Tip Trick Firefox
You may have installed countless add-on in Firefox to enhance your using experience, but if you want to get the most out of Firefox, you really have to hack your way into the about:config.
The
about:config page
contains most (if not, all) of Firefox configuration options. It is
so far the most effective, and the most powerful way to tweak and
enhance your Firefox performance. Here are 28 of the popular tweaks.
Accessing
your about:config page
- In your Firefox, type about:config in the address bar.
- You will be shown a warning page. Click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button to proceed.
- On the main page, you will see a long list of configuration entries. Enter the name of the key you want to update in the “Filter” field. The list will narrow to only the entries that match your keyword as you type.
- To modify the value, simply double click on the entry value field and update the entry. That’s all!
- Isn’t that simple? Now, let’s get to the tweaking.
1)
Adjust the Smart Location Bar’s Number of Suggestions
In
Firefox 3, when you start typing in the location bar, a drop-down
list of suggestion URLs will be shown. If you want it to show more
than 12 suggestions (12 is the default), you can adjust the
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
keys and get it to show the number you want.
- Config name: browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
Default: 12
Modified value: Set to your desired number of suggestion. If you want to disable it all together, set it to -1
2)
Disable the session restore function
Firefox
3 automatically saves your session every 10 secs so that whenever it
crashes, it can restore all your tabs. While this is a useful
feature, some of you might find it irritating. To disable this
function, toggle the value of browser.sessionstore.enabled
to False
Config
name: browser.sessionstore.enabled
Default: True
Modified value: False if you want to disable the session restore function
Default: True
Modified value: False if you want to disable the session restore function
3)
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.
- Config name: browser.sessionstore.interval
Default: 10000 (in msecs, equivalent to 10secs)
Modified value: Set it to your desired value. 1000 means 1 sec and 60000 means 1 minute.
4)
Enable Advanced Color Profile Support
Firefox
has this advanced color profile features that display higher image
quality. It is not enabled by default as it has a negative effect on
the performance of the browser. If you are concern with the image
quality rather than the performance, you can activated it via the
gfx.color_management.enabled
setting
- Config name: gfx.color_management.enabled
Default: False
Modified value: True (if you want to activate the color profile support feature)
5)
Disable Antivirus Scanning
This
is mainly for Windows users. By default, Firefox 3 automatically scan
the downloaded file with the default anti-virus application to make
sure it is free of virus. If you download a big file, it could take a
long time for the whole scanning process to complete. To increase the
performance of the browser, you might want to consider disabling the
anti-virus scanning via the browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
key.
- Config name: browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
Default: True
Modified value: False (if you want to disable it)
6)
Configuring The Scrolling Tabs
When
you opened many tabs, Firefox will not keep on reducing the tab
width. Instead, it shows a scrolling bar so that the min width
(100px) is conserved and you can scroll to find your tabs. If you are
those who don’t like the scrolling tab function and prefer Firefox
to show all the tabs, regardless how small it is, you can set the
value of browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
to 0 to disable it. Similarly, if you want Firefox to display more
tabs before showing the scrolling button, you can reduce the default
value to a lower value, say 75 pixels.
- Config name: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
Default: 100
Modified value: 0 if you want to disable the scrolling functions, other values to set the min width value
7)
Show/Disable Close button on Tabs
Some
people love to see the Close
(the red X) button on every tabs, but some hate it. Whatever is it,
you can configure it to your preferences via the
browser.tabs.closeButtons
setting.
Config
name: browser.tabs.closeButtons
Default: 1
Modified values:
Default: 1
Modified values:
- 0 – display a close button on the active tab only
- 1- display close buttons on all tabs
- 2- don’t display any close buttons
- 3- display a single close button at the end of the tab strip
8)
Extend Scripts Execution Time
In
Firefox 3, a script is only given 10 seconds to respond, after which
it will issue a unresponsive script warning. If you are hooked on a
slow network connection, you might want to increase the script
execution time via dom.max_script_run_time
to cut down on the frequency of the no script warning.
- Config name: dom.max_script_run_time
Default:10 (in secs)
Modified value: 20, or any values greater than 10
9)
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.
Config
name: 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:
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
10)
Enable Spell Checking In All Text Fields
The
default spell checking function only checks for multi-line text
boxes. You can get it to spell-check for single line text box as
well.
Config
name: layout.spellcheckDefault
Default: 1 (spell checker for multi-lines text boxes only)
Modified values:
Default: 1 (spell checker for multi-lines text boxes only)
Modified values:
- 0 – disable the spell checker
- 2 – enable the spell checker for all text boxes
11)
Open Search Box Results In New Tab
When
you search using the search box at the top right hand corner of the
browser, it will display the search results in the current tab. If
you don’t want the search to interfere with your current tab, you
can tweak the browser.search.openintab
to make it open in a new tab.
- Config Name: browser.search.openintab
Default: False
Modified value: True (open search box results in new tab)
12)
Lower The Physical Memory Used When Minimized
This
tweak is mainly for Windows users. When you minimize Firefox, it will
send Firefox to your virtual memory and free up your physical memory
for other programs to use. Firefox will reduce its physical memory
usage, when minimized, to approximately 10MB (give or take some) and
when you maximize Firefox it will take back the memory that it needs.
- The preference name does not exist and needs to be created.Right click on the background and select New->Boolean.Enter the name when prompted: config.trim_on_minimize
Enter the values: True
13)
Speed up your Firefox
Several
tweaks required for this
- Config name: network.http.pipelining
Default: False
Modified value: True - Config name: network.http.proxy.pipelining
Default: False
Modified value: True - Config name: network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Default: 4
Modified value: any value higher than 4, but not more than 8 - Config name: network.http.max-connections
Default: 30
Modified value: 96 - Config name: network.http.max-connections-per-server
Default: 15
Modified value: 32
14)
Increase/Decrease the Amount of Disk Cache
When
a page is loaded, Firefox will cache it into the hard disk so that it
doesn’t need to be download again for redisplaying. The bigger the
storage size you cater for Firefox, the more pages it can cache.
Before
you increase the disk cache size, make sure that
browser.cache.disk.enabled
browser.cache.disk.enable is
set to True.
Config
name: browser.cache.disk.capacity
Default: 50000 (in KB)
Modified value:
Default: 50000 (in KB)
Modified value:
- 0 – disable disk caching
- any value lower than 50000 reduces the disk cache
- any value higher than 50000 increases the disk cache.
15)
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.
Config
name: browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll
Modified value:
Modified value:
- False – place cursor at insertion point
- True – select all text on click
16)
Autofill Address in URL Bar
Other
than the smart location feature, you can also get your URL bar to
autofill the address as you type the URL.
- Config name: browser.urlbar.autofill
Default: False
Modified value: True (Have Firefox autofill the address as you type in the URL bar)
17)
Same Zoom Level For Every Site
Firefox
remembers your zoom preference for each site and set it to your
preferences whenever you load the page. If you want the zoom level to
be consistent from site to site, you can toggle the value of
browser.zoom.siteSpecific
from True to False.
- Config name: browser.zoom.siteSpecific
Default: True
Modified value: False (enable same zoom preferences for every sites)
18)
Setting your zoom limit
If
you find that the max/min zoom level is still not sufficient for your
viewing, you can change the zoom limit to suit your viewing habits.
- Config name: zoom.maxPercent
Default: 300 (percent)
Modified value: any value higher than 300 - Config name: zoom.minPercent
Default: 30 (percent)
value: any value
19)
Configure Your Backspace Button
In
Firefox, you can set your backspace to better use by getting it to
either go back to the previous page
or act as page up
function.
Config
name: browser.backspace_action
Default: 2 (does nothing)
Modified value:
Default: 2 (does nothing)
Modified value:
- 0 – go back previous page
- 1- page up
20)
Increase Offline Cache
If
you do not have access to Internet most of the time, you might want
to increase the offline cache so that you can continue to work
offline. By default, Firefox 3 caches 500MB of data from supported
offline Web apps. You can change that value to whatever amount of
your choice.
- Config name: browser.cache.offline.capacity
Default: 512000 (in KB)
Modified value: any value higher than 512000 will increase the cache value
21)
Auto Export Firefox 3 bookmarks to bookmarks.html
Unlike
the previous version, Firefox 3 backup the bookmarks file in
places.sqlite rather
than the usual bookmarks.html.
Since bookmarks.html
allows us to export and sync our bookmarks with other browser, it
will be very useful if Firefox 3 can backup the bookmark to the
bookmarks.html as
well.
- Config name: browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML
Default: False
Modified value: True (auto export bookmarks file to bookmarks.html)
22)
Disable Extension Compatibility Checks
This
is useful if you want to use an extension that is not supported by
your version of Firefox badly. It is not recommended, but you can
still do it at your own risk.
- Right click and select New->Boolean. Enter extensions.checkCompatibility in the field. Enter False in the next field.
- Right click again and select New->Boolean. Enter extensions.checkUpdateSecurity into the field and enter False into the next field.
23)
Disable Delay Time When Installing Add-on
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.
Config
name: security.dialog_enable_delay
Default: 2000 (in msec)
Modified value:
Default: 2000 (in msec)
Modified value:
- 0 – start installation immediately
- any other value (in msec)
24)
View Source in Your Favorite Editor
This
is very useful for developers who are always using the ‘view
source‘ function. This tweak allows you to
view the source code in an external editor.
- There are two configuration need to be made:
Config name: view_source.editor.external
Default: False
Modified value: True ( enable view source using external text editor) - Config name: view_source.editor.path
Default: blank
Modified value: insert the file path to your editor here.
25)
Increasing ‘Save
Link As‘
timeout value
When
you right click and select the ‘Save Link
As…‘, the browser will request the
content disposition header from the URL so as to determine the
filename. If the URL did not deliver the header within 1 sec, Firefox
will issue a timeout value. This could happen very frequently in a
slow network connection environment. To prevent this issue from
happening frequently, you can increase the timeout value so as to
reduce the possibility of a timeout.
- Config name: Browser.download.saveLinkAsFilenameTimeout
Default: 1000 (1 sec)
Modified value: any value higher than 1000 (value is in msec)
26)
Animate Fullscreen Toolbar Collapse mode
In
Firefox’s fullscreen mode, toolbars and the tab strip are hidden at
the top of the screen and only shown on mouseover. To draw attention
to this, there is an animation of the toolbar sliding upwards and
off-screen when fullscreen mode is toggled on. For performance issue,
the animation of the collapse of the toolbar only appear for the
first time. For some reason that you may love/hate the animation, you
can adjust Browser.fullscreen.animateUp
to switch it on/off for every collapse.
Config
name: Browser.fullscreen.animateUp
Default: 1 (animate the toolbar collapse only the first time)
Modified value:
Default: 1 (animate the toolbar collapse only the first time)
Modified value:
- 0 -disable the animation
- 2- enable the animation for every collapse
27)
Autohide Toolbar in Fullscreen mode
In
fullscreen mode, the toolbar is set to autohide and appear upon
mouseover. If you have a need to view the toolbar at all time, you
can toggle the value of browser.fullscreen.autohide
to False to always
show the toolbar.
- Config name: browser.fullscreen.autohide
Default: True (always autohide)
Modified value: False (always show the toolbar)
28)
Increase Add-On search result
If
you go to Tools->Add-ons->Get Add-ons
and perform a search there, Firefox will only fetch and display 5
matching results. If you want Firefox to show more than 5 results
(say 10), you can adjust extensions.getAddons.maxResults
to get it to display more results.
- Config name: extensions.getAddons.maxResults
Default: 5
Modified value: any value more than 5
This
list of about:config
is definitely not the complete list. If you have any tricks not
listed here, please add it in the comment.
29) Manually Uninstalling Plugins
If you go to Firefox->Add-ons->Plugins, You will see a list of plugins that are installed on your mozilla. The plugins can sometimes crashes and If you can't use an uninstaller program to remove a plugin, you can remove it manually. Here are steps :
- Type about: config in the location bar, Firefox must be offline.
- Search for the preference: plugin.expose_full_path then double click it, change it to true.
- Type about: plugins in the new location bar.
- Each entry in the About Plugins page will have "File name :" Followed by a path. Use Windows Explorer to navigate to the folder shown for the plugin you want to remove.
- Rename the file to something other than its normal name - eg npswf32 Becomes Xnpswf32
- Double click again plugin.expose_full_path and change to false and restart your firefox.
Plugin container.exe is a new process is added to the Firefox version 3.6.6 and above. With the latest version of the plugin installation process is separated from the normal process of the browser which means you will get interference browsing even when certain plugins stops working or crashes and some of the plugins that will take most of the PC's memory and eventually slow PC.
Those who want to disable the plugin container, follow these steps:
- Open Mozilla Firefox
- In the Firefox address bar type about: config and press Enter Click on the "I'll be careful, I promise!" And open the configuration window Firefox
- Later in the filter bar type dom.ipc
- Ignore the first and last line, change the value of row 2 to 5 to false
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled
true
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll false
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll false
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll false
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll false
dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs 45
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll false
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll false
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll false
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll false
dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs 45
31) Hard Reset Your Firefox
Restore Firefox Default Settings Without Re-Install. How to restore the default settings of Firefox. If
you have tweaked your about : config page to speed up your browser to
Facebook , or simply install an add -on that has messed up your Firefox
configuration belongs. have a simple method to restore all default settings back without removing the software. Here's how :
- Open Firefox in Safe Mode , from the programs menu or by typing " firefox - safe-mode " in the Start - > Run.
- Select what you want to be taken back to the original settings by checking one of the following options :
- Disable all add - ons : Disables all added themes and extensions.
- Reset toolbars and controls : Removing all toolbar customizations made.
- Reset to default Firefox bookmarks : Replaces your bookmarks with the default marker.
- Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults : Restores the default Options and preference settings and reset the default theme. It also changes back to default all the entries in the about: config page. It also changes the default back to all entries in the about : config page.
- Restore the default search engine : Adding back the entire default search engine (Google, Yahoo, eBay, Creative Commons, Answers.com, and Amazon.com), without removing any additional search engines.
Choose option fourth. Now everything will go back to default , such as if you install a new FireFox.
Well, itu tadi tips dan tricknya. Semoga
dapat membantu, mohon maaf bila tulisan Saya masih berantakan
dan terima kasih telah menyempatkan waktunya untuk berkunjung ke- Blog Saya. ありがとう。(^_^)v