5 Firefox config tips
Firefox allows you to change critical settings it its about:config menu. There are a wide range of options here and some are surprisingly useful, yet hidden from the user. To access the menu, go to about:config in the address bar, and confirm that youll "be careful".
Ill take this point to note that this is a serious message and if you go haywire changing any setting to see what it does, theres a chance that youll mess up the browser and have to reinstall it. Saying that, just follow the instructions here and youll be fine.
about:config has hundreds of options to choose from, but dont just edit them for fun
Change close buttons on tabs
You can have 3 places for the tab close button in Firefox: one on each tab, one on the active tab or one on the far right of the window. I prefer to have one on the active tab only, as it stops you accidentally closing other tabs.
In about:config, search for browser.tabs.closeButtons and youll see one result. Double click it and enter either 1 (buttons on all tabs), 0 (buttons only on the active tab) or 2 (close button at the right). The changes take place immediately, so look at your tabs for the effect.
More on tabs
While we are looking at the tabs, delete closeButtons off the end of the filter and youll see all the tab options. browser.tabs.autoHide hides the tab when there is only one in a window, while browser.tabs.loadInBackground makes a link opened in a new tab stay in the background. Double click these settings to change them from true to false.
Awesomebar tips
If you often go to the same sites, youll notice the Awesomebar coming up when you type in an address. The default settings are useful
but a few simple modifications can make it even better.
Delete everything from the filter box and search browser.urlbar. My favourite option here is browser.urlbar.autoFill which automatically completes the URL youre typing so you can press enter halfway through. Alternatively you can turn off the Awesomebar altogether be setting browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled to false.
By default you only make one request to a server at any time, so if the server is taking longer to respond your browser is wasting time waiting for one thing to finish before it can go on the the next. Pipelining lets you open more requests, so you can get other data at the same time.
This tip should be taken with a pinch of salt: it might make it faster, slower or have no change at all. However, its not a bad idea to give it a try:
Search for network.http.pipelining and set that to true. Below it is the maxrequests, so set that to 8 (this is the most that Firefox can use). If youre on a proxy, you should also set network.http.proxy.pipelining to true as well.
Use backspace to go back
In some browsers pressing backspace will take you a page. Firefox has this disabled by default but it can easily be enabled by searching browser.backspace_action and setting it to 0. If you set it to 1 then backspace will act as a page up key instead.
If you see any other options you feel like trying to change, then remember to take note of which they are so you can reset them (right click and select Reset). Just because you dont see any effect doesnt mean that something hasnt changed in the workings of Firefox.
These settings should also work on Windows, so please try them out there.
This one is a must! block annoying ads, avoid tracking cookies, and save your self some bandwidth (helps speed things up for everyone by not downloading ad images). This ad blocker also uses an anti-virus like subscription list which updates to avoid new ad servers all together. if it fails to block an ad. you can block it yourself; By frame, single image, or even the server (and supports wildcards like *).
Noscript Allows you to disable javascript and select which sites can run javascript on your browser. This help protect against IFRAMES and other XSS attacks..
Leetkey allows you to convert strings to other encoding and vice versa. binary, Hex, Base64, l33t, Rot13, Reverse, and even morse code. It also has a encryption module on it to encrypt and decrypt strings. Below are a few examples of these things encoded with leetkey.
This shows you the IP address of server you are connected to in your status bar and always you to run whois, netcraft, Whoishostingthis.com, and ip2country. Good for security. If your at a wifi Hotspot and it shows your web-mail log-in page IP address is in the same LAN subnet, you are probably the victim of DNS Poisoning or a man-in-the-middle attack my friend. It might be worth your time to investigate the IP or move to a less hostile network.
These two work together. Firebug can help you, in real time, debug a web page, highlights the code section on the page. also allows you to edit the code and then update it in real time (great for modifying web forms ;-] ). Firecookie allows you to look at your site cookie in real-time and edit and delete values in real time. All this is nicely done at the bottom of the browser! A MUST FOR WEB DEVELOPERS AND HACKERS ALIKE!