Firefox Hacks,Tweaks,Extensions and Optimizations! ! !

First of all let me answer a very common question.Then i will talk about the Hacks and optimizations.

Q.What is Firefox and why should an internet surfer use it ?Ans.Firefox is the award-winning, free Web browser which is better than most of its competitors today. You can browse the Web with confidence - Firefox protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups. Some outstanding features of firefox are:

A Better Web Experience
Firefox 1.5 has an intuitive interface and blocks viruses, spyware, and popup ads. It delivers Web pages faster than ever. And it’s easy to install and import your favorites. Packed with useful features like tabbed browsing, Live Bookmarks, and an integrated Search bar, Firefox will change the way you experience the Web, for the better.

Faster Browsing
Enjoy quick page loading as you navigate back and forward in a browsing session. Improvements to the engine that powers Firefox deliver more accurate display of complex Web sites, support for new Web standards, and better overall performance.

Automatic Updates
The new Software Update feature makes it easy to get the latest security and feature updates to Firefox. Firefox automatically downloads these small updates in the background and prompts you when they are ready to be installed.

Tabbed Browsing
Use tabbed browsing to open multiple Web pages in a single browser window, and quickly flip back and forth. Drag and drop open tabs to keep related pages together.

Improved Pop-up Blocking
Firefox’s built-in pop-up blocker has been enhanced to block more unwanted pop-up and pop-under ads.

Integrated Search
Tap into the power of the Web’s most popular search engines with the built-in Search bar, and easily add new engines.

Stronger Security
Firefox keeps you more secure when you’re browsing the Web, closing the door on spyware, worms, and viruses. The Firefox community of developers and security experts works around the clock to monitor security issues and release updates to better protect you.

Clear Private Data
Protect your privacy with the new Clear Private Data tool. With a single click, you can delete all personal data, including browsing history, cookies, Web form entries and passwords.

Live Bookmarks
Stay up to date with your favorite Web sites and blogs. Use Live Bookmarks that update themselves automatically with the latest content from the Web.

Customize Firefox
Select new button controls for your toolbars, install extensions to add new features, or change the look of your browser with themes - the way Firefox looks and works is under your control.

Firefox Hacks,Tweaks,Extensions and Optimizations

1.Minimize Hack
The first hack that I have here is the popular Firefox Minimize Hack that has recently flashed through the internet. The purpose of this hack tries to keep Firefox from eating up your physical RAM and instead puts the burden on your hard drive, or at least that is the general reason behind it. To implement this hack, perform the following steps.

1. With Firefox up and running, type about:config and hit enter.

2. Right click on the new page and select New -> Boolean.

3. In the pop-up window, type in “config.trim_on_minimize” without quotes and hit enter.

4. In the next pop-up window, select True and hit enter.

5. Restart your browserResult:With that done, open up a bunch of tabs and monitor the memory usage.
In my first run without this hack, Firefox was using 137.8 Mb of Ram. With all 30 tabs open again, Firefox was using 118.4 Mb, but when minimized this dropped to an astounding 4 Mb. However, this was too good to be true, I left Firefox minimized and came back 12 minutes later and the memory use had slowly creeped up to 42.4 Mb. While this was 10 times larger than the initial 4.2 Mb, I was still saving about 75 Mb.

2.Network Hack
This next group of hacks all relate to the network.http group in about:config. Basically these various options open up your network connection to Firefox, permitting it to access information online as quickly as your connection will permit you. Since the majority of readers utilize broadband connections, this will benefit you, but people using dial up modems (56k) this is not going to benefit you much, sorry. To implement these hacks, perform the following steps.

1. With Firefox up and running, type about:config and hit enter.

2(a). Find the entry called “network.http.pipelining” and set it to “true”.

2(b). Find the entry called “network.http.proxy.pipelining” and set it to “true”.

2(c). Find the entry called “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” and set it to 16-32, but beware, if set too high you may risk banning yourself from various servers by being mistaken for a DoS attack.

3. Restart your browser.Result:With these options enabled, webpages load faster, pictures in particular. When I went to Flickr.com and started clicking around, all the pictures loaded at one time unlike how it used to load one picture at a time.


3.Download Manager Hacks
This next group of hacks deal with the download manager in Firefox. For those of you that don’t use the Firefox download manager, skip this section. I don’t know about you, but I personally hate the download manager, it is annoying and generally a distraction when it pops up with its messages and warning, so, let us do away with it.
Follow these steps to tweak/destroy your manager.

1. With Firefox up and running, type about:config and hit enter.

2. Take your pick of the following attributes to modify.

3(a). browser.download.manager.show
Alert Interval at default shows the alert message for 2000 milliseconds or 2 seconds. I personally set it to 500 milliseconds; all I need is a quick blurb telling me my download is done.

3(b). browser.download.manager.open
Delay at default opens up the download manager immediately, which can be a big pain if you are downloading 10Kb files to your desktop, you don’t need that annoying manager to pop up. I have this guy set on 30,000 milliseconds or 30 seconds. If a file is larger than 30 seconds of download time, I might want to watch its progress.

3(c). browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone at default is set to false so that your manager doesn’t close itself. I set it to true just to get this thing out of the way the moment it is done, I like to watch progress, but I don’t need to waste space or the time to close it.

3(d). browser.download.manager.flashCount at default flashes the download manager icon in your taskbar for 2 seconds, I prefer zero seconds to reduce annoyance, adjust to your own preference.

4. Restart your browser.Result:This last hack is less of a hack and more of a good habit you should pick up. I tend to clear my cache and download list at least once a week, sometimes more often. This will usually increase performance and it will also update all content.

Extensions
Extensions are what make Firefox great, you can customize to your hearts content by adding extensions. The following list are the extensions that are useful.
Fission
This extension places a page status bar over the address bar which creates a cool effect and also lets you know how much of the page is left to download. Useful for slower connections and just plain cool.

Reveal
This is definitely the coolest extension I have seen. You know that cool thing that OSX does that lets you view all your currently open programs in little thumbnails? Well this does the same thing, but for your tabs! When I am writing an article, coding CS, or doing something else that requires lots of back and forth movement, this saves me a lot of time from having to ctrl-tab or click on tabs. To get to know reveal, take the quick 30 second tutorial that prompts you upon restart. I highly recommend this extension.
Gmail Space
Who likes free online storage? I do and I’m sure you do too. This extension turns those 2+GB that Google has given to each of their users into 2GB of online storage. I find this as a great way to transfer files between computers with no need for a jump drives. While I don’t know how secure this extension is, I find it nice when I don’t want to carry a jump drive around, but nothing beats having a FTP server.
IE Tab
This causes Firefox to render a page with an embedded Internet Explorer within your Firefox window. I use this specific extension whenever a page renders terribly in Firefox. I wish they made an extension for Safari that would let you guys render my page in Firefox, sorry! Very useful when a page loads terribly. Be warned though, IEtab has a known memory leak but they are working on fixing it.
Tab Mix Plus
This extension was called in by Stu and it offers even more features than TabX and Fission. It puts “x” buttons on every tab, shows a loading status bar on each tab, lets you manipulate you add various properties to your tags, and the title goes red if the page has loaded and you haven’t checked up on it since it loaded. There are a bunch of featurs in Tab Mix Plus and if TabX isn’t enough for you, grab Tab Mix Plus.

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