Firefox tips & tricks

Here are a few Firefox tips. More to be added as I become aware of them.

Prevent websites from resizing the browser window (Firefox)

Tools, Options, Content Tab. Next to "Enable Javascript", click on "Advanced". Uncheck the offensive option (I uncheck everything).

Essential Firefox extensions

Adblock Plus. Blocks ads, even in Gmail.

Download Manager Tweak. Allows you to download in a tab instead of a separate window. Saves you from having to close the download window all the time. Using it to replace Download in Tabs (not supported in FF 3.6, might come back later).

Add Bookmark Here. Should be a feature, not an add-on.

Add to Search Bar. Right-click inside any search box, and you can add that search engine as one of the drop-down option in the Firefox search window! Awesome.

Free Download Manager plugin. Installed by Free Download manager. Greater control over browser behavior when you click on download links.

Flashgot. They say this is useful for downloads, I've had it for years but never used it for its main purpose. Lately they've launched a "Download Media" feature, and I've found that useful to extract embedded streaming media from a page.

FlashBlock. Displays a large "F" in the place of flash components. If you want the flash, you click the "F". I installed this add-on when I temporarily moved away from broadband and needed to speed up my dial-up connection. I liked how the extension cleaned things up, and kept using it.

Firebug. Displays CSS styles of pages you visit (for web designers).

YSlow. Integrates with Firebug. Diagnoses pages for speed bottlenecks. The integrated "Smush.it" tool will losslessly reduce the size of your images by stripping unneedeed text, much like Jpeg & PNG stripper.

Colorzilla. If you develop web sites. Wondering what that color is? Saves you having to save and open in Photoshop.

Video DownloadHelper. Trying it out at the moment. Let's you download videos from sites such as YouTube.

Harmful Firefox Extensions

Some of my users reported that when they tried to download certain MP3 files from my server, the download stopped after 350KB instead of 10MB. The ISP ran all kinds of traces and found no issues on their end. On some systems, using the same internet connection, the files downloaded fine.

What caused this incomplete download problem of a simple MP3 file? In Firefox, under Tools/Add-ons, I noticed that Windows Update had installed a Firefox extension without my permission: the "Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant". Needless to say, I was extremely unexcited about seeing that MS was messing with my non-MS browser without my consent. Apparently this Extension has something to do with one-click functionality. Some people say it opens a dangerous backdoor into Firefox.

I clicked Uninstall, restarted Firefox, the downloads worked again. No idea why. If you don't see an "Uninstall" button, maybe you'll see "Disable".

How to duplicate a tab

Why duplicate a tab? To safely branch off before clicking "submit" when it took you ages to get to a particular screen.

There used to be an extension for this feature. Now it is built in. Press Ctrl as you click on the tab and drag it to the right to create a duplicate.

Firefox Shortcuts

Here are shortcuts I use all the time:
Ctrl W: close tab
Ctrl Shift T: undo "close tab"
Ctrl Tab: select the tab to the right of the active tab.
Ctrl 1: select the first tab
Ctrl 3: select the third tab
Crtl 9: select the last tab
Ctrl Shift Tab: selext the tab to the left of the active tab.
Ctrl Enter: complete the address you are typing in the address bar with ".com"
Shift Enter: complete the address you are typing in the address bar with ".net"
Ctrl Shift Enter: complete the address you are typing in the address bar with ".org"

Search Box

I love the search box at the top right of Firefox. How awesome to be able to search Wikipedia without first going to the site. Also, lately I've found that Google results are getting less and less relevant, so I like to call upon a little search engine muscle. Here are the search engines I like to program in my box:

Delicious
Wikipedia
Dictionary.com
Bing
Custom search engine boxes added through the "Add to search bar" add-on (see the section about extensions above).

Troubleshoot Blinking Cursor

Once, for a few days a very strange thing happened in Firefox. There was a blinking cursor on my web pages. Navigating was a real pain!

If this happens to you, go to Tools, Options, Advanced, General, and uncheck the box that says "Always use the cursor keys to navigate within pages".

Open Tabs at the Far Right when you Right-Click

It used to be that when you right-clicked a link and chose "Open in new tab", Firefox would open the new tab at the far right of the tab bar. With Firefox 3.6, FF started inserting the new tab immediately to the right of the original page. I'm a bit conservative, so I didn't like this...

To revert to the old behavior, access the advanced configuration menu by typing
about:config
in the address bar, then clicking "I'll be careful, I promise!"
Next, paste
browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent
in the Filter box, then press Return.

Right-click on the line of settings, choose "Toggle". Done!

Refresh Favicon in the Page Tab

If you develop websites and test them in Firefox, you may notice that Firefox doesn't update the site's icon after you upload a new favicon.ico file. To remedy this, point the browser to the actual favicon.ico file (for instance: http://eprimer.net/favicon.ico), then hit "refresh" or F5. The new icon will load, and it should apply to the rest of the site. If you have also the favicon in subfolders, repeat the procedure.

Speed up Firefox for Dial-Up

I cover these tweaks (some through the about:config menu) in my page about optimizing your system for dial-up connections.

Smiles,

Andy

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