I have one more Firefox 3.6 about:config tip up my sleeve.  By toggling one setting, you can go from having a drop down list of tabs to a thumb-nailed view of each tab that is open. 

Here is how you too can enable this secret Firefox 3.6 feature.

How to Enable the Tab Preview Menu Button

• Type about:config in the address bar. Then, if needed click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
• Next, in the filter box – type in:
  • browser.allTabs.previews
• Right-click that about:config entry, and select “Toggle”

This will change it from false, to true.  You could take the same steps to disable it too.  Now when you click that icon with the four tiny squares, you will get a visually prettier way to check out all your tabs.

Also once this has been enabled, you can use the keyboard combination:

Shift + Ctrl + Tab

To get the same tab previews, just without the button clicking.

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New to Firefox 3.6, when you are on a page, and you want to open a link in a new tab – rather than opening the link in the far right of the tab bar, Firefox will now open the link right next to the tab you are in.  Now, while this might be convenient for some, it is a feature I don’t really need.  So here is how you can disable the new “Insert Related Tab After Current” tweak in Firefox 3.6.

Make New Tab Pages Open in the Far Right of the Tab Bar

• Type about:config in the address bar. Then, if needed click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
• Next, in the filter box – type in:
  • tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent
• Right-click that about:config entry, and select “Toggle”

This will convert Firefox back to loading opening a new tab from a web page on the far right of the tab bar, rather than right next to the tab you opened it from.

To switch back, follow these same steps and toggle the “false” back to “true”.

This should help those of you out there who do not like this new feature to Firefox 3.6, or are just not ready to switch how you open a page in a new tab just yet.

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With Firefox 3.6’s release, we can all do a quick about:config tweak that will enable the prettier tab switching.  By default, when you hit the keyboard keys Ctrl + Tab you just rotate through your tabs.  By making some quick adjustments though, you can pull up the new tab switcher that you see in the picture above.

How to Enable Firefox’s Secret Visual Tab Switcher

• Type about:config in the address bar. Then, if needed click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
• Next, in the filter box – type in:
  • browser.ctrlTab.previews
• Right-click that about:config entry, and select “Toggle”

Now, when you hit the keyboard combination of Ctrl + Tab you will get the new visual tab previews, rather than just scroll through the tabs one by one.  If you want to switch back, just follow the same steps to toggle it from true, back to false.

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One big complaint about search engines is they are all rather vanilla with their visual representation.  Wouldn’t it be better if you could color code things a ‘bit more?  One Greasemonkey script that does a great job at this is Colorful Search.

Once you install this user script, it will generate a random light background color for Bing, Yahoo and Google.  Colors are decided and grouped together based on the domain name they come from.  So you can quickly see that if Firefox Facts results are light blue, and you see 7 out of the 10 results are light blue, they all came from here.  It makes the visual representation much more useable. 

Want to color code your own search engine results? You can pick up Colorful Search from userscripts.org.

Want to hide all the stuff you do not really need on your personalized iGoogle homepage?  Thanks Super iGoogle, a handy Greasemonkey script, you can simplify iGoogle to only show you the content you need to see.

Why hide iGoogle content?

I really didn’t want to hide everything you see in the screenshot, I mainly needed a way to hide the left sidebar, because I really only use one page on iGoogle for my calendar, RSS links and e-mail.  Once you get Super iGoogle installed into Greasemonkey, the tool itself is pretty self explanatory.

What about other Google links, settings and more?

You get a drop down menu added to the iGoogle web page, where you can choose to hide or show the header, the sidebar, the footer and the mini search the script adds to the very top of your iGoogle page.  Other menu items include:

• Advanced Search
• Search Preferences
• Language Tools
• iGoogle Settings
• Change Theme
• Get artistic themes
• Themes for Causes
• Add Stuff
• Classic Home
• My Account
• Sign Out

So all the usual iGoogle settings are there, they are just tucked away so they are not a visual distraction to you.

Download the Super iGoogle user script on UserScripts.org.

Before the tweak (notice the close tab button is on the tab itself)

After the tweak (notice the close tab button has been moved to the far right)

Now what is the secret?  You just need to do a little editing in your about:config page.

1. Type in about:config in the Firefox address bar
2. Tell Firefox you’ll be careful, promise! (unless you already asked Firefox not to be warned about this anymore)
3. In the the filter box you see at the top, type in browser.tabs.closeButtons
4. Right-click it’s entry on the about:config page, and choose “Modify”
5. Change the value from 1 to 3 (you can switch it back the same way if you don’t like it)
6. You are done!  Enjoy your tab closing button in it’s new location!

Hope you enjoyed this quick customization tip, using the powers of the about:config settings and configurations.  If you enjoyed this one, be sure to check out the other about:config tweaks we have covered in the past too.

There you have it.  Once you have done so, it will ask you if you want to switch into Firefox’s private browsing mode.  You could also save about:privatebrowsing as a bookmark, so you have easy one click access to the private browsing mode, without adding any extra add-ons to Firefox.

Now here is my challenge to all of you out there, does anybody know a quick way to stop private browsing, and return your browser back to normal (other than the traditional menu method).  If you do, leave it in the comments!

So do you want to customize web sites without writing one single line of code?  Check out this video tutorial for a little more information about the Customize Your Web add-on for Firefox.

Some of the other customizations featured include:

• Removal and rearrangement of elements (cut / copy / paste behavior)
  Modifying of elements in every possible way (changing size, color, default values etc.)
• Definition of keyboard shortcuts / shortstrings for any clickable element (shortstrings are multi-character shortcuts, e.g. "SO" for a "Sign out" Button)
• Adding keyboard navigation support for any list of elements  (e.g. for the result entries of search)
• Insertion of arbitrary HTML and JavaScript code
• Definition of small macros which are triggered by a shortcut
• Automatically triggering actions on page load (e.g. for automatic click on a login button or focusing a special field)

I am just having fun playing around with this add-on figuring out all the things I can do with it.  For some, it might seem a little complex, however there is extensive documentation to help you along.

You can pick up the Customize Your Web add-on for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons site or from Mouseless.de.

Did you know you can tidy Firefox up, with VACUUM? No, I do not mean that thing you use to clean your carpets.  Here is a way to VACUUM your places database from within the browser.

Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Open the Firefox tools menu and click on error console.
2. Paste the following command into the code box as a single line:
Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("VACUUM");
3. Hit the “Enter” key or click the evaluate button.

The user interface will freeze for a moment, but after you are done, your SQLite databases should be less fragmented than before, leading to a leaner and meaner Firefox browsing experience.

Thanks goes to Mozilla developer Jeremy Orem for this fantastic tip!

Bonus – Vacuum Places Improved is an add-on that will do this for you automatically.

So what is the solution?  Time to visit our good friend, the about:config…

The quick fix for this problem, at least for my own sake, is to increase the time between each of the saves performed by session restore. By opening about:config in your Firefox address bar, then typing browser.sessionstore.interval in the filter box, you’ll see a value of 10000, which is in milliseconds. (Meaning your session is saved every 10 seconds.) I changed this to 300000, or every 5 minutes, as I don’t have the urgent need for tab restoration. If you feel like being more on the safe side, try increasing it to something a bit lower, say 120000, or every 2 minutes.

I gave it a shot, and it might not be a life changing experiance after doing so, but it does seem to make the videos play faster, especially if you have several Firefox tabs or windows open at the same time.