How-To: Firefox
Tips
Keywords speed up searching
Keywords are a power feature that allow quick access to frequently used search sites. To use a keyword you first assign an operation to a keyword and then the next time you type in the keyword in the URL bar the operation is performed. For example I assigned 'g' to invoke a google search and whenever I type 'g sometext' in the URL bar and then hit the enter key Firefox loads up the google.com site with the search results for 'sometext'.
To add a keyword simply right-click over the search text box and then select 'Add a Keyword for this Search...'.
Enable spell checking in single line fields
Firefox by default only performs spell checking on multi line fields. To enable spell checking on single line fields in addition to multi line fields visit the
about:config page and search for the 'layout.spellcheckDefault' config parameter, then double-click to change the value to
2. See
this page for more information.
layout.spellcheckDefault 2
View source with your favorite editor
To change the viewer to another editor visit the about:config page and change the following values (set 'view_source.editor.path' to the path to your editor, mine is gvim).
view_source.editor.external true
view_source.editor.path /usr/bin/gvim
Disable selecting all when clicking in the URL bar
In windows clicking on the URL bar in Firefox selects the entire URL. You can make Firefox act like it does under Linux where clicking on the URL bar merely places a cursor where you click with this change. Visit the about:config page and change the following value.
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll false
Performance boost: pipelining
Pipelining increases HTTP efficiency by including multiple requests in a single TCP connection. These changes will increase performance yet may break some sites. See
this page for more information. Visit the
about:config page and change the following values.
network.http.pipelining true
network.http.pipelining.ssl true
network.http.proxy.pipelining true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 8
Performance boost: maximum number of connections
Increasing the maximum number of connections (both in general and per website) will reduce the time it takes to load a page, yet will increase the load on your Internet connection (and on the website). Visit the about:config page and change the following values.
network.http.max-connections 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server 32
Performance boost: increased disk cache size
Increasing the size of the disk cache will decrease the time it takes to render pages from websites you visit often. Visit the about:config page and change the following values.
browser.cache.disk.enable true
browser.cache.disk.capacity 50000
Disable the GTK file picker (Linux)
If you don't enjoy having to click your way through your file system and prefer to have the option to copy and paste a path then disable the default GTK file picker and use the internal XUL file picker with a simple configuration change. See
this page for more information. Visit the
about:config page and change the following value.
allow_platform_file_picker false
Slow scrolling work around for Gmail
It's hard to believe, yet Firefox 3 and Gmail do not mix well (I have seen reports as far back as May 2008 yet neither Google nor Firefox have addressed this issue)! This problem is due to the very slow rendering of borders for Gmail pages.
The good news is that there are two ways to work around this bug. The first is to avoid the new version of Gmail, which is as easy as clicking on the 'Older version' link on the top right of Gmail. The second way is to disable borders in Gmail. To do that download the
Stylish Firefox extension and then 'Write' a new style with the following content naming it 'slow scrolling in gmail work around', then enable it. Gmail will now render without borders making it much faster for scrolling.
@-moz-document
url-prefix("http://mail.google."),
url-prefix("https://mail.google.")
{
*{border-style: none !important;}
}
Resetting the master password
If you have forgotten the master password you can reset it (and thus lose all of your saved passwords!) by entering chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul into the location bar then clicking on 'Reset'.
Forcing Firefox to remember passwords
Some sites use a technique to prevent web browsers from remembering passwords (aka 'autocomplete'). You can override this behavior by editing the file nsLoginManager.js located in the xulrunner library (it's a simple javascript text file). Look for the function 'isAutocompleteDisabled' and comment out the code to ensure that the function always returns false.
sudo vim /usr/lib/xulrunner-*/components/nsLoginManager.js
Here is an example of what the function should look like after the change:
_isAutocompleteDisabled : function (element) {
/*
if (element && element.hasAttribute("autocomplete") &&
element.getAttribute("autocomplete").toLowerCase() == "off")
return true;
*/
return false;
},
Tunnel DNS requests over a SOCKS proxy
If you are using a SOCKS proxy make sure that DNS requests are tunneled using the proxy, otherwise your DNS lookups will occur over the direct network connection. FoxyProxy supports this as an option, yet if you are using the built-in Firefox proxy on its own then you need to set it yourself. To enable tunneled DNS requests over the proxy visit the about:config page and search for the 'network.proxy.socks_remote_dns' config parameter, then double-click to change the value to true.
network.proxy.socks_remote_dns true
Extensions
Monitoring the amount of disk and memory cache used by Firefox
Blocking ads and other annoyances
This is
not to be confused with the older
Adblock extension which hasn't been updated in quite some time.
Real-time weather
Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with the
Forecastfox Firefox extension.
Masquerading for fun and profit
The
User Agent Switcher Firefox extension allows you to alter the user agent string sent to web sites. It is quite useful to get around sites that only properly display for certain unnamed crappy browsers.
The perfect tab extension
The
Tab Mix Plus Firefox extension adds powerful tab features such as opening closed tabs and a tab session manager that can even restore the state of your tabs after a crash. Make sure to increase the 'max number of closed tabs to remember' from the default of 5 (under the 'tab features' preferences).
Super sidebars
Web page saving made easy
The
ScrapBook Firefox extension helps you to save web pages and easily manage collections. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support.
Find those media links
Slashdotter
CustomizeGoogle
The
CustomizeGoogle Firefox extension enhance Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam).
Resurrect Pages
Greasemonkey
Gmail Manager
FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension)
Stylish
The
Stylish Firefox extension allows you to customize the look of a website by modifying the style as it is displayed in Firefox. It is
extremely helpful in working around the Gmail slow scrolling bug in Firefox 3 (see above).
Better Gmail 2
The
Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension adds useful extra features and skins to Gmail, like hierarchical labels, macros, signatures, file attachment icons and more. Requires the Greasemonkey extension (see above).
Configuration Mania
FoxClocks
The
FoxClocks Firefox extension lets you keep an eye on the time around the world - or just your local time - by putting small clocks in your statusbar.
BugMeNot
The
BugMeNot Firefox extension makes it easy to bypass compulsory web registration by showing a context menu with data filled in via www.bugmenot.com.
NoScript
The
NoScript Firefox extension permits you to only allow JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from sites you trust.
Flashblock
The
Flashblock Firefox extension takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content.
FoxyProxy
The
FoxyProxy Firefox extension is an advanced proxy management tool that completely replaces Firefox's limited proxying capabilities.
ShowIP
The
ShowIP Firefox extension shows the IP address(es) of the current page in the status bar. It also allows querying custom information services by IP (right mouse button) and hostname (left mouse button), like whois, netcraft.
Stealther
Distrust
Flagfox
The
Flagfox Firefox extension displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides quick access to detailed location and webserver information.
DownThemAll
Site Information Tool
The
Site Information Tool Firefox extension provides information about a webpage including rankings, domain registration data, IP information, server response and page data, thumbnail and more.
FlashGot
The
FlashGot Firefox extension allows you to download all the links, movies and audio clips of a page at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular, lightweight and reliable external download managers.
BetterPrivacy
The
BetterPrivacy Firefox extension is a Super Cookie Safeguard which protects from usually not deletable LSOs (Local Shared Objects). It blocks longterm tracking on Google, YouTube Ebay and many other domains.
More extensions!
Themes
Favorite themes
Useful Commands
- ctrl-l firefox address bar
- ctrl-k firefox search field
- ctrl-pgup next tab (left to right)
- ctrl-pgdn previous tab (right to left)
- ctrl-t new tab
- ctrl-r or f5 reload page
- ctrl-u view page source
