best guide to add-ons, themes and tips for Firefox
By tweaking your browser cache settings from within about:config, you could see a ‘bit of a speed boost when it comes to using Firefox on a daily basis. You see, when images are loaded by default, they can be cached so they don’t need to be redisplayed or looked for again. What we will be editing today will control the maximum amount of memory used for caching images.
Due to privacy concerns, some Firefox users may wish to disable or turn off the session restore feature in Firefox. As an example, if your computer is used by multiple users, the browser could crash while you are checking your Gmail account. Rather than restoring Firefox, you decide to go do something else. When somebody else comes in to launch Firefox, the browser will be restored to your inbox (due to fact that is where it crashed). If you want a little more browsing privacy, here is how you disable the session restore feature in the browser.
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.
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.
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.
All in all, 2009 was a great year for Firefox. It grew by leaps and bounds, and continues to be the best alternative browser out there. Firefox Facts did pretty well in it’s own right too – surpassing the 7,000+ RSS subscriber mark. So with today being the last day of 2009, let us all sit back and revisit some of the best posts of the year.
Here are 10 of the most read stories, tips, tutorials and reviews I have posted here in 2009. Hope you check out some classics you might have missed, or revisit a favorite post or two.
#10 – Love (or Disable) the New Tab Button in Firefox
Love it, or hate it – Firefox got one more addition to it’s browser that seems to have gotten a mixed reaction from the fans. The open new tab button rests at the end of your tab bar in Firefox 3.5 giving you an easier user interface to open a new tab.
In an effort to simplify the Firefox interface, did you know you can make a few changes in the about:config page to move the close tab buttons around? I’ll show you how to move it to the far right of the browser, in just six easy steps.
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.
Want to speed up your flash video watching? By default, Firefox takes a sort of “snapshot” of whatever you are doing every ten seconds. Why? It is so that the browser can restore itself, just in case of a crash. Now you might ask, what does this have to do with flash videos? Well, the snapshot action is what is causing your ten second delay, at times, with watching flash videos on the Web.
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.
If you need to edit some of the advanced preferences of Firefox, and you need a neater way to get that done, gui:config is right for you.
This extension of Firefox will give you a lot of the “about:config” preferences, in an easy to navigate menu box. It displays the options, included in the current version, using checkboxes, dropdown lists and textboxes.
If you want to check out all the advanced settings that gui:config makes available to you, Lifehacker has done a nice gallery of each tab you see in the screenshot above.
I would consider this extension well worth trying out, at least. The add-on, gui:config is a must have for anybody who likes to tweak and customize their browsing experience. You can find out more about the development at: http://guiconfig.freedig.org/.
How do you get Firefox’s live bookmarks to refresh faster? By default, the Live Bookmarks are set to refresh every 60 minutes to check for new headlines. However, if you want to get your news a little quicker, there is a tweak you can do to make the process go a little faster.
In the address bar, type in about:config, and then hit enter.
At the warning, click the button that says, “I’ll be careful, I promise!”. Now you are ready to do some configuration changes. We want to setup a new option though, so right-click anywhere inside of the about:config screen and then go to New > Integer.
For the preference name type in:
browser.bookmarks.livemark_refresh_seconds
Now, for the value, you will need to add your time up by seconds. For example, if you wanted it to be reloaded every two minutes you would type in 120 (because there are 120 seconds in two minutes). The smallest number you can put in here is 60 seconds. If you put in anything lower, Firefox will slap you in the face – and then say, “Oh yeah, you wanted to put in ’60′ right?”.
You can also reload a Live Bookmark manually to by right-clicking it and choosing “Reload Live Bookmark”. However that isn’t nearly as fun as diving into about:config.
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
