Website cookies are things that most people don’t worry about. However, it is important to know what they are used for and how you can control what information they store about out. Cookies are small files stored on your computer (placed there by websites) so that they can remember certain settings or statuses. By default, cookies are enabled in Firefox.
Tag Archives | Settings
Reopen Tabs from Last Time
Now, most of the time, when I see Firefox asking if I want to save my tabs for the next time Firefox starts, I quickly click through whatever I have to do to turn this extra warning off. However, I was thinking the other day, I wonder how I could toggle this interesting Firefox feature on or off again?
Open Your Homepage on New Tabs
New Tab Homepage is a very simple and lightweight add-on for Firefox. When you open a new tab in Firefox, it will open your default homepage – rather than an empty tab. While I am using Firefox, I frequently go back to my homepage to check my mail or the latest updates in my RSS reader – so this extension seems like a very obvious evolution of the opening a new tab process.
How to Allow Pop-ups in Firefox
By default, Firefox has a pretty good pop-up blocker. It gets the job done. Sometimes, it does too good of a job and blocks a pop-up on a webpage where you want to see a pop-up though. Today, I will be showing you how to allow pop-ups for a certain domain from within Firefox.
Find Your Firefox Profile Folder!
Every so often, you might need to find your Firefox profile folder to do some tweaking or maintenance of your own. In the past, this has lead to diving through your operating system’s folders and after twenty clicks, finding the information you need. Since Firefox 3.6 there is a much easier way to open your profile folder, with no additional extensions installed.
Use Gmail as Your Default Mail Application (Quick Tip)
There are a lot of Firefox features that don’t get much press, or are quickly forgotten about. For example, did you know that you could switch to using Gmail or Yahoo! Mail as your default mail client (to handle those mailto links)?
To chance your settings, go to Tools, Options and then click on the Applications tab. From there, type “mail” into the text box to go to the default mail handler settings. From the drop down box, you should get several choices, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail being two of them. Choose the webmail application of your choice, hit the button labeled, “OK” and you are all set.
Now you are ready to use the webmail provider of your choice as your default e-mail application, as far as Firefox knows.
Clear Junk When Firefox Closes
Want to have Firefox just clear out the un-important stuff when you start browsing? Now, this is highly based in my opinion – and I do have to say that one man’s un-important data might be another man’s stuff he can’t miss.
I’ll share with you though how I have my browser setup to clear some un-important data each time I close the browser.
Mitch’s Clear History When Firefox Closes Settings
Go to Tools, and then click on Options.
Next, go to the Privacy tab and select “Use custom settings for history” from the drop down menu.
Put a check mark in the box for, “Clear history when Firefox closes” and then click on the button labeled, Settings.
Make sure you add a check mark for only the following boxes:
- Browsing History
- Download History
- Forms & Search History
- Cache
Then hit the button labeled, “OK” to continue. On the Options window, also click the button labeled, “OK” and you are all set.
This way I have Firefox setup to clear everything except for my saved passwords and login sessions that are enabled by cookies. Your setup might be different, and if it is – feel free to share in the comments.
Easy Access to Hidden Firefox Settings
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/.
Foxmarks Introduces Password Sync
One of my favorite features of the old Google Browser Sync was the ability to sync my passwords between my laptop and desktop computers. Till now, no other program has gotten that right. That was the case till Foxmarks decided to roll out this new feature.
Password Synchronization is an optional feature for the newest version of Foxmarks that allows you to simply and securely synchronize your saved passwords.
Since this feature is turned off by default, how do you activate it?
- Open the Foxmarks Settings dialog (located in Tools > Foxmarks > Settings…).
- Click on the “Sync” tab.
- Select the checkbox labeled “Passwords”. You will be guided through a quick and easy password synchronization setup flow.
Big congrats goes out to Foxmarks for making a damn good add-on even better.
Spell Check All Text Fields in Firefox
What do you do about misspelling words in text boxes? Well, you use the built-in Firefox spell check feature. However, by default it does not work with ALL text fields. That can simply be rectified though your about:config settings.
Just type in about:config into your address bar to get started. Next, into the filter text box, type in layout.spell. That should bring up the preference name layout.spellcheckDefault. Right-click it, and then select “Modify”. Change the 1 (default value) to 2 and you should be all set.
Firefox’s built in spell check will now check all text fields, no matter where or how they are used on the web site in question.
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