Firefox can be heavily customized through
about:config page (just type it in the address bar)
There are entries (one per line) that handle various types of configurations. Each entry has a searchable keyword. The entries can be of Boolean, integer or string value. Entries contain Name, Status, Type and Value. Typically, you will be modifying only the Value, by double-clicking on it and making the change.
If you accidentally misconfigured about:config, you can fix it in one of two ways:
- Make a backup of your prefs.js file before you start editing. Then, if something goes wrong, you can restore it by copying it over the corrupt file.
- If you can't restore via a backup prefs.js file, you can exit Firefox and issue the command firefox -safe-mode to bring up the Firefox Safe Mode screen. Then, just select Reset All User Preferences To Firefox Defaults. Note: this will restore all user preferences to their default values.
Speed up Firefox
This hack requires a few steps. Search for
pipelining in the filter and you should see:
network.http.pipelining: change this to true.
network.http.proxy.pipelining: change this to true.
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: change this to 8.
Now search for
max-connections and you should see:
network.http.max-connections: change this to 96.
network.http.max-connections-per-server: change this to 32.
ramdisk cache
in order to prevent Firefox hangups on high latency devices, low speed devices and to prevent the wear out of solid state disks move the disk cache to a ram disk by creating a new key (right click New -> String)
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory
and enter the value
/dev/shm/firefox/
Disable antivirus scanning
This is only for the Windows version. If you're downloading large files, this scanning can seriously slow things down. And since you will most likely scan the downloaded file anyway, you'll probably want to disable this. Of course, if you are uber paranoid (not a bad trait for computing), you might want to leave this entry alone.
To disable antivirus scanning, search for
scanWhenDone and you should see:
browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone: change this to false.
Handling JavaScript Popups
When you come across a site that executes a javascript open new window function, and if the popup window is without all the usual window features, i.e.
back/forward/reload buttons, status bar etc, Firefox will automatically treat it as a popup and will not open it as a new tab. However, if you find this to be a nuisance and wanted to open all new windows in a new tabs, you can specify it via the
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction setting.
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction
Default:
2 Open all JavaScript windows the same way as you have Firefox handle new windows unless the JavaScript call specifies how to display the window
Modified values:
- 0 open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows
- 1 do not open any new windows
- 2- open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows unless the Javascript specify how to display the window
Select all text when click on the URL bar
In Windows and Mac, Firefox highlights all text when you click on the URL bar. In Linux, it does not select all the text. Instead, it places the cursor at the insertion point. Regardless which platform you are using, you can now tweak it to either
select all or
place cursor at insertion point.
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll
Change it to
False: place cursor at insertion point
True: select all text on click
Spell checking in all fields
By default, Firefox checks spelling only in multiple-line text boxes. You can set it to check spelling in all text boxes. Search for
spellcheckdefault and you should see:
layout.spellcheckDefault: change this to 2.
Open search bar results in new tab
When you use the search bar, the results display in the current tab. This can be a nuisance because you will navigate out of the page you are currently in. To make sure Firefox always opens search results in a new tab, search for
openintab and you should see:
browser.search.openintab: change this to true.
Auto export bookmarks
In Firefox 3, bookmarks are automatically saved and exported for you. The only problem is that by default, they're saved as places.sqlite instead of the more convenient bookmarks.html. To change this setting so that they can be easily re-imported, search for
autoExportHTML and you should see:
browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML: change this to true.
Disable extension install delay
Everytime you wanted to install a Firefox add-on, you will have to wait for several secs before the actual installation starts. If you are tired of waiting, you can turn the function
security.dialog_enable_delay off so that the installation will start immediately upon clicking.
security.dialog_enable_delay
Default:
2000 (in msec)
Change it to:
0 start installation immediately
any other value (in msec)
View source code in an external editor
When you need to view the source of a page, it opens up in browser pop-up. Most developers would probably like to have that opened in their favourite editor instead of having to cut and paste. To do this, there are two entries to modify. Search for
view_source.editor and you will see:
view_source.editor.external: change this to true.
view_source.editor.path: change this to the explicit path to your editor of choice.
Get more add-on search results
When you do a search in the Add-on window, you'll see just five results. You might find it more efficient to increase this number. Search for
getAddons and you should see:
extension.getAddons.maxResults
change this to 10 (or higher, if you want to see even more).
Redefine the Backspace button
Did you know you can configure Firefox to use the backspace button to either go back a page or go up a page? This keeps power users from having to go back and forth from the keyboard to the mouse. Search for
backspace and you will see:
browser.backspace_action
change this to 0 for previous page and 1 for page up.
Adjust the Session Restore Saving Frequency
Same as above, if you decided to keep the session restore feature on, but want to reduce the session saving frequency, change the value of
browser.sessionstore.interval so that Firefox will save the session at a longer interval.
browser.sessionstore.interval
Default:
10000 (in msecs, equivalent to 10secs)
Privacy: Correctly set the History expiring time
The settings in the Preferences -> Privacy menu concerning "Remember my history for at least - days" actually set the
minimum time the browsing history is kept in memory. In order to set the
maximum time you have to change this key
browser.history_expire_days
Default: 180 days
You can also set the maximum number of webpages to be recorded into the history by setting the string
browser.history_expire_sites
Default: 40000 pages