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Computers : Firefox

Updated: 4th December 2011

This page contains information about extensions, plugins, configurations and hacks for the Firefox web browser. Click the links below to jump to the various sections.

• about:config Mods
• Add-ons
• Fixes & Tweaks
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Links
• Plugins

about:config Mods

By entering “about:config” into Firefox's location bar you can customise a lot of it's features, just make sure you know what your doing. The Mozilla Preferences page should help if your after something not covered here.

accessibility.blockautorefresh

To stop webpages automatically refreshing set the value to true.

browser.tabs.closeButtons

Options for the close button on the browser tabs. Change the value to one of the following:
0 - Display a close button on the active tab only.
1 - Display close buttons on all tabs (Default).
2 - Don’t display any close buttons.
3 - Display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior)

browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

To set the minimum width of a Tab.

browser.search.openintab

Toggle to True to make searches open in a new tab.

geo.enabled

To disable the Location-Aware Browsing or Geolocation feature in Firefox 3.5 toggle geo.enabled to false.

layout.spellcheckDefault

If set to 2 the spell-checker also checks single line input fields in addition to textareas, etc.

network.prefetch-next

Set to false will stop pre-fetching of links.

Add-ons

This is a list of the Firefox add-ons that make the browsing experience more fun, helpful and productive.

Adblock Plus

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
Info: Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.

Colourful Tabs

Link: http://varun21.googlepages.com/main.html
Info: Colourises your tabs, making it easier to differentiate between them.

CoLT (Copy Link Text)

Link: http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/colt/
Info: CoLT (Copy Link Text) is a Firefox extension which makes it easier to copy a hyperlink and it's associated text, custom options also available.

DownloadHelper

Link: http://www.downloadhelper.net
Info: Download videos and images from many sites with minimum effort.

Download Statusbar

Link: http://downloadstatusbar.mozdev.org/
Info: This shows your downloads in a statusbar complete with progress meters in the browsers taskbar, saves having the downloads window open.

DownThemAll

Link: http://downthemall.mozdev.org/
Info: Mass downloader

Extension Developer

Link: http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/extensiondev/
Info: A suite of tools for extension developers.

Extension List Dumper

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3746
Info: "This extension adds a button ("Dump list") to the Add-ons window. When this button is pressed, a new window is opened with the list of installed extensions, themes or or plugins. The browser version and the Operating System are also dumped."

Fasterfox

Link: http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/
Info: Automatic performance and network tweaks.

Firebug

Link: http://www.getfirebug.com/
Info: You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

FireFTP

Link: http://fireftp.mozdev.org/
Info: Browser based FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client.

Flagfox

Link: http://flagfox.servehttp.com/
Info: Displays a flag depicting the location of the current server.

Flashblock

Link: http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
Blocks flash files from loading, replaced with an arrow so you can choose to play them or not, great for stopping flash adverts or having multiple flash pages open without them all playing at once.

FoxLingo

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2444
Info: The Ultimate Language Tool! Web Page Translation, Translated Search, Auto Translation, Text Translation, Language Resources, Learning Languages, etc.

MediaPlayerConnectivity

Link: http://membres.lycos.fr/sethnakht/
Info: Gives you the ability to open a media stream directly in an external player.

openselectedlinks

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/841/
Info: Adds a right click menu item to open selected links. Select a collection of links, right click anywhere, select 'Open [number] Links'.

Screengrab

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146
Info: "Screengrab saves entire webpages as images. It will save what you can see in the window, the entire page, just a selection, a particular frame... basically it saves webpages as images.."

Simple Mail

Link: http://telega.phpnet.us/simplemail/
Info: Email notifier & client.

StumbleUpon

Link: http://www.stumbleupon.com/
Info: Social bookmarking extension, you need to sign up (free) and select your interest, then a click of a button brings highly rated web pages from other Stumblers.

Stylish

Link: http://userstyles.org/stylish/
Info: Customise the look of websites and of the user interface.

Tree Style Tab

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/
Info: “This provides tree-style tab bar, like a folder tree of Windows Explorer. New tabs opened from links (or etc.) are automatically attached to the current tab. If you often use many many tabs, it will help your web browsing because you can understand relations of tabs.”

Tiny Menu

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1455
Info: Replace the standard menu bar with a tiny menu popup.

Web Developer

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60
Info: Adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools, one of my favourite extensions.

Fixes & Tweaks

Add Keyword Search

You can search from the location bar by entering keyboards relating to your search engines in the search bar. To add a keyword for the search engines drop down the search menu and click on select "Manage Search Engines...".

Select the search engine you want to add a keyword to, then click on "Edit Keyword...". Enter the keyword you'd like to use for that search engine. Repeat the process for other search engines.

Then in the location bar type that keyword followed by a space and then your search word.

Discontinuous Selections

Select with the mouse then hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) and make another selection, repeating as neccesary.

Duplicate Tabs

Hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) while you drag a tab to create a duplicate which also includes its history.

Flash popups

Even though you have popups blocked in your preferences some popups still occur, this could be down to Flash popups.

The fix for this is shown over at http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/firefox-popups.html but if you have run the Fasterfox extension you may find this new Integer has been created and already set to 2. Even so the information at the bottom of the article is still interesting, as by default Firefox allows the number of popups to be 20!!! Modifying the number allowed via 'dom.popup_maximum' to 1 or 2 seems a lot more sensible.

Not displaying Some Web pages

Make sure Firefox is not running, then start Firefox in Safe Mode, and choose the option to reset user preferences to defaults.

Resize The Search Bar

Simply drag the (invisible) handles at the edge of the search box.

Links

Configuration.
FAQ Issues & Fixes.
FirefoxNewVersion.
Firefox System Requirements.
MozillaZine Forums.
Mozilla Preferences.
Problematic Extensions.
Reducing Memory Usage Safe Mode.
Standard Diagnostic.

Plugins

To check the status of the currently installed plugins in Firefox enter in the address bar:

about:plugins

For more information see:
Common Firefox Plugins.
Help Installing Plugins.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Firefox keyboard shortcuts, increase your browsing speed and productivity.