When I installed Firefox 3, the Back and Forward buttons disappeared from the toolbar. Here’s how to bring them back.

This tutorial will work with Firefox 2 also.

1. Right-click on the Home or Refresh button.

2. Click Customize…

3. Drag the Back button to the area of the toolbar you want it. Do the same with the Forward button.

4. Click Done.

In Firefox, there is a setting that can allow or disallow scripts from opening your browser window.

1. Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.

2. Find the setting dom.allow_scripts_to_close_windows.

3. Double-click on the setting to set it to true to enable scripts to close the browser window via close(). Set it to false to prevent scripts from closing windows via close().

Note: This setting is available in Firefox 3 and Firefox 2.

When you visit certain web sites in Firefox, you might get an error message that says something similar to the following:

site address is a site that uses a security certificate to encrypt data during transmission, but its certificate will not be valid until date/time.

To try to solve this problem, just double-click on the time in the lower right corner on the Taskbar and set the time correctly. Be sure to check the time, month, date and the year. As soon as it is corrected, this will usually fix this issue.

Unfortunately, the iPhone doesn’t sync bookmarks directly from Firefox. There is a workaround though. To import Bookmarks from Firefox, you first will have to import them into Safari, then sync them into your iPhone.

Mac users can perform the following steps:

1. Open Safari and select File > Import Bookmarks…

2. Find your bookmark file under your Home folder, then Library > Application Support > Firefox > Profiles > user folder.

3. Double-click the file called bookmarks.html.

4. Connect your iPhone and select it on the left pane in iTunes.

5. Click on the Info button.

6. In the Web Browser section, turn on Sync Safari bookmarks and click Apply.

Windows users can perform these steps:

1. Open Firefox and select Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks.

2. Bookmarks Manager will open. Select File > Export…

3. Save the bookmarks.html file to your Desktop.

4. Open Safari and select File > Import Bookmarks…

5. Double-click the bookmarks.html file on your desktop.

6. Connect your iPhone and select it on the left pane in iTunes.

7. Click on the Info button.

8. In the Web Browser section change the option for Sync bookmarks from to Safari.

You know how some web sites open up windows and make it where you can’t resize them? It’s annoying. Here’s how to prevent this.

1. In Firefox type about:config in the address bar and press ENTER.

2. Locate and double-click the entry for layout.frames.force_resizability to set the value to true.

The favicons in Bookmarks can be distracting sometimes. Here’s how to disable or enable them.

1. Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.

2. Set both of the preferences browser.chrome.site_icons and browser.chrome.favicons to false to disable favicons or set it to true to enable them. Double-clicking on the setting will toggle it.

I had a big problems with Flash ads locking up my computer. The ads have become increasingly intrusive and annoying. They pop up, cover what your reading and at times, you can’t get rid of them. I found a hack that prevents flash movies from loading unless you tell them play. It provides a nice Click to play option on the areas of the screen displaying Flash content in Firefox. It works on most Flash movies. Here’s how you add it.

1. Find your Firefox profile folder, located at C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\randomvalue\chrome

If you are using a different skin other than chrome, replace chrome with the name of the skin you are using.

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I honestly had a very hard time finding where the button is to clear the Firefox (for Windows) cache today. I figured it out though.

1. Click Tools > Options.

2. Click Advanced.

3. Click on the Network tab.

4. Click the Clear Now button.

5. Click OK.

This week I’ve experienced a problem with Firefox after the updated they have been pushing. I was unable to cut, copy and paste from Firefox. I couldn’t copy URL’s, text from web pages or anything. I started Firefox in Safe Mode and the problem was gone. It appears that my StumbleUpon Add-on was causing the issue. Once I disabled it, the problem went away when I started Firefox in normal mode.

I have been regularly running into these problems with Firefox lately. I would blame the add-on developers, but other plug-ins have stopped working with each Firefox update. It’s starting to influence me to switch back to IE.

How to set Firefox 2 as the default web browser in Windows.

1. In Firefox, click Tools > Options.

2.  Under Main, there is an area for Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup. Click the Check Now button.

3. When the prompt appears for Firefox is not currently set as your default browser. Would you like to make it your default, click Yes.

Firefox should then become your default browser.

When you right-click on a link and open it in a new tab, the page will be opened in a new tab. By default it doesn’t switch you right over to that tab. Check this box if you would like Firefox to switch you over to that tab immediately.

1. To get here, Click Tools > Options… in Firefox.

2.  Click Tabs on the top bar.

3.  Check the box for When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately.

Now you are saved from clicking an extra time each time you open a link in a new tab.

When Firefox performs a search from the Address Bar, it queries the search engine string you have setup within Firefox. If it’s using Yahoo, you can switch to Google. Don’t like Google? Use Ask. Here’s how to switch which search engine Firefox searches when you use the address bar to search.

1. In Firefox type about:config in the address bar and press ENTER.

2. Locate and double-click the entry for keyword.URL

3.  Set the value based on which search provider you would like to use for your address bar searches. Here are a few search strings you can use.

Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=

Ask: http://www.ask.com/web?q=

Google: http://www.google.com/search?&q=

ChaCha: http://search.chacha.com/search/query?searchwithguide=0&query=

The Firefox tabs can get pretty small when you open a lot of them in one window. This setting will limit how small Firefox will make them.

1. Type about:config in the address bar and press ENTER.

2. Locate and double-click the entry for browser.tabs.tabminWidth

3. Set the value as desired. The larger the number, the larger the tab will appear.

Are you protective about others knowing what you’ve been doing in Firefox? This setting comes in handy, especially in work environments where you might be worried others are checking out what you’re doing. You can set Firefox to clear private data whenever you close out of Firefox.

Every once in awhile, Firefox throws me a warning when I visit and encrypted page. I find them annoying. Here’s how to disable these warnings about visiting an encrypted page.

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