ghacks Technology News

Firefox Configuration Mania

Many Firefox settings can only be changed in the about:config dialog that appears when you type the phrase in the Firefox address bar. The settings in there however have rather cryptic names and it can sometimes be quite hard to figure out what they do, actually not that hard because every setting is explained on the Mozilla website. Still, it takes some time to look them up.

Configuration Mania is a Firefox add-on that displays many of those “deeper” settings in a menu that resembles the Firefox options menu. Users can access five main tabs, like Browser or Security, which lead to several subtabs that provide access to the settings.

Let me give you an example that helped me actually. Clicking on the Browser tab opens a menu with several like User Agent, Location Bar and Download. A click on Download revealed the option to disable the alert that you receive when a download finishes. I would have a hard time finding that option in the about:config settings.

firefox configuration mania

Users who would like to keep the alert can chance the interval in that it is shown and even increase or decrease the speed of the animation. You can find dozens of such helpful settings in Configuration Mania.

Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.

Related Articles:

Opening Tabs In Firefox, Configuration Options
Doing Some Firefox Configuration Spring Cleaning
Advanced Firefox Configuration Tips
Set Download Folders in Firefox
Firefox Mar Mod, Tweak Firefox Settings



About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.

Author: , Friday March 14, 2008 -
Tags:, , , , ,


Responses so far:

  1. Lorissa says:

    Good tip, valuable tool.

  2. Mutant says:

    Seems a nice extension.
    Martin,does it have the option that the data downloaded in the download manager should always be shown in kb.
    As i use dialup i dont like to see data downloaded in mb.

  3. Martin says:

    Mutant no it does not have this option.

  4. Bill says:

    you can get more control over downloads with Download Statusbar
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/26

  5. Rajavanya says:

    Check out the fun with Firefox.. and a new use too
    http://www.techtola.com/2008/03/fun-with-firefox-browser-inside-browser.html

  6. George Johnson says:

    Slowed my browser down dramatically with bad “Paint & Rendering” settings. I set all of the settings to the listed defaults and the browser is now chugging along versus its previous peppy pace. Uninstalled the extension, restarted FIREFOX, and the browser is still chugging along and is dead slow at window controls and tab switching. I strongly recommend you to not install this extension as it does not “revert” changed settings back to their originals.

  7. George Johnson says:

    Found a webpage with fixes for the “Paint & Rendering” slowdown from “Configuration Mania”. This webpage below explains what these settings are and what they recommend for your browser to work correctly again.

    Hacking Page Rendering
    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1854509,00.asp

    user_pref(“content.notify.ontimer”, true);
    user_pref(“content.interrupt.parsing”, true);
    user_pref(“content.notify.interval”, 100);
    user_pref(“content.notify.threshold”, 100000);
    user_pref(“content.notify.backoffcount”, 200);
    user_pref(“content.max.tokenizing.time”, 3000000);
    user_pref(“content.maxtextrun”, 8191);

Leave a Reply   Follow Ghacks   Subscribe To Comment Rss

Subscribe without commenting

© 2005-2012 Ghacks.net. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - About Us