Remove the ‘Open in a New Window’ button
One of the best features in Firefox is Tabs. So why use windows? Two or three may be useful, but you may not use so much the ‘Open in a new window’ option to have it with the other common actions. Check out this neat tutorial to remove the ‘Open in new window’ option and save space and missclickings.
Decide when to open in a new tab or not
Did you know that when clicking a link with the middle button -or the wheel- of the mouse, you force it to open in a new tab?
Having such an effective way to decide where to open the new link in Firefox makes it annoying when a webmaster forces you to open the link in another window. With this hyper-small Greasemonkey script YOU can decide if you want to open the link in the same tab or not (left click or middle click, simple!).
Optimize loading time
Follow this nice tutorial to optimize the loading time of Firefox 3.
Avoid the annoying Restore session dialog box
I nearly always want to restore the last tabs even when Firefox closed unproperly (if not, I would open it in Safe mode), so here is a trick to tell Firefox to avoid popping up the dialog box:
Auto restore previous session and tabs without prompting message box
- Type
about:config
in the browser - Promise to be careful
- Find this row:
browser.sessionstore.resume_session
- Set it to
True
Firefox extensions
Must-have extensions:
- GreaseMonkey with some UserScripts allows you to enhance websites with scripts
- AdBlock Plus removes all ads
- Bugmenot allows you to bypass stupid registry forms
- Download StatusBar to monitor your downloads status and keep surfing at the same time
- Autofill forms to save some time by auto-filling web forms
- Stop-or-Reload Button unifies Stop and Reload button into one (perfect for small screens)
- PDF Download avoids the browser from loading PDF files inside and lets you download, view as a webpage…
- StumbleUpon randomly shows you the best websites in the Internet
- All-In-One Sidebar is a sidebar to access the addons, bookmarks, downloads, history and keep surfing
- StatusBarEx shows realtime Firefox bandwith and CPU usage in the status bar (only for Windows)
For web developers:
- Web Developer lets you tweak websites (edit CSS live, view forms info, render as mobile phone, ruler…)
- FireBug lets you monitor and debug websites (HTML, JavaScript, Ajax calls and a lot more)
- CSSViewer display CSS class, id and properties
- ColorZilla the perfect color picker for Firefox
- IETab to render websites with IE inside FF
- User Agent Switcher to change your browser’s agent
Security:
You may also like:
- Full Fullscreen adds a button to go to FullScreen
- Fission combines address bar and progress bar like Safari browser
- Hide Tab Bar hides the tab bar
- Searchbar Autosizer useful for small screens (i.e. Asus Eee PC)
- Tiny Menu converts the File-Edit-View menu in a button to save space (i.e. Asus Eee PC)
- MediaPlayerConnectivity useful to view DivX, YouTube, etc. from your video player instead of using the browser
Firefox Custom/Smart Keyword Search
This trick is awesome. You can search everywhere without having to go to that page, needs some preparation but it is really worth it.
There are tons of tutorials so I will link to them:
- Smart Keywords (Mozilla): the official little guide
- Fifteen Firefox Quick Searches (LifeHacker): a more advanced description
Firefox profile
The intention is to save the maximum screen resolution but still be able to access anywhere in 2 clicks.
[screenshot]
[to be continued…]
Uninstalling Internet Explorer
If you are not a developer and don’t need to check cross-browsing issues and stuff like this and you have Firefox installed and customized to your own needs, why have Internet Explorer crappy buggy security hole? You may want to uninstall it. Google is full of resources and tuts on this.
All images are under under a Creative Commons license and found at Flickr.
One comment
Sergej says:
Hey Xavi,
thanks for the post. But what is with Ghostery users? It’s kinda hard to detect them, isn’t it?
BR:Sergej