Posts Tagged ‘Firefox’
Disable Plugin-Container in Firefox
Plugin-container is a Firefox process designed to ‘out-source’ the plugins used by the browser. Firefox’ model is based on the use of plugins to add functionality, however this goes along with a chance of instability due to a malfunctioning plugin – this would cause the whole browser to collapse since the plugins were all included in one central Firefox process. With the implementation of the plugin-container, the plugins are seperated from the browser process, making it more stable. Now if a plugin crashes, Firefox remains unharmed.
It is known however that this feature causes serious performance issues with many users, that’s why it might be a good idea to test what happens if you deactivate plugin-container (the plugins are not disabled that way, they are just stitched to the main process again).
To do so, open Firefox and direct the URL line to about:config. This is the internal configuration of Firefox, be sure to take the warning that will be shown seriously.
In the search bar on top, enter dom.ipc. A few boolean entries will be shown whose name begins with dom.ipc.plugins (on Firefox 9 there are two, while there are five on some older versions).
Set all of them to false to disable plugin-container:
If this results in performance improvement for you, leave the settings as they are, if there is none however, it is recommendable to switch them back to improve Firefox’ stability.
Fast-Access Search Results on Firefox with Firejump
It often happens that people use search engines just to access a site they know the url of but are too lazy to type it in with all the dots and slashes, although this adds one step to the process of opening the site.
However there is a Firefox Add-on called FireJump that lets you configure what page is opened when you search for a specific keyword, allowing you to skip the search results and direct the browser right to a specific website.
Download the plugin at http://firejump.net/
Unfortunately it is currently only available in German, but the few buttons are self-explaining.
On the above screenshot you are given the option to either open the default search results or to skip to the FireJump homepage when you search for firejump. The button below saves your choice.
All-In-One-Gestures Plugin for Firefox
The All-In-One-Gestures plugin for Firefox is a plugin that enables you to accomplish nearly every task you want to in Firefox with the help of drawing lines on the screen. You just need to assign the directions for the common task in the preferences and start drawing:
By default, the key for drawing gestures is the middle-mouse key, meaning the mouse-wheel, which can be changed however. The plugin is highly customizable as you will see on first glance when opening the options window, it is also updated regularly to be up-to-date with Firefox’ fast updates.
To show an example, as seen in the options table above, the following gesture will duplicate the current tab:
Gestures are shown as red lines on the screen by default so that you can see what you are drawing. Additionally, the tool can be misused to draw funny pictures on your Firefox windows!
Clear Firefox Browser Cache
Browser Cache (or Internet Cache) is there to speed up your browser performance by saving sites and items you visited on the internet on your hard disk and recalling them when you visit them again. However there may be times when you want to delete that cache because it either consumes too much disk space (its size can easily climb to 500MB and more) or you do not want someone who has access on your computer to see what sites you visited. In Firefox there is a simple solution for this. Click on the main button and open the Options window:
Select Advanced and go to the Network tab.
The Offline Storage section shows you how large your cache is at the moment. Here you can use the Clear Now button to delete your cache.
If you stayed loyal to Firefox 3.6, go to Edit > Preferences instead.
Save Tabs on Current Firefox Version
From version 4 on, FireFox has disabled the option to save tabs when you leave the browser and left us with the Restore Session option on program start. To enable the option to save tabs again, direct FireFox to about:config and accept the prompt. In the filter bar, enter browser.showquitwarning and double-click the value to toggle it to true. Firefox will now ask you if you want to save your tabs again:
Firefox Private Browsing extended in Windows
If you want a private browsing session where there is no record taken of the pages you visited and the keywords you entered anywhere (search queries, passwords etc.), Firefox offers the right option for you. The Private Browsing feature saves your current windows and tabs and opens up a new empty window that does not save any histories or inputs. After ending the session, it restores your previously closed windows and tabs. To access it on Firefox 7, browse the Firefox menu and click Start Private Browsing:
If you are still using Firefox 3.6, go to Tools instead and choose the appropriate option there:
But apart from this option, to truly erase your footsteps you need to take another step. One could still simply enter
ipconfig /displaydns
into a command line and see what sites you were on. To prevent this, open a command line yourself by entering cmd into a Run… prompt and enter
ipconfig /flushdns
Handy Firefox Plugins
There is a large variety of Firefox plugins currently out on the market but only a small part of them is really useful for the casual internet user, that is why I tried some of them out and filtered the most effective and handy.
Tab Mix Plus
Tab Mix Plus is a great plugin that adds a large variety of functions when dealing with tabs. It can duplicate tabs, pin them to the tab bar in icon size, make tabs unclosable, undo the closing of tabs and reload them every once in a specified interval, which is incredibly useful if you want to watch videos on the internet multiple times.
Answers
Answers is a plugin that quickly provides you with definitions of whatever word you need a definition of. Simply click on an expression with the predefined key combination (Ctrl+Click on Linux, Alt+Click on Windows) and a notice will pop up that shows you one or more possible definitions:
All-in-One Sidebar
All-in-One Sidebar provides you with a flexible, slim sidebar that gives you quick access to your bookmarks, history, downloads, plugins and website and browser information. It also causes the Downloads window not to pop up but to open inside the sidebar on the same window.
How to Customize Firefox with about:config
Apart from the wide variety of plugins available for Mozilla Firefox and the option to configure it in the Preferences window, there is another, slightly more hidden feature to customize Firefox’ behavior . To access it, enter about:config into your url bar. You will be directed to a warning on first access which you should take seriously:
Once you hit the button you will find yourself inside a giant table of variables with a filterbar at the top which you can use to narrow your results down. Do not change any option when you are not sure of the effects! Here are a few ones you might consider changing to make Firefox a little more handy (if they are not present in your current table, you can add them by rightclicking on it):
dom.max_script_run_time – determines the time before Firefox gives back a timeout from a connection request (in seconds).
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction – 0 will open all links as all new windows are treated by Firefox, 1 will allow no new windows and 2 is just as 0 except if Javascript tells something else
security.dialog_enable_delay – determines the delay before being able to download a plugin
accessibilty.tabfocus – determines which elements are selected when pressing the tab key, 1 is forms, 2 is other elements, 4 is links and 7 is all elements
browser.download.manager.closewhendone – closes downloadmanager after completion of download it true
browser.urlbar.autofill – autocompletes links entered in the url bar
middlemouse.paste – a click on the mousewheel will use the paste function, as in Linux
browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo – determines the amount of closed tabs you can recover
browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo – determines the amount of closed windows you can recover
How to save the music from a youtube video as mp3 file
Have you ever wanted to save the sound from a youtube video on your harddisk as mp3 file? There is a handy Firefox plugin named “Youtube to mp3″ available for that. Open the following link in the Firefox webbrowser:
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/11047/
and click on the “add to Firefox” link to install the plugin. Then restart firefox to activate the plugin.
Test the phising filter of your web browser
If you like to test if the phising filter of your webbrowser works, open the following URL of the mozilla test page in the browser:
You should get a result page that looks similar to this one if you use the Mozilla Firefox browser:
