When I first encountered this I immediately opened up about:config and searched everywhere for the entry that was causing this issue. No luck. Every possible entry “browser.online” entry was checked as “true”, but still the browser would start offline. Everywhere I looked it seemed it was set up properly…and this shouldn’t be a difficult issue. It was turning into a hair-losing situation. Eventually, however, I would figure out what was going on.

In many modern Linux distributions network management is controlled by the user-friendly NetworkManager utility. Sometimes there is a bit of a disconnect between Firefox and NetworkManager.? This doesn’t happen often (Most often this happens in Fedora.), but when it does happen it will make you feel like you have no idea what you are doing.

There are two ways to get around this. The first way is go hop on to Firefox, open the about:config window (you will most likely have to click the check box promising you’ll be careful using this configuration page), and do a search for the string:

toolkit.networkmanager.disble

By default this is set to false which means it is working in conjunction with NetworkManager to see if there is a connection. Set this string to true, restart Firefox, and you most likely will not have this problem again.

Figure 1

If you’d rather not monkey with the about: config page in Firefox you will have to change a setting in NetworkManager itself. You will find the NetworkManager entry in the Administration sub menu of the System menu. The entry is labeled “Network”. Click on the Network entry to open up the NetworkManager window (see Figure 1).

Select your method of connecting to the net and click the Edit button. A new window will appear that allows you to edit various aspects of this connection.

Figure 2

There is only one configuration you need to change here. If the box next to “Controlled by NetworkManager”is checked, uncheck it. If it is unchecked, check it. This will depend completely on how you manage your network connection.

Firefox by default uses NetworkManager to know if a connection has been made. If you use another tool for your network connection, and you have Firefox enabled to check NetworkManager, you will always start off line, because Firefox will think you have no connection.

My suggestion is that you first try the about:config entry. If that doesn’t work then give the NetworkManager approach a try. One way or another, you will be able to stop this insipid behavior.

Final Thoughts

The real culprit here, in my opinion, is that the developers of NetworkManager and the developers of Firefox can’t seem to agree on a standard. This, of course, is a problem that haunts Linux in a number of areas. In the case of this one issue, you now know a way around it.

Related posts

• Tweak Firefox with about:config (2)
• Open XML Viewer For Microsoft Word 2007 (2)
• Linux Firefox Tips (5)
• Installing Firefox and Flash From Source (8)
• Extend Firefox’s user agent switcher (6)

The about:config address is a special location that allows you to change configuration options in Firefox. Most of these options aren’t every-day, end-user-friendly options. Instead these options can look a little overwhelming to the pedestrian. But to those that hold no fear of tweaking, about:config is your friend. In this article I will show you a few tweaks in about:config so you can get familiar with how this special configuration address is used.

When you first load about:config in your Firefox browser you will have to click an “I’ll Be Careful, I Promise” button that warns you what you are about to do can void your warranty. It’s okay, really, go ahead and push the button.

Once you push the button you will see entries like this:

accessibility.accesskeycausesactivation     default     boolean     true

The first entry is the Preference Name. Next is the Status, followed by the Type, and the Value. Each entry follows this same format.To change a value in an entry you only have to right click that entry and, depending up on the type of value, click the Toggle entry in the popup menu. If the value is, say, an integer a Modify entry will appear allowing you to modify the value of the entry.

Within the about:config there are various categories:

• Accessability
• Advanced
• Alerts
• Browser
• Config

Your about:config will show each entry arranged according to category. You will also find a very large amount of entries – don’t let that overwhelm you. You can also search your entries (thanks to the handy Filter.

So let’s take a look at a few about:config entries that will make a noticeable change in the speed of Firefox. These entries are:

• network.http.pipelining.
• network.http.proxy.pipelining
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

The fastest way to find this is to enter pipelining in the Filter.

Once you have found them you will do the following:

• Set network.http.pipelining to “true” by right clicking the entry and selecting Toggle.
• Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to “true” by right clicking the entry and selecting Toggle.
• Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to value like 50 by right clicking the entry, selecting Modify, entering the new value, and clicking OK.

Now let’s add a totally new entry to help speed up Firefox. Click anywhere and select New and then select integer. A small window will open asking for the name of the new entry. Enter nglayout.initialpaint.delay and give it a value of “0″ (no quotes) when prompted.

Firefox should now be noticeably faster.

Of course using about:config isn’t limited to speed. Browse through the listing of entries and you will notice that nearly every possible configuration option imaginable is there. Play around with familiar entries and see how far you can tweak Firefox. Just use caution, if you don’t know what an entry does make sure you look it up before you edit it. A good place to find information on each entry is the official Firefox about:config Entries database.

Related posts

• Linux Solutions: Why does Firefox start in offline mode? (7)
• Delete about:config Entries in Firefox (3)
• Advanced Firefox Configuration Tips (6)
• Zoom In on Images in Firefox (6)
• Youtube: Enhance Youtube Experience (11)

With Firefox 2, I use about:config to plug many of Firefox’s notorious memory leaks. The tips I used worked great and I never had any problems with my Firefox. A little while ago though someone posted an interesting question on Lifehacker that I hadn’t really thought about. What if you want to delete an about:config entry?

This is quite a practical question. Let’s say I misspell an entry as I’m typing it in. Obviously, I don’t want to keep these useless entries in my browser so I would get rid of them. The good part is that there’s a very simple way to delete redundant entries without causing any chaos with your browser.

To delete an entry, just right-click it and select Reset. Then, restart Firefox. If the value you chose was originally part of the browser, it will go back to its default value. If the value was added by you, it will be deleted.

I tried out this trick on my own version of Firefox with a few deliberately mistyped entries. It worked fine for me. This is a handy trick to know in case you ever make some unwanted adjustments to Firefox. What do you think of this tip? Do you know of any other way to delete about:config entries in Firefox? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• Working with several Firefox profiles (21)
• Whitelist Bookmarks In Adblock Plus (1)
• Warning Unresponsive Script in Firefox (14)
• Tweak Firefox with about:config (2)
• Trim down the Location Bar in Firefox 3 to show results in one line (2)

I should probably start with some basic information on how you edit the Firefox configuration at all. This is actually pretty simple: Enter about:config in the address bar and hit enter. A large preferences list should appear. Every option has a preference name, a status, a type and a value.We are using the name to find the option in the large list. Status defines if it is still the default value or has been edited by the user, type defines which values are accepted in the value field. For boolean it would be true or false, integer a number and so on. To filter the list enter part of the name into the Filter text field, the results get updated on the fly. On to the tweaks..

Change location of bookmarks file

• key: browser.bookmarks.file
• default: not existing, create new String by right-clicking and entering the above key
• value: path to bookmark.html, for instance e:\bookmark.html

You might want to change this if you want to use a removable drive to store your bookmarks for instance.

Middlemouse Paste

• key: middlemouse.paste
• default: false
• change to: true

Setting this option to true makes it possible to paste text into any text field in Firefox.

Hide Go Button

• key:browser.urlbar.hideGoButton
• default:false
• change to:true

If you set this value to true the Go button will be removed giving you more space in that bar. No one uses the go button anyway, just hit enter, this has the same effect.

Click Selects all in url bar

• key:browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll
• default:true
• change to:false

This is useful if you often copy only part of the url. The default behavior selects the complete url first if you click into the url bar and you have to click and select again to copy part of the url only.

Open Search Results in a new Tab

• key:browser.search.openintab
• default:false
• change to: true

Opens the search results always in a new tab instead of the currently active tab.

Spellcheck for textareas

• key:layout.spellcheckDefault
• default:1
• change to: 2

This activates the spell check for textareas and input fields as well.

Autofill in url bar

• key:browser.urlbar.autoFill
• default:false
• change to:true

Known urls are automatically completed while entering them.

Disable extension compatibility check

• key:extensions.checkCompatibility
• default: not existing, create new Boolean with the above name
• value: false

Setting this value to false means that Firefox will not check installed extensions for compatibility. Great during updates, could lead to problems with incompatible extensions though.

Related posts

• Visualize blue https sites in Firefox 3 in a better way (8)
• Tweak Firefox with about:config (2)
• Two Firefox Sidebar Tweaks (14)
• Tiny Menu Firefox Extension (5)
• Pimp the Add Bookmark Dialog in Firefox (3)