Unfortunately, it’s enough to regularly clean your system of cookies to make App Tabs not work. On my work computer, I run CCleaner on daily basis and the App Tabs I set up don’t work. Therefore, I installed a wonderful App Tab Initializer addon, but still find it strange that such a great functionality cannot work on its own…

So with that said, I thought I would give App Tab Initializer a shot and I have to say, it does exactly as reported. If you automatically clear your browser history upon closing Firefox, this add-on will allow you to keep your favorite App Tabs up and running. App Tab Initializer lets you grab the list of open App Tabs from your current browser and store it. When you start Firefox it will open your preferred set of App Tabs.

You can pick up App Tab Initializer from the Firefox Add-ons website.

The first thing you will want to do is check for updates for your add-ons.  You can easily do this in the latest version of Firefox by clicking the Firefox button and then click Add-ons. This will open up the Add-ons Manager.  Next, select the gear button at the top and select, “Check for Updates”. Firefox will then search for and download any updates that are available automatically. Restart the browser when asked, and you should be good to go.

If the add-on has been simply disabled (Firefox sometimes does this with add-ons that were added by another program) you should be able to simply re-enable the add-on in question.

1. At the top of the Firefox window, click on the Firefox button and then click Add-ons. The Add-ons Manager tab will open.
2. In the Add-ons Manager tab, select the Extensions panel.
3. Click the Enable button next to the add-on you’d like to re-enable.

Know of any more fixes?  Be sure to leave them in the comments!  Hope this helps you the next time you find your favorite add-ons are not working in Firefox.

Firefox should remember passwords by default.  If you have turned off or disabled this feature though, it might not.  Every so often, I need to use the Firefox password manager to remember a password, and it seems that for the life of me I can not get it to do it.  What might be the problem? Check your exceptions!

I can tell you that from experience, this accidental movement can prevent your passwords from being saved by the browser.  Take these steps to see if this might be the reason why your password hasn’t been saving:

• From the menu toolbar, go to Tools and then Options…
• Next, select the Security Panel
• Just to double check, if it isn’t already marked – make sure you check Remember passwords for sites
• Now, to the right of where it says, "Remember passwords for sites", click on the button labeled, Exceptions…
• Check the list, and make sure the website you are trying to log into is not on that list. If it is, just select the entry for the website – and click remove.

Now, close out those option windows and give it another shot. Firefox should now let you remember the password for the website in question now, if you had an entry to delete or you did not have the "Remember passwords for sites" option checked.

Facebook is a tool that some of us use everyday, so we might as well make it look the way we want and add new abilities that we really need, right? FaceTweak is an add-on for Firefox that promises to be the Ultimate Facebook Enhancer.  With it, you can add tons of tweaks to the Facebook interface and engine to get more out of this social networking tool.

Once installed, you will see that you have many more options available for tweaking Facebook to suit your needs.  These are mainly broken down into backend fixes, that make certain Facebook features better and ascetic changes, that make Facebook look different.

Here are the main features FaceTweak has to offer:

• AutoLogin – Auto-login to Facebook (assuming Firefox is set to remember your password)
• Chat Emoticons – Adds smileys to the side of Facebook, clicking on one adds to your message
• Replace Smileys – Replace text smileys as graphics (graphics are original from Facebook.com)
• Fixed Header – Makes the Facebook navigation menu remain ‘fixed’ to the top of the screen
• Fixer – Bigger photos, better albums, download videos, show age, Google Calendar integration, etc.

Here are some of the new social options you have available:

• Auto Confirm Friend Requests – Automatically accept all friend requests
• Autopoke – Automatically pokes back pokers listed on your home page
• Deletes – Bulk delete friends
• Ignore All Requests – Denies all Facebook requests on button click
• Invites – Invites your friends to the app if they’ve already allowed the app access
• Highlight Birthdays – Highlights today’s birthdays on your home page
• Games Quick Invite – Adds quick invite links to various games (needs ‘Invites’ option enabled)
• Poke All – Adds ‘Poke All’ and ‘Poke Selected’ buttons above the pokes on user homepages
• Reply Button – Adds a reply button to comments
• Select All Friends – Select all friends at once instead of having to do so one by one

But wait, that’s not all – you also have tons of media options to play with too:

• inYOf4ceBook – Larger versions of thumbnails and profile pictures on mouse-over
• Video – Adds links to download or convert videos with Zamzar.com, and provides embedded code
• View All Photos – Places link to view all photos of a user
• View Photo in Album – View all photos of a user or an album

And on top of all of this greatness, you get over 20 new skins for Facebook, so you can change how the website looks and feels. You can pick up FaceTweak from the Firefox Add-ons website or learn more about the development of this neat tool at FaceTweak.com.

Want to make your misspelled words stand out a ‘bit more when composing a message in Firefox?  It is easy to do with this quick about:config tweak.  You can select no highlighting, a dotted line, long dots, a single straight line, a double underline or the default squiggly line.

Here is how you can make your spelling mistakes stand out more in Firefox.

1. Enter About:config in the Firefox address bar. If it pops up an alert, tell it that you know what you’re doing and proceed.
2. Search for ui.SpellCheckerUnderlineStyle. If you find anything, skip to step 5.
3. If your system is like mine, you found nothing. That means you have to add this configuration value. Right-click the main portion of the window and select New > Integer.
4. Now, enter ui.SpellCheckerUnderlineStyle to create a setting by this name.
5. Now you can set the value of this setting to one of several options: 0 for no highlighting, 1 for a dotted line, 2 for long dots, 3 for a single straight line, 4 for a double underline (like you see above – that’s my pick), and 5 for a squiggly line, which is the default.

Once you are done, you will be able to spell check like no other!  Well, ok – that might be a little dramatic, but you will have a more customized misspelled word notification.

Thanks goes to Download Squad for this amazing find!

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.

Learn More About Firefox 3.6 |  Subscribe for More Firefox Tips!

Due to some unknown reason, Firefox on Windows pulls certain file locations for security reasons.  In turn, having too many temporary, history or recent document files will slow down Firefox 3.5’s data generation process.  A bug has been filed about this, but in the mean time – the best thing you can do to help fix it is to do a little house cleaning.

The fix here is to browse through and clear both Internet Explorer’s history and cache and Firefox’s history and cache as much as you can.  You can find more help with this process at these resources:

• Workaround for Firefox 3.5 slow startups on Window
• Speed Up Firefox 3.5 Start-Up on Windows

I had not noticed this problem too much – then again, I have my Firefox temp files set to clear every time I close the browser and I hardly ever use Internet Explorer.  How about you?

UPDATE:

This problem was fixed in Firefox 3.5.1.  To check for updates, be sure to go to Help > “Check for Updates…” in Firefox.  Thanks to the Firefox development team for the speedy update!

You will want to pickup the bug489729 add-on for Firefox.  This oddly named extension comes with two main controls. You can:

• Disable Detach Tab – use this to disable tab tearing
• Enable Drop URL – use this to be able to drag a tab to your desktop to create a shortcut.

Now, what if you want to keep tab tearing, however you would like the ability to undo a tab detachment?  Then you need to pick up the Undo Detach Tab add-on for Firefox.  As the name says, it will add a context menu option where you can undo your tab tearing.

First thing you should do is follow the common Firefox troubleshooting tips:

• Troubleshooting Firefox Problems

Check for Faulty Add-ons

Next, take a look at your extensions.  It could be that one of your add-ons you have installed has a problem with it.  First thing I want you to do when checking out your add-ons is to go to Tools > Add-ons and then click on the “Find Updates” button.  See if updating any of your add-ons might help get rid of the issue.

The next suggestion would be to go to Tools > Add-ons, disable all the add-ons you have installed, and then restart Firefox.  If the problem has gone away after that, you can then enable add-ons until the problem comes back.  This should help you figure out which add-on is at fault.  It could also be caused by a combination of add-ons, that do not play nice together, so do not rule that out as a possibility too.

Could it be Spyware/Malware?

This suggestion from mozillaZine might also be worth checking into:

If the problem is in Firefox on Windows, check for a file named m3ffxtbr.manifest in the “chrome” folder of your installation directory (usually “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\chrome\m3ffxtbr.manifest”). If the file exists, delete it, then restart Firefox. This file is created by the “MyWebSearch Toolbar” (a form of spyware).

Be sure to check out this knowledge base post for more tips on working with this nasty problem.  Now the last and nuclear step would be to do a fresh or clean install of Firefox to see if you can get rid of the problem that way.  It is a drastic step, but has worked for me in the past.

If you said yes, you win… well, you win nothing, but you do have the pride of knowing Firefox is a crafty tool in the right hands.  What I want Michael to do is left-click on his mouse and select all the text he wishes to print.

Got all the text from the article highlighted?  Good.  The next step is to go to the File menu and then select “Print…”. (You can also hit Ctrl + P)  That will bring up the Print Options box.  Under Print range make sure you select “Selection”.

Doing so will make sure you are only printing what you have highlighted from the article.  This way you can get rid of the useless junk like the sidebars and headers.  You only print what you need!  Hit the “OK” button and you should only print the article and none of the rest of the information on the web page.

The final result is a nicely formatted article without any of the rest of the junk you don’t need.