paste it back into the Locations field.
Extensions
Below is a short list of my favorite extensions.
-Mr. Tech Local Install-
The Mr. Tech Local Install extension does several useful things. The primary purpose is that it allows you to install an extension from the .xpi file, thus eliminating the need for adding random extension sites to the installer whitelist. I do not use this very often, really.
The extensions list by default sucks, to put it bluntly. It is unsorted and huge! This extension helps in two ways: it sorts the list alphabetically, and it makes unselected extensions be only the height of their name. Very spiffy. I used to use a Slim Extension List extension for this, but Mr. Tech made that redundant!
A third enhancement is the addition of "Restart Firefox" to the file menu (and the shortcut ctrl + alt + r). There is also a restart button inside the Extensions window, the blue arrow in the top right of the above image. This is very handy when you install or update extensions, as it saves you from the need to go click on the FF icon again.
-Ads Are Evil-
< Download Adblock > | < Download Filterset G> | < Download Flashblock>
If you are like me, you have grown rather jaded by the constant bombardment of advertisement for useless crap on the Internet. Luckily, FF makes it easy to filter them out. The Adblock Plus extension will filter advertisements out of web pages you browse to based on a blacklist set of filter rules. You can right click on images, iframes, and other elements on a page and add them to the blacklist. Alternatively, you can get a 3rd party set of filter rules to speed along the process.
NOTE: Filterset G seems to be broken currently. To that end, I have uploaded an exported copy of the filter set here: filtersetg.txt. You can import this into your Adblock Plus filters.
This is where Adblock Filterset G Updater comes into play. It is an extension that dynamically updates your Adblock filters based on the highly effective Filterset G set of filters. Thus, you can be assured of keeping abreast of the latest ad server domains that pop up! Filterset G also includes a whitelist of a couple of domains that should not be filtered out due to legitimacy, but would otherwise be killed by the filters. You must use Adblock Plus to get whitelisting capability though.
On a similar note, there is a vile tendency amongst some kiddie advertisers to terribly abuse Flash technology for advertisement banners. Flashblock will show all flash elements on a page and allow you to filter them out in much the same manner as Adblock.
-Bugmenot-
Compulsory web site registration just to download a file or some other mundane task is just plain wrong. It wastes your time as a user and wastes space in the site's database. It is good for noone. The good folks over at Bugmenot.com maintain a vast database of dummy accounts and passwords for such web sites to save you from having to register on them. Using this service is a little slow, however, since you have to bring up the page, paste in the url, and manually enter the login info. Luckily, there is a nice Bugmenot extension for this process. It adds an item to the right click context menu on login forms that automatically fetches login info for you, and even cycles through all the logins for that site in the database until it finds a working one (or runs out). It couldn't be easier.
-Colorzilla (eye dropper)-
I often find myself wondering just what color that is used on a web page, or needing to sample the colors of on image. One way to do this is to take a screenshot and get the color with an eye dropper tool in an image processor (eg: Paint). This is cumbersome, so I make use of the Colorzilla extension. It basically adds an eye dropper tool accessible from the status bar. You can copy the color to the clipboard in hex format or RGB format.
-Customize Google-
Customize Google alters the http stream coming from Google pages to add various features. These range from direct links to the images in Google Image, to filtering out bad web sites from search results. This last one is especially useful for removing crappy web sites that get themselves in the Google index, but then make you pay money to see whatever information you were searching for. Additionally, this plugin will remove the ads from various Google services, including Gmail. Adblock is not quite capable of this, due to the nature of Google web page design.
-Download Statusbar-
The built in download manager is great for keeping track of downloads, but it is cumbersome. Download Statusbar creates a small bar above the status bar when there is an active download in progress, and can be cleared separately from the main download manager. Combined with disabling the download manager from popping up, this makes for a much smoother experience. There are also many other options for managing downloads, such as auto-clearing files from the bar after so much time passes.
-IE Tab-
Some poor web designers still make pages for buggy implementations of HTML and CSS, or use legacy scripting languages like ActiveX. These pages tend to look bad in standards-compliant web browsers, resulting in having to open them in Internet Explorer. But why bother firing up the IE process when you can just open them in a FF tab with IE Tab? This extension adds an option in the right-click context menu for hyperlinks that lets you open it in a new IE tab, using the IE rendering engine instead of Gecko.
-Reveal-
With this extension, you can hit F2 to see (large) thumbnails of all open tabs appear on screen, similar to Expose in Mac OS X. Another function is seeing a thumbnail of each page in the back button drop down list for a tab. It is quite handy to be able to see exactly what the page looked like, especially for sites that have the same title on every page (eg: forums).
A third function is a built-in site zoom. If you triple click on a page, you get a magnified view of it. This can be handy for viewing those sites that choose to use atrociously small font sizes.
-Show IP-
I sometimes find myself needing to know the IP address of a web site. This extension just adds the IP address to the status bar.
-Style Sheet Chooser-
Alternate style sheets are sometimes provided by savvy web sites for a custom viewing experience. Unfortunately, the built-in style sheet selector does not remember your selection when you visit a different page on the site. This extension will add such memory.
-Tab Mix Plus-
Tabs are awesome. All applications should have them. Unfortunately, FF has a lot of hidden tab options that are only accessible via about:config page. Tab Mix Plus brings these into a convenient interface. It combines the features of a lot of smaller tab option extensions and adds its own to the mix. A must have.
Some features include:
- Control where links get opened, such as links set to go into a new window go into a new tab instead.
- Undo closed tabs.
- Control what happens when you double click, right click, middle click, etc. on a tab.
- Change how tabs are displayed. I like to minimize the width so that only the favicon shows. Allows many more tabs to be opened without scrolling.
- Control what tab-related items are in right click context menus.
- Session manager that will remember what tabs you have opened when you close the browser. It will then reopen these tabs when you reload the browser.