I really hate the behavior of Firefox in Windows when you open the options. The complete browser is not accessible anymore until you close the options again. This is extremely frustrating if you want to test a few settings. There is however a really nice way to change the behavior and make it that the options are independent from the Firefox browser.
To do this you only need change one setting in Firefox and restart the browser afterwards. Type about:config in the address bar and search for the string browser.preferences.instantApply and change the setting from false to true. This ensures that the options can be accessed and changed while it is still possible to surf the Internet.
The options window looks different from the known one. There is only a close button now which means that the settings take effect immediately. This means that changes take effect even before you hit the close button. This is excellent if you want to test some settings.
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I don’t know why but browser.preferences.instantApply is already set to true in my Firefox.
Stefan
http://www.alterfalter.de
Like Stefan, browser.preferences.instantApply is already set as true (default) in my Firefox too. This is probably because I’m not using Windows, but Linux (Gentoo). I’ve noticed this with another post here, but can’t find the link just now.
Another note: I don’t need to restart my browser to see the affects of this configuration change – it happens straight away; I only need to re-launch the Preferences (or “Options”) dialog.
Fredden yes it is set to true in Linux and to false in Windows by default. So, this trick is only nice for Windows users to get the same behavior as the Linux guys.
I did it immediately. thanks