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.
1. In Firefox, click Tools > Options…
2. Select the Privacy tab.
3. In the Private Data area, you can check Always clear my private data when I close Firefox.
4. Taking this option further, you can click the Settings… button to configure what data you would like to erase when you close 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.
1. In Firefox, click Tools > Options… .
2. Click Secuirty.
3. Click the Settings… button in the Warning Messages area.
Did you know that Firefox has a feature that caches pages that it thinks you are going to click on? This can slow down system performance. Here’s how to disable the Firefox prefetch setting.
1. Type about:config in the address bar and press ENTER.
2. Locate and double-click the entry for
network.prefetch-next
3. Set it to false to disable this feature. Double-clicking on the setting will change it.
Web sites that take over my Firefox browser window really annoy me. You know, those sites that use JavaScript to resize your window or even move it to another part of your screen? There is an option in Firefox that can prevent this from happening
1. In Firefox, select Tools > Options… .
Do you have a username and password that has changed, but Firefox keeps trying to automatically fill in old passwords for you? Delete them with these steps.
1. In Firefox click Tools > Options.
2. Click Security at the top.
3. Click the Show Passwords button.
4. Find the web site you wish to remove in the list. Click/highlight it with your mouse.
5. Click Remove and click Close then OK when you are finished.
Now the stored password will be removed from Firefox.
How to make Firefox’s fonts look like the fonts used in Vista.
1. In Firefox, click Tools > Options.
2. Click Content.
3. Under Fonts & Colors click Advanced.
4. Use Constantia as a replacement for Serif.
Calibri as a replacement for Sans-serif.
Consolas as a replacement for Monospace.
So you don’t want anybody using your computer to know what you’ve been searching for in your Firefox Google Toolbar? Here’s how to delete it.
1. Click on the drop down menu for the Google Search.
2. Search history will appear. At the bottom is the option to Clear Search History.
3. Click this option and all of your search history will be cleared. The drop-down will be entirely blank afterwards.
How to use GoogleTalk within a Firefox Window.
1. Download and install the Firefox gTalk Sidebar add-on.
2. Once the add-on is installed and Firefox is restarted, you have to make a button for it. Right-click on the Navigation toolbar… you know where the back, forward and reload buttons are? Select Customize.
How you can play your iTunes or MP3 files in Firefox.
I listen to iTunes when I browse the web. It’s often a pain for me when iTunes decides to play a song I don’t feel like listening to, then I have to bring up iTunes (which often takes a while since it’s such a memory hog) to switch the song.
Luckily, the dudes over at TweakXpert discovered a Firefox add-on that allows you to play your MP3’s and iTunes from within Firefox.
Now I’m just a click away from selecting a new song while I’m browsing.
I don’t like Firefox constantly updating the version or the Add-ons all by itself without my knowledge. I like to disable this. You can enable or disable this feature with these steps.
1. Click Tools > Options.
2. Click on the Advanced option along the top.
3. Click on the Update tab.
4. Uncheck the boxes under Automatically check for updates to: to disable the automatic updates. Check them if you wish for them to be enabled.
Alternately you may choose to select the Ask me what I want to do option under the When updates to Firefox are found: section.
How to start Firefox in Safe Mode.
If you are having problems with Firefox due to an add-on or modification, you can correct the problem in Safe Mode.
By default an icon is installed called Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode) that you can use.
If this icon is not available, you can do the following:
In Windows go to Start > Run and type firefox -safe-mode
In Mac OS X open Applications > Utilities > Terminal > Run (for Firefox): and type /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -safe-mode
How to make Firefox save certain file extensions instead of opening them automatically.
By default, Firefox opens many file types such as DOC and WMV files instead of prompting you to save them in a location. You can change this behavior by following these steps:
1. Go to Tools > Options
2. Click the Contents tab then click Manage.
3. You can then double-click file types and change the behavior of Firefox when you click on a link to a file.
According to Mozilla, Firefox is designed to use 100MB to 150MB of RAM. By design, the more RAM that is available on your system, the more Firefox will use. Here are a few things to check if you feel Firefox still takes up too much memory.
1. Extensions
Extensions are the main culprit in using too much memory with Firefox. Check under Tools>Add-ons and uninstall any Extensions that you don’t need.
2. Themes/Skins
Certain themes or skins can cause problems with Firefox. Check under Tools>Add-ons and uninstall Themes except for the Firefox default.
3. Certain Web Sites
If a web site has a lot of data in it or something like a Flash movie playing constantly, it will take up a lot of memory. Close unneeded web site tabs or windows that may have this problem.
Have you wanted the ability to play Windows Media Player files within Firefox? You can.
There is a cool plugin available here that will allow you to view a Windows Media Player video within Firefox.
Enable or disable the spell checking feature that checks your spelling in web forms.
1. Type about:config in the address bar.
2. In the filter field type spell
3. Find the entry for layout.spellcheckDefault and double-click it.
4. Set the integer to 1 to enable the spell checker.
Set the integer to 0 to disable the spell checker.
You can also go to Tools >Options>Advanced and select Check my spelling as I type under the General tab.
Enable the ability to find text on a web page without having to use CTRL+F.
I am constantly using CTRL+F or EDIT–>FIND IN THIS PAGE to find text in a web page. This handy setting eliminates the extra step. Now I can simply start typing and it will start finding the text I type.
1. Type about:config in the address bar and press ENTER.
2. Locate and double-click the entry for
accessibility.typeaheadfind
3. Set it to true to enable this feature.
Set how Firefox handles links to files that open in external programs.
1. Type about:config in the address bar and press ENTER.
2. Locate and double-click the entry for
Browser.link.open_external
3. Set it to one of the following:
1 - Open links from external programs within the current Firefox window.
2 - Open links from external programs in new windows.
3 - Open links from external programs in new tabs in an existing window.
Speed up the performance of Firefox with this tweak.
1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar.
Change each of these settings:
content.interrupt.parsing - true
content.max.tokenizing.time - 2250000
content.notify.interval - 750000
content.notify.ontimer - true
content.switch.threshold - 750000
nglayout.initialpaint.delay - 0
network.http.max-connections - 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server - 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy - 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server - 8
browser.cache.memory.capacity - 65536
Check out the Firefox Tweak Guide for more information on how to tweak Firefox.
You are unable to resize any popup windows in Firefox.
1. Type about:config in the address bar and press ENTER.
2. Find the value dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable
3. Double-click the value and change it to true.
You should not be able to resize any popup windows created in Firefox.
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