MOZILLA FIREFOX

Showing posts with label Firefox 3 Hacks and Tweaks. Show all posts

Mozilla Firefox Has Just Turned 5 Years Old!

How To Find Updates for all your Firefox Plug - ins

Find Updates for all your Firefox Plug-ins

Firstly, you select Tools -> Add-ons from the Firefox menu bar, you’ll get a list of all extensions, themes and plug-ins that are currently installed in your copy of Firefox.

The same add-ons dialog has a “Find Updates” feature to help you figure out if you are running any out-dated extensions but that doesn’t work with your plug-ins. How do you then find out that you are running the latest versions of all plug-ins?

It’s simple now. You can open the Firefox browser and visit the Plugins Check page hosted on mozilla.org. This will create a list of all plug-ins that are installed on your system and will match that data with its own list to determine if you are running an older version that has been marked out-of-date.

In case this online check fails for a particular plugin, you can click the “Research” button to perform a search on Google using the plug-in name as the search query. This is not always accurate but you’ll at least reach the vendor’s website that is officially hosting the plug-in.

It makes sense to visit the plug-ins checker page occasionally because older plug-ins not just make your browser insecure but they also make it more unstable. Mozilla says 30% of the reported crashes are caused by old plugins.

Bookmark Previews: Cover Flow for your Bookmarks

Bookmark Previews is a Firefox extension, which generates thumbnail previews for all your Firefox bookmarks and lets you browse through your bookmarks in Apple-ish Cover Flow interface.

Basically, this extension adds two views to your bookmark manager: Thumbnail view (Cover Flow style) and Album view. Whenever you add a bookmark or visit any of your bookmarked pages, it snaps a screenshot and preserve it. When you first install this extension, it’ll create thumbnails for your bookmarks in background.

It’s pretty cool, if not very usable.

Bookmark Preview

Improved Version of Read it Later for Firefox 3

Read it Later is a handy Firefox add-on, which we’ve covered earlier. Basically, it’s pretty similar to the bookmarking feature, but it’s meant only for those one-time interesting pages. You can save pages of interest to read it later. The developer has released a new version of the add-on, which makes it compatible with Firefox 3 and adds several new features as well.

Read it Later for Firefox 3 tightly integrates with Firefox 3’s address bar. Just next to the ‘one-click bookmarking’ star in the address bar, Read it Later adds a checkmark. Clicking on the checkmark will save or remove the page from your reading list.

Another nifty feature to be included in this version of Read It Later is the ability to sync your list with multiple computers. For instance, you can sync your office reading list with your home computer using the unique feed ID and password given to your list. This way, your read list is no more tied down to your home or office computer. What’s more? Read below the fold:

Offline Reading: If you want to access your reading list, while you are away from active internet connection, Read It Later can prefetch those pages and save it for offline reading.
RSS Feed: Your reading list is accessible from any RSS reader (like Google Reader, FeedDemon or even a mobile phone). You can also use your personalized RSS feed to share your reading list with others.
Click to Save Mode: While running through tons of links in delicious, digg or any other social media site, you can toggle the ‘click to save’ mode by pressing Alt + M (customizable). Any link clicked, while this mode is active, will be straight away added to your reading list.

You can install Read It Later from Firefox 3 from here.

Force Old Extensions to Work in Firefox 3

When you install Firefox 3, it checks to see if your old extensions have been updated for the new version of the browser. If it finds they haven't, it disables them.

If you like living on the edge, you can change a couple of settings to force Firefox to use your old extensions. Be forewarned, though, that doing this can cause compatibility problems and other woes.

Go to the following settings in about:config, and change both to false by double-clicking them:

extensions.checkCompatibility

extensions.checkUpdateSecurity

If you don't want to muck around with about:config but still want to force old extensions to work in Firefox 3, download and use the Nightly Tester Tools extension.

Gmail Handle mailto: Links

Gmail, surprisingly, doesn't show up in the Firefox list of mailto: handlers. But you can add it. Just follow these steps:

1. In the address bar, type about:config and press Enter. Ignore the warranty warning.

2. In the filter box, type gecko.handlerservice.

3. From the entries that appear, double-click gecko.handlerServiceAllowRegisterFromDifferentHost. This will change its value from false to true.

4. In the address bar, copy this code, exactly as you see it, then press Enter:

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto",
"https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","GMail")

5. Below the address bar, you'll get a message asking if you want to add Gmail as the application for mailto: links. Click the Add Application button.

6. Next time you click a mailto: link, a screen will appear that lets you choose an appropriate application. Select Gmail, check the box next to "Remember my choice for mailto: links," then click OK.

From now on, Gmail will handle the links. As with Yahoo Mail, if you're not currently logged in, you'll first have to type in your e-mail and password, and then Gmail will create the e-mail.

Rapidshare Hack For Firefox Users

The hot new Firefox plug-in takes browser customization to a whole new level by letting users filter site content or change page behaviors.
The glory of open-source software is that it allows anyone with the inclination and the scripting knowledge to get under the hood and hot-rod their computing environment. But most of the time, that advantage is available only to people with the programming skills to make the changes they want. That's where Greasemonkey, a free plug-in for Firefox, comes in -- it simplifies hacking the browser.
Released at the end 2004, Greasemonkey is the latest in a growing arsenal of Firefox customization tools. It changes how web pages look and act by altering the rendering process. Greasemonkey is to Firefox what aftermarket parts are to cars -- it lets you personalize your browser by making it faster and more powerful or simply by making browsing more aesthetically pleasing. How and why you will use Greasemonkey (and I predict you will, if you don't already) will depend on how you browse now.

CODE

http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/

1) Install the Greasemonkey extension >>

CODE

http://downloads.mozdev.org/greasemonkey/greasemonkey_0.2.6.xpi

2) Restart Firefox
3) Go to

CODE

http://rapidshare.de/files/1034529/rapidshare.user.js.html

4) Right click on rapidshare.user.js and choose "Install User Script".
Run FireFox.
From File Menu click on Open File then browse to wherever you saved the 'greasemonkey.xpi' plug-in. Open it, wait a couple seconds for the install button becomes active. Click on it to install this plug-in then CLOSE FIREFOX.
Run FireFox again. From the File Menu click on Open File then browse to wherever you saved the 'rapidshare.user.js'. Open it. Click the Tools Menu then click on Install User Script then click OK.
Close FireFox.
The script will let you enjoy "no wait" and multiple file downloads

Custom build optimizes Firefox 3.1 for Intel

Mac owners searching for a faster version of Firefox may be able to turn to a custom-developed build, an independent coder claims. While the current official build of the web browser is v3.0.6, Mozilla is presently seeding a beta of v3.1, sometimes known as Shiretoko. The Mac beta is said to be unoptimized for Intel processors however, which has led to Chris Latko's creation of a custom version under open-source rules.

The Intel optimizations by themselves provide only a modest speed improvement, but the fastest build is said to be aided by the inclusion of TraceMonkey, which provides native code compilation in Mozilla's JavaScript engine. The performance of this second build is rated at approximately twice that of the official Shiretoko distribution, and only slightly slower than a recent version of WebKit, the technology on which Apple's Safari browser is based.

The Latko build is a free download, but may break some add-ons and cannot be run at the same time as an official build.

Firefox 3.0.6 update fixes crash, security flaws

Mozilla has released Firefox 3.0.6, an update to its popular web browser. The company claims to have resolved several security issues, as well as stability problems which triggered crashes. Some security fixes include preventing people from changing a form input control's type during the restoration of a closed tab, which could be used in altering the input type to steal the content of a user’s local file. Also blocked is a Chrome XBL method that could be used with window.eval to execute JavaScript. Other minor fixes have been made to prevent cookies marked HTTPOnly from being read by JavaScript via XMLHttpRequest, and an issue with Firefox ignoring certain HTTP directives that could have resulted in users viewing improperly cached pages containing private data. Lastly, a problem that was supposed to have been solved in the previous update, involving people using local Internet shortcut files to access other sites, turns out to have had a bypass method involving redirection to a privileged about:URL. Mozilla now claims to have closed the loophole.

Firefox 3.0.6 is a free download from the Mozilla website.

Some Coolest Firefox Tips And Tricks

Get to be a Jedi master with the following cool Firefox tricks.

1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.

2) Smart keywords. If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.

3) Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):

Spacebar (page down)
Shift-Spacebar (page up)
Ctrl+F (find)
Alt-N (find next)
Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
Ctrl+T (new tab)
Ctrl+K (go to search box)
Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
Ctrl+= (increase text size)
Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
Ctrl-W (close tab)
F5 (reload)
Alt-Home (go to home page)

4) Auto-complete. This is another keyboard, but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there - like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.

5) Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:

Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)

6) Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:

Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
Shift-scroll down (previous page)
Shift-scroll up (next page)
Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
Middle click on a tab (closes tab)

7) Delete items from address bar history. Firefox’s ability to automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just don’t want those URLs to show up (I won’t ask why). Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited with those letters in them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.

8) User chrome. If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit complicated to get into here, but check out this tutorial.

9) Create a user.js file. Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder (see this to find out where the profile folder is) and see this example user.js file that you can modify. Created by techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of the things you can do in its comments.

10) about:config. The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s address bar. See Mozillazine’s about:config tips and screenshots.

11) Add a keyword for a bookmark. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.

12) Speed up Firefox. If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:

Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

13) Limit RAM usage. If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.

14) Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized. This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it’s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.

15) Move or remove the close tab button. Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:

0: Display a close button on the active tab only
1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
2:Don’t display any close buttons
3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)

How to Easily Save All Images and Media Files

One other interesting feature I have fond in Firefox 3 is that you can easily save all media and image files. To do this first you need to click on the site identification button sitting just left to the address bar. A “Manage Information” Button will pop up. Click on it and you will see another popup with lot of options. Select the Media Option. Here you can see all the images and other media files availble in that web page. Select any or all, then click on the Save As button. This will ask you to specify a folder where it will save all the media and image files.

I am also using flash block extension which blocks all annoying video and flash contents and help the pages to load faster. Interclue is another useful add-on I have installed, which helps me see less and know more, click less and do more, and warns me of dangerous sites.

Firefox 3 Hacks And Tweaks

The following tweaks are obtained by typing about:config and then modifying the page. Make sure you take a back up copy just in case something goes wrong. Here are some of the hacks for the experimantally oriented.

Step one: Type about:config in the address bar and hit enter

Step two: Make the following modifications to the file by typing in the values on the respective fields to get the desired result (feel free to experiment)

1. To enable/disable Single Click Select URL of address bar

browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll = True

browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll = False

2. To auto Complete URL while typing in the address Bar

browser.urlbar.autoFill=True

3. To set the number of auto complete URL in the address bar

browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = #

(# indicates the number of auto complete URLs shown. The default is 12)

4. To disabler Browser Toolbar Tip

browser.chrome.toolbar_tips = False

5. To paste copied content by clicking the center button on the mouse

middlemouse.paste = True

6. To disable blinking text

browser.blink_allowed = False

7. To create a single close button to for all Firefox Opened Tabs.

browser.tabs.closeButtons = 3

8. To increase number of recently closed tabs.

browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo=15

9. Right click view source in your editor

view_source.editor.external=True

view_source.editor.path= Path of Editor

10. To enable fast scrolling across tabs

toolkit.scrollbox.scrollIncrement =75

11. To stop displaying website icon in address bar and on the tabs

browser.chrome.site_icons = False

12. To enable spell check in text fields

layout.spellcheckDefault = 2

13. To speed up the browser

network.http.max-connections 30 to 96

network.http.max-connections-per-server 15 to 32

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server 6 to 8

network.http.pipelining false to true

network.http.proxy.pipelining false to true

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 30 to 8

network.http.pipelining.ssl false to true

network.http.proxy.pipelining false to true

14. To disable annoying browser behavior

Change the followowing values to 'false'

dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar

dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar

dom.disable_window_move_resize

dom.disable_window_open_feature.toolbar

15. To show more tabs on single window

browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 75

16. To display search results in new tab

browser.search.openintab=True.

Make your Extensions Work With Firefox 3

Firefox 3 Beta only: If you've taken the plunge into testing the new Firefox 3 beta your favorite extensions are disabled, that's because developers haven't updated them and may not be providing secure updates yet. If you're an impatient risk-taker who needs your extensions back NOW, here's a cheat that may get them to work. Big Honking Warning: Only do this if you're willing to deal with possible bleeding edge extension bugs and security risks!

Type about:config into Firefox's address bar and click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.
Restart Firefox.

All goes well, and any extensions that aren't yet officially Firefox 3 Beta 3 compatible and don't have secure updates will be enabled. Final warning: These changes may lead to unexpected wacky behavior. Proceed at your own risk!

Windows: Play It Safe with Self-Contained Portable Firefox 3

If you want to use Firefox 3 without losing Firefox 2 or touching its settings, you want the portable Firefox 3 beta application. This standalone, self-contained version of Firefox isn't just for thumb drives. Save it to any folder on your computer (I prefer one called Firefox 3b5 on my desktop) and it creates a whole new user profile and runs completely separate from Firefox 2. One catch: you can't run Firefox 2 and portable Firefox 3 at the same time.

Download the portable Firefox 3 Beta 5 for Windows

When you run Firefox 3 portable you'll start out with a fresh profile that doesn't have your extensions, bookmarks, and homepage set. Instead of going through all the work of setting those up again, you can copy your Firefox 2 user settings to Firefox 3 portable. Here's how.

First, make sure NO versions of Firefox are running at all, but that you've run Firefox 3 portable at least once.
Navigate to the Firefox 2 profile folder you want to copy to Firefox 3. ( most likely it will have the word "default" in the folder name.)
Copy that entire folder and paste it into the Your-Firefox3-Folder/Data/ folder.
Rename the existing profile folder in Your-Firefox3-Folder/Data/ to something else (like profile.bak).
Finally, rename the profile folder that you just copied (something like nsm1chqs.default) to profile.

Now, launch Firefox 3 portable, and you should see all your Firefox 2 customizations there.

Three useful Firefox 3 'awesome bar' hacks

1. Control how many listings you're getting. The default number of sites that show up on the Smart Location Bar, or "awesome bar," of the nwe Mozilla browser is 12. Changing that number works the same way as getting rid of the sites altogether.

Just type about:config into your address bar, hit the "okay" button when the security warning pops up, then paste browser.urlbar.maxRichResults in the open box, and hit the Enter key.

Double-click the result, and it'll let you change that digit to whatever you want. One thing to note, though, is if you add more results, it won't make the list any longer than six at a time, so you'll still have to scroll.

2. Keep bookmarks off the address bar. You save a bunch of sites, but you don't want them showing up when you're typing, right? This extension will keep the church-and-state line of browsing history and bookmarks from being crossed ever again.

This probably isn't useful, if you only have a few bookmarks, but it can be very helpful if you've got a huge collection that requires you to scroll down the list to find the site you're looking for, effectively killing any time saving the bar was meant to do.Add-on Distrust lets you get away with 'private' browsing in Firefox 3.(Credit: Mozilla Add-ons)

3. Keep certain sites from showing up altogether. Got a site you'd rather not have others see when they're using your machine? Unless you've got browser history turned off, and the site isn't bookmarked, you're generally out of luck.

There's currently not a way to keep specific sites from showing up or right-clicking to remove them from the list, which is why we have to recommend using Apple's Safari for it's "private browsing" feature. When toggled, it won't save any of your information, clicks, or cached data for anyone else to find.

If you don't feel like switching browsers (even though Safari is pretty darn good), there's an extension called Distrust (download here) that emulates the same thing, deleting only the bits of data from that session. Just don't be surprised if your significant other or kids ask why there's an eyeball in the corner of your screen.

10 interesting Firefox extensions to impress your friend!

1.Piclens

Anyone that hasn’t seen PicLens before is sure to be left in awe. It’s a nifty image browser for sites like Flickr, Google Images, Photobucket, and more. It brings an astonishing 3D realm for navigating photos to the browser. Transitions are smooth, effects are amazing, and there aren’t really enough words that can describe how awesome the experience is. We’ve gotta throw a YouTube video out there because a screenshot wouldn’t even do it justice:

Seeing that you and all of your friends are probably YouTube junkies it’s best that we forewarn you about PicLens supporting YouTube videos. Yes, you can search and browser through Youtube videos just like you can with images. That’s a good enough reason not to install the extension, because the last thing we need is a reason to spend a few more hours each day on YouTube.

2. Scrapbook (Homepage)

WIth Scrapbook you can actually capture and save any website to your computer. That way you can access a cached version of the page anytime you would like, and what’s even better is that you can mark it up all you want. Highlight a word here, throw a note there… you’re friends will never realize that you can grab a site and morph it into whatever you want.

3. Gspace (Homepage)

Do you feel bad about having an outrageous amount of storage in Gmail and letting it all go to waste? With this simple extension you can put your Gmail account to work as a file storage solution. It comes equipped with a spiffy FTP-like interface that couldn’t make transferring files any easier with your Gmail account. Heck, it can even interact with multiple Gmail accounts so that you can create one for documents, another for images, and so on!

4. Tab Effect (Homepage)

I can’t say that this extension serves a valuable purpose, but it will sure catch the attention of your friends . You’ll see the extension in all it’s glory when you go to switch from one tab to another. That’s when the cube-like rotation effect will kick in, and you can watch as your friends’ jaws drop to the floor.It is an very interesting feature so we highly recommend you to download this feature.

5. Repagination (Homepage)

This is an extension that your friends may not be impressed with right away, but they will definitely be looking for the download if you use it with one of their favorite sites.

Repagination is a powerful tool that can continuously grab whatever page the “Next” button links to, and it will be concatenated onto the current page. One example of this is being able to grab hundreds of search results pages, and scroll through them all as if they were a single site. It works pretty much anywhere there are page numbers or a next button. It’s especially handy when you’re navigating through pages of photos, such as those on Flickr.

What’s going on in the screenshot below is I scrolled down to the bottom of the Google search results page and right-clicked on the number “2?, which represents the next page in the order. Then I went to Re-Pagination->All and it concatenated 26 more Google search results pages onto the one that I was already viewing. I darkened the concatenated portion in the screenshot below so that you can distinguish where the original results page ends and where the other one begins, but when using the extension it looks like one fluid page. You can also limit how many pages are concatenated which might be a good idea so that it doesn’t add so many.

6. Tab Scope (Homepage)

I know I know, seeing a thumbnail when you hover over a tab is nothing knew. Opera does it out-of-the-box, and to the untrained eye this is really nothing different. Don’t be deceived… this is not just a preview.

With Tab Scope you can fully navigate the small thumbnail that is shown when you hover over a tab. Go forward or back, refresh the page, scroll, or even click on links. It’s way more than just a preview, and it deserves all the attention it gets.

7. Update Scanner (Homepage)

I’m sure your friends would love to be notified when the content of websites change. Just think, they could take MySpace stalking to a whole new level. With Update Scanner it is a no brainer.

Just point it to the URL you want to check for updates, specify the interval at which it should check the page, and tell it roughly how much of the content needs to change before it notifies you. Update Scanner will do all the work in the background, and will popup with a notification whenever a change has been detected.

8. Interclue (Homepage)

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a better idea of what a hyperlink points to? That’s where Interclue comes into play. When you hover over a link it is capable of showing a crazy amount of data about that specific page. Maybe the number of words the it contains, how many links there are, Digg count, and much more. If the link points to a YouTube video you can even watch it right from the Interclue popup window.

9. Firefox Universal Uploader (Homepage)

Take the pain out of uploading files to Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Box.net, Facebook, and more by using this uploader tool. It is complete with an FTP-like interface, but you’ll use it to upload/download images and files to your favorite sharing sites. This is also a great way to retrieve images in bulk that you’ve uploaded to a supported online service, but accidentally deleted from your own computer.

10. ThumbStrips (Homepage)

The last thing you’ll need to show your friends is how you can navigate your browser’s history in style. Remembering names of the websites you visit is so 2005. With ThumbStrips you can just flip through thumbnails of the sites you recently visited:

If you show your friends all of these things it will surely leave them in awe. Most browsers aren’t capable of doing most (if any) of the things listed here, and if they’re not using Firefox the odds are probably pretty good that they had no idea it was capable of doing such amazing things thanks to the extensions.

Some Best Firefox Shortcuts & Tricks

1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.

Spacebar (page down)
Shift-Spacebar (page up)
Ctrl+F (find)
Alt-N (find next)
Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
Ctrl+T (new tab)
Ctrl+K (go to search box)
Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
Ctrl+= (increase text size)
Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
Ctrl-W (close tab)
F5 (reload)
Alt-Home (go to home page)

4) Auto-complete. This is another keyboard shortcut, but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there - like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.

5) Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:

Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)

6) Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:

Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
Shift-scroll down (previous page)
Shift-scroll up (next page)
Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
Middle click on a tab (closes tab)

Speed Up Firefox - Ultimate Solution

If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:

Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

9 Tweaks for Firefox 3's Location bar

While Firefox 3’s location bar is perhaps my personal favorite new feature and the one I missed the most when I have to use Firefox 2 for some testing, there are a lot of people who find it weird, obtrusive and don’t like it including bookmarks and history among its results.

An option to restore its old behavior was available for a few weeks during Firefox 3 development but it was pulled basically because it would need a lot of testing and it was thought it was not worth it. The option may come back for Firefox 3.1.

In the meantime, for those who prefer the old way and those who want even more power, here are 9 easy tweaks you can try.

1. Make the autocomplete menu show only typed addresses and not visited or bookmarked

Enter about:config in the location bar to access the advanced preferences. Accept the “This may void your warranty message”.
Look for browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped and double click it to set it to TRUE.

2. To set the autocomplete menu to single line suggestions install the oldbar extension, developed by Seth Spitzer. Together with the previous tweak pretty much restores Firefox 2 behavior, except typed characters are searched in all the address instead of just the beginning.

3. Change the number of suggestions displayed in the autocomplete menu

Enter about:config in the location bar to access the advanced preferences.
Look for browser.urlbar.maxRichResults and set it to the number of results you want to get.
Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

4. Hide the star button if you prefer to use the Bookmarks menu or a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + D)

Open your userChrome.css file located in your profile folder.
Add this line to the end of the file: #star-button {display: none !important;}
Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

5. Always show the Go button. By default it is only displayed when you are editing the current web address.

Open your userChrome.css file located in your profile folder.
Add this line to the end of the file: #go-button { visibility: visible !important; }
Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

6. If you enter firfox in the location bar and you try to correct it, the autocomplete menu won’t suggest anything because it only keeps working as you edit the last characters. Install the Edit Middle extension, developed by harikaried, to make it work with edits anywhere.

7. To auto select the first suggestion in the autocomplete menu, install the Enter Selects extension, developed by harikaried. You will need to logon to Mozilla Add-ons to install it as it’s still experimental.

8. Tweak the autocomplete menu title and addresses size and colors by adding these lines to your userChrome.css file. Check for the specific hexadecimal color code to use at WebMonkey.

.ac-comment {font-size: 100% !important; color: #444444 !important; }

.ac-comment[selected='true'] { color: #FFFFFF !important; }

.ac-url-text {font-size: 100% !important; color: #000077 !important; }

.ac-url-text[selected='true'] { color: #FFFFFF !important; }

9. To include Google and Amazon search results in the autocomplete menu install the Searchery extension, developed by Ian McKellar. You will need to logon to Mozilla Add-ons to install it as it’s still experimental.

10. Bonus tip courtesy of Frederick from the comments: To hide the web feed icon from the location bar, add this line to your userChrome.css file: #feed-button[feeds] { display: none !important; }

Happy tweaking!

Recover Firefox 2 passwords in Firefox 3

Updated to Firefox 3 today - loving it so far. But, have had a major problem!

Lost your saved passwords upon updating to Firefox 3! You can check to see if your passwords imported into Firefox 3 by going to Tools > Options > Security > Saved Passwords.

However, a little tinkering, and I have my saved passwords in Firefox 3!

Here’s how:

Go to your Firefox Profile Folder. You can find your profile folder in Windows by navigating to %APPDATA%/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/
Now look for the file called signons2
Open with any text editor, highlight and copy all of the data, then close the file.
Now look for the file called signons3
Open with any text editor, highlight and then paste the data from signons2
Close the file (Don’t forget to save!)
Now restart Firefox … and your passwords are now updated to your Firefox 3 installation!