This is not the first occurrence that a critical update is released shortly after a major version upgrade of the web browser. Similar updates had to be delivered after the release of Firefox 9 and Firefox 8.

Firefox 10.0.1 fixes critical issues that came to light shortly after Firefox 10 had been released to the public. This includes at least one startup crash when the browser is opened by the user, and one Java related issue that is causing text fields to hang in the browser. Firefox users can resolve that issue manually by minimizing or resizing the browser. The patch released later today will fix the issues permanently though.

The product planning summary lists additional issues that the developers are currently looking into. This includes issues with AVG’s SafeSearch extension that is blocking the enter key from functioning correctly in the browser’s address bar. While it it possible to click on the go button to be taken to the site, it is a issue that the developers want to resolve as quickly as possible.

Other issues mentioned in the summary are additional crashes, and incompatibilities with Norton products and RealPlayer Video Downloader.

The release is already available on the Mozilla release ftp server and on third party download portals such as Softpedia. It is likely that the new version will be pushed to all users later today. At that point it will also be offered for download on the Mozilla website and as an update in the browser.

Please note that both the standard Firefox 10 build and Firefox 10 ESR will receive the update to Firefox 10.0.1.

Changes have been introduced, but only in select browsers at this point of time. Google Chrome for instance uses sandboxing technology and automatic updates to keep users secure. The global updater that other web browsers use on the other hand is not nearly as thorough when it comes to downloading and applying updates as soon as they get released.

Adobe today has released a new Flash preview version for the Windows operating system that contains a new feature for the Firefox web browser.

Flash Player Protected Mode aims to limit the impact of Flash based attacks in Firefox on Windows systems. The new Flash Player feature is compatible with Firefox 4.0+ on Windows Vista or higher. Only a 32-bit version of the Flash Player release is available for download.

The security mode is automatically enabled when users view Flash Player files in the Firefox web browser. Flash contents are executed in a restricted environment that prevents attacks from reaching the operating system or other applications. It is basically a sandbox comparable with Google Chrome’s sandboxing technology, Protected Mode in Adobe Reader, and Protected View in Office 2010.

Firefox users running the new version will notice that two processes are started whenever Flash contents are accessed in the web browser with Protected Mode enabled.

Adobe notes that these are the “broker and sandbox” processes which only run if Protected Mode is enabled. These are child processes of the plugin-container.exe process if enabled in the browser. Plugin-Container adds crash protection to the browser.

The Flash Player Protected Mode version for the Firefox browser has known issues. On 64-bit Windows systems for instance, a right-click on Flash contents causes Firefox to hang. Here is the list of known issues.

• Flash Access support is not enabled in this build.
• Secure Sockets are not working in this build. (3101130)
  Open and Save dialogs can hang in Windowless Mode (3096944)
• Camera streams fail to play back when encoded with the H.264/AVC codecs (3096918)
• On 64-bit Windows, Right-Clicking Flash Content cases Firefox to hang (3096953)
• Custom context menus and clipboard copy does not work (3096977)
• Local Security Dialogs are not displayed (3096714)
  When printing to “Microsoft XPS Document Writer”, the “Save File As” dialog is always minimized (3096958)
  Some Stage3D content may cause Adobe Flash Player to exit silently (#3049089)
• Closing a SecureSocket connection may block Adobe Flash Player execution and result in timeout (#3045631)
• Camera fails to play back when camera stream is being encoded with H264/AVC codec (#3049298)
• IME may not be active in Windows Vista at times between browser sessions (#3055127)
• In SandBox Stand-Alone Player, some menu items in the Microsoft IME language bar do not respond to mouse clicks (2947549)
• Some Windows function keys such as F5 may prevent the Japanese IME candidate box to pop up (#3055096

Adventurous Firefox users find the Flash Player Incubator preview release over at Adobe Labs.

A final release version of the new Flash plugin version moves the Firefox browser security wise closer to Google Chrome.

The release notes, as usual, list only a handful of changes that have made it into the new version of the browser. At the top of the list is an improvement for Windows users who can now update Firefox easier thanks to one less User Account Control prompt during installation of the update.

The second new feature in this version of the browser is the new line numbering of the page source code. This is actually a pretty useful features for developers as it improves the source code’s accessibility significantly.

Developers can now also use the column-fill and text-align-last CSS properties which the Mozilla developers have implemented in the browser. In addition, experimental support for ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects have been implemented.

Firefox 12 comes with smooth scrolling enabled by default. The feature aims to improve the scrolling experience in the browser. Firefox users who experience issues with smooth scrolling or who prefer to work without the feature can disable it under Firefox > Options > Advanced > General > Use Smooth Scrolling.

Aurora users should pay attention to the known issues listing as well. Some Gmail users may for instance experience scrolling issues in the main Gmail window under this particular release.

Developers should take a look at the Mozilla Hacks article on the new release which highlights development related changes in Firefox 12.

The ESR release has been designed for companies, organizations and users who cannot keep up with deploying new Firefox versions every six weeks. Firefox ESR releases will follow the rapid release process, but increase only by a minor version whenever the standard version increases by a major version. Regular Firefox 10 users will be moved to Firefox 11 in six weeks time, while Firefox 10 ESR users will be moved to Firefox 10.1 instead.

The ESR release will be offered separately from the regular version of Firefox. Another important change in Firefox 10 is that add-ons are now automatically set to be compatible if they have also been compatible with Firefox 4. This ends the majority of the add-on compatibility issues that Firefox users experienced whenever a new major version of the browser was released.

The beta changelog lists the features one expects from a six week release cycle with the new hidden forward button the most notable change. Firefox 10 furthermore adds support for CSS3 3D-Transforms, anti-aliasing for WebGL, full screen APIs that can be used to build web apps that run full screen and support for the bdi element for bi-directional text isolation.

Developers can make use of the new CSS Style Inspector and IndexedDB APIs that match the specifications more closely

The previously announced silent update option has not made it into this version of Firefox. Mozilla aims to release the new feature with Firefox 13, which is expected to launch in the beginning of June.

Firefox users can expect to see update notifications later today. Please check out our Firefox 10 What’s New guide which looked at the changes in the Firefox 10 Aurora version.

Update: Firefox 10 Stable (here) is now available at the official Mozilla website.

Update 2: Firefox 10 ESR download links are now also available. Click here to go the page.

Creating a new profile usually resolves issues as most are user profile related and not browser related. The process however is complicated and not as straightforward as it can be.

And this is without doubt the core reason why Mozilla plans to integrate a reset feature into the browser. The idea here is to reset the browser by creating a new profile and migrating core user data to that profile. Something that would take half an hour or longer to complete can now be completed with a few clicks in the browser’s user interface.

The reset Firefox option can be accessed in three different ways according to the updated Mozilla wiki document on the topic.

• During installation, either by automatic detection or user request, that the new installation is actually an attempt to repair the web browser.
• Three crashes in a row on startup will trigger a prompt that offers to start the browser in safe mode or to reset Firefox.
• Actively clicking on the Reset Firefox option on the Troubleshooting page in the browser.

Once the command is invoked, it will run a number of tasks:

• Confirm with the user what actions are about to be taken
• Create a new user profile
• Migrate user data: Bookmarks, History, Saved passwords, Autofill form data, Extensions and themes
• Reset toolbars and controls
• Reset all user preferences to Firefox default
• Disable all add-ons and switch to the default theme
• Then Firefox will restart using the new profile.

Add-ons and themes are migrated to the new profile, but deactivated in the process. This could cause some confusion but may be necessary as add-ons may be the cause for the experienced issues. Users can go into the add-ons manager to re-enable the add-ons and their favorite theme.

Advanced users may also need to make changes to the advanced user configuration again as everything is reset to factory defaults.

Mockups have been posted which are attached below.

The resetting feature is still in development, and it is not clear when it will be integrated into the Firefox browser. Check out the wiki entry for updates. (via Techdows)

A recent feature addition to Firefox 12 is causing some controversy among users. Firefox 12 is currently available in the Nightly channel before it moves on to the Aurora, Beta and then Stable channel. This means that the majority of Firefox users will experience the new feature – if not altered – in about 13 weeks.

Firefox 12 introduces the inline autocomplete feature in the browser which displays the first matching root url in the address bar. Firefox users can then use the enter key to automatically load the website in the browser.

The two core problems here are that Firefox is not displaying the most popular url in the address bar, and that it only looks at the root url and not page title for a match. As you can see on the screenshot above, entering the characters wi does not autocomplete to en.wikipedia.org or another appropriate hit, but to wisestartupblog, a site that I read an article once on.

One could now say that it does not really change the existing functionality, as it is still possible to select suggested results from the list with the mouse or cursor keys. The change is visual on the other hand and may irritate users who are not used to seeing entries being auto-completed. The issue that weights far more heavily is how results are selected. Instead of displaying a site that the user likely wants to visit, the first matching site is displayed. And while this may sometimes be the site the user wants to visit, it often may not be that site especially since there is no popularity check involved.

Firefox users who do not want the feature can turn it off, here is how it is done:

• Enter about:config in the address bar and hit enter to load the Firefox advanced configuration menu.
• First time users see a warning page before they can actually access the configuration.
• Filter for the term browser.urlbar.autoFill
• A double-click sets it to false, which will turn the feature off.

You can repeat the process to turn the auto fill in the address bar on again. (thanks Sören for the tip)

Let me put this into perspective. The change to the rapid release process earlier last year made it nearly impossible for companies and organizations to keep up with the testing and deployment of new versions of the browser. With new versions released every six weeks, companies had to use more man-hours to test and deploy new browser versions. Not updating to the latest version of the browser was out of the question, as security and stability updates were only released for the latest version and not previous versions.

Companies until now were able to use Firefox 3.6 which still received support by Mozilla. An idea was proposed to extend support for some versions of the browser on a regular basis to give companies breathing space. It was not clear at the time of writing if Firefox 10, 11 or another version would be the initial ESR version of the browser.

Mozilla at a meeting earlier today made the upcoming Firefox 10 Stable release the first Extended Support Release of the browser.

The ESR will follow the rapid release process, but instead of increasing a major version every six week, a minor version is pushed instead. The Firefox 10 ESR release will be updated to Firefox 10.0.1 when Firefox 11 gets released, and Firefox 10.0.6 with Firefox 16.

ESR releases will be supported for eight release cycles. Firefox 10 ESR support for instance ends in February 2013 while Firefox 17 ESR support will end in December of the same year.

A new ESR is pushed out in the sevenths release cycle giving companies a total of 12 weeks to distribute the update.

ESRs will receive security updates for critical or high severity vulnerabilities. The company notes however that updates may not be provided in some cases if “a backport cannot be applied with reasonable effort”. Other updates may be provided as well at Mozilla’s discretion. How will companies and organizations react to this? It is to early to tell but the prospect of not receiving security updates make ESRs quite unreliable.

Firefox 3.6 users will receive update notifications in April offered through the browser’s internal updating service that will update the version to the latest stable build of the browser.

Some users have deliberately chosen not to upgrade from Firefox 3.6 to a newer version, most to protest against features and design changes that Mozilla made to more recent versions of the browser.

If you are one of them, what will you do when April comes? (Thanks FX for the tip!)

Once verified that Firefox was not playing sound at all I checked if I could hear audio on the local system which worked fine.

I remembered that Windows 7 had audio mixers for every application capable of playing audio. It could have happened that the volume for the Firefox browser was all turned down. Turned out it was not unfortunately.

Next check was the Google Chrome browser, and this is when things got really weird. I could not hear any audio in Chrome either. Checked on YouTube and several other video hosting sites and sound was not playing.

My next guess was a issue with Adobe’s Flash plugin. I switched to HTML5 playback on YouTube, but audio was still not playing. A check on Adobe’s website revealed that the latest Flash version was installed on the system.

My next – and last guess – was that the installed audio driver was corrupt somehow. I did not put to much hope into the solution though as it felt unrealistic as audio was still playing on the desktop.

Still, I went to the Logitech website and downloaded the latest driver version for my G930 wireless headset. I checked playback in Firefox and Chrome after driver installation, and guess what; Audio was playing again.

I have no idea how this happened in first place. Lets take a look at the troubleshooting steps again:

• 1. Restart the browser, play again in same browser.
• 2. Check audio on other sites
• 3. Check Mixer in Windows
• 4. Check audio playback in a second browser
• 5. Check if the Adobe Flash plugin is up to date
• 6. Check another audio playback option, e.g. HTML5
• 7. Reinstall the audio driver

Is there anything else that you can do if those steps do not fix the issue on your end? Nothing comes to mind to be honest. Anyone with additional suggestions?

You could use it to hide that you are shopping for Christmas presents, looking for medical issues or to avoid embarrassment when your better half discovers that you are interested in watching Spring Break parties on your computer.

The private browsing mode can be started from the Tools > Start Private Browsing menu, or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-P. Firefox will save all tabs in a session, exit, and open anew in the private browsing mode. You can also autostart Firefox in private browsing mode if you want your browsing sessions to be cleared automatically all the time.

Open in Private Browsing Mode is an extension for the Firefox web browser that adds functionality to open links in private browsing mode to the web browser. The add-on does not change the fact that the current browsing session will be saved before the private browsing window is opened. It merely makes the whole process more comfortable.

When you encounter a link that you want to open in private browsing mode, you’d otherwise have to copy it manually, start the private browsing mode, and paste it into the address bar to load it in that mode.

With the add-on installed, you simply right-click the link and select the Open Link in Private Browsing Mode option from the context menu to do so.

You can also start a private browsing session without opening a link. Just right-click anywhere on the page and select the open private browsing mode option to do so. Even better; you can switch back to normal mode with a right-click on a page in private browsing mode.

Open in Private Browsing Mode is a useful extension for Firefox users who make use of the browser’s private browsing mode. The extension can be installed from the official Mozilla add-on repository. Chrome users can use Ghost Incognito for similar functionality.

I then checked if it was an issue with the prefs.js or another file that does not get updated properly forcing the browser to repeat the same process on every start.

While I was looking through the Firefox profile folder I noticed a user.js file in there. And that file, according to Mozilla does not exist by default. The Firefox developers furthermore note that that “once an entry for a preference setting exists in the user.js file, any change you make to that setting in the options and preference dialogs or via about:config will be lost when you restart your Mozilla application because the user.js entry will override it”.

This for my situation meant that the user.js file was blocking Firefox from updating properly. I have no idea how and why it was created in the first place, but decided to create a backup and delete it to see if it resolves the issue.

I closed Firefox first, copied user.js from the profile folder to the Windows desktop, and deleted the file afterwards. Firefox on next start did not check for add-on compatibilities anymore and the browser seems to have returned to its former self.

It is also interesting to note that the user.js file has not been created again by the browser.

Hope this helps Firefox users who are encountering the same issue that I did. I suggest you create backups of the file just in case for an option to restore it if this does not resolve the issue you are experiencing.

A Firefox test environment is the perfect alternative, as long as it does not share data with the default browser version.

This tutorial explains how to setup a test environment that you can use to test add-ons or tweaks without affecting the default browser that you use regularly.

A few options are available: A portable version of Firefox could be enough for some users, others may want to use a virtual machine or only a different profile.

The portable version is probably the easiest to setup, it should not pose difficulties even to inexperienced users.

Portable Firefox

You can download a portable copy of Firefox from Portable Apps. Just install the portable version into a directory on your machine. You will notice that you cannot launch the portable and regular version of Firefox at the same time, which can be a serious problem.

The startup parameter -no-remote makes it possible to run multiple instances of Firefox at the same time. There is however even an easier option for the portable version of the browser. Go to the FirefoxPortable\Other\Source directory and copy the file FirefoxPortable.ini into the root folder. Open the file with a text editor and change the AllowMultipleInstances value to true.

You should now be able to launch Firefox Portable even if the installed version of the browser is already running.

You can now install add-ons and themes, modify settings and do other modifications that do not affect your default Firefox profile and installation.

The portable version has one disadvantage that needs to be mentioned. Everything that you change in the portable version remains, which means that you could run into a situation that you cannot recover the browser from. You could re-install the portable version, or keep a backup copy at hand to resolve the situation.

One Firefox, Two Profiles

The -no-remote parameter can be used to run multiple profiles that use the same Firefox core at the same time. Two steps are needed to complete the setup.

1. Creating a profile

You obviously need to have two profiles to run them at the same time. For that, you can use the new Profile Manager.

Just select New to create a new Firefox profile and that it is linked to the right version of the browser. You also need to make sure that Start new instance [-no-remote] is selected under Launch Options.

You can start Firefox with the newly created profile directly from the profile manager. It is however not that comfortable to launch the profile manager every time you want to start the second Firefox profile. Here is what you can do to circumvent this.

Create a new Firefox shortcut. Windows users can open the Firefox installation directory in Windows Explorer (C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\), right-click firefox.exe and select the create shortcut option from the context menu. The shortcut is either placed in the same directory or on newer versions of Windows on the desktop.

Right-click the shortcut and select Properties. Locate the Target line and add the following parameter to it at the end: -P profilename

Replace profilename with the name of the profile. If you are not sure how it is named open the Profile Manager again and take a look.

Click ok to apply the changes. I suggest you rename the shortcut as well to avoid confusion. If you have done everything correctly you should be able to launch a second instance of Firefox on your computer.

This method has the same disadvantage as the portable version environment. Everything that you do remains, which may lead to unrecoverable issues.

Virtual Machines, Sandbox

Virtual machines or sandboxing is the third possibility. This is usually more complicated to setup but has the advantage that changes are only temporary. You can use free programs like VMWare, Microsoft’s Virtual PC or the excellent Sandboxie.

You could use a Firefox browser appliance for VMware. Please note though that you need to update the browser as it uses an old version of Firefox (Firefox 8 at the time of writing).

To use it, you first need to install VMware on your computer. To run the browser application do the following:

In the VMware Player dialog box, browse for Virtual Machine Configuration File, browse to the directory where you installed the Browser Appliance, select the file Browser-Appliance.vmx, and click Open.

Closing Words

Users who test a lot benefit from setting up a test environment. This opens up lots of possibilities. You could run a cutting edge test environment, e.g. with the latest nightly versions of the browser to test your web pages and applications against it, or the same version as your standard profile is using.

Are you making use of different profiles in the browser? And if you are, for what purpose? Let me know in the comments.

Firefox 11 Stable will be released in 3 months. Users running the version of the browser right now might be interested in the changes and new features that Mozilla has implemented into the browser.

Firefox 11 is all about web standards support. Firefox users not interested in web development won’t find new features or changes that impact their daily browsing habits. The feature coming nearest to this is support for SPDY, a transport protocol designed by Google to replace HTTP eventually. The protocol is currently only supported by a handful of web properties and applications. Google Chrome supports it, as do the majority of Google properties.

The protocol offers several benefits over standard HTTP. Connections will always run on SSL (no eavesdropping), servers should see reduced load and high latency users should see improved page loading times.

The preference is off by default. Users who want to enable the feature need to enter about:config into the Firefox address bar and filter for the term network.http.spdy.enabled in the preferences window. A double-click on the preference sets it to true which means that it is enabled.

A new battery API has been introduced in Firefox 11, which can provide web developers with information about the device’s battery status among other things.

Web developers do also benefit from new web development tools added to Firefox 11. This includes free-form style sheet editing and 3d views of web page structures.

More information about those tools are available here.

A list of all new features of Firefox 11 at the time of writing is available on Mozilla Hacks. Firefox users who have just been switched to Firefox 10 Beta or Firefox 9 Stable can use the posted links to find out what’s new in their version of the browser.

Update: Mozilla aims to integrate add-on syncing into Firefox 11 as well. (thanks Kshitij)

A new version of Firefox appeared on the official Mozilla ftp server today, only a day after the release of Firefox 9. News about the release of Firefox 9.0.1 are scarce at the moment.

The only indicator is a critical bug listing on Bugzilla that was likely the cause for the rushed new version. Bug 712490, Tracking bug for build and release of Firefox 9.0.1, does not reveal additional information about the nature of the bug. The only information to gather from the bug listing is that it affects all Firefox platforms and versions.

Bugzilla lists one additional bug with a normal severity rating which makes it very unlikely that it has been the cause for the rushed release. The bug is preventing custom app updates on Linux versions of the Firefox web browser.

Firefox 9.0.1 is currently being distributed to Mozilla ftp servers and the distribution network. It is likely that Firefox 8, Firefox 8.0.1 and Firefox 9.0 users will receive update notifications in the next 24 hours.

The Mozilla website is currently listing Firefox 9.0 as the latest web browser version on the Get Firefox download page. Release notes and bug fix pages for Firefox 9.0.1 have just been created. They are however currently displaying a copy of the Firefox 9.0 release notes and bug fixes.

It is likely that the information will get updated in the next hours. Firefox users who are experiencing issues in the browser may want to go ahead and download version 9.0.1 early to see if the new release resolves the issues.

Everyone else is probably better off waiting for the official release announcement which hopefully will provide additional information on the issue. (Thanks Midnight for the tip)

I have covered all Firefox 9 changes back when the Aurora version of the browser was released. Aurora versions on the other hand are not always what final users can expect from the browser.

The biggest new feature that Mozilla introduces in Firefox 9 is Type Inference which improves JavaScript performance significantly by using inferred type information. Mozilla noted that the new feature can speed up the browser’s JavaScript performance by up to 30%. Users will usually see less than that percentage though in their day activities.

The developers furthermore have added support for font-stretch, improved support for text-overflow and improved overall standards support for HTML5, MathML and CSS.

Mac OS X Lion users benefit from the new two finger swipe navigation and improved theme integration.

The release notes list several stability enhancements and bug fixes that have made their way into the browser (check the complete list of changes for details, linked on the release notes page).

Most Firefox users can probably wait the day until the browser is officially released by Mozilla. Users can then update Firefox with the browsers automatic update feature, or by downloading the new version from the official website.

Firefox users who experience issues with the current stable version, for instance crashes, may want to install the new version as soon as possible to resolve the issues.

Those users can download Firefox 9.0 Final from third party websites such as Softpedia. Please note that Softpedia only hosts the English version of the browser.

Have you tried Firefox 9 yet? If so, what’s your impression of the new version?

Firefox users have three options to downgrade add-ons in the browser. It is not necessary to uninstall the new add-on version before installing the old one. Keep in mind though that older versions may be incompatible with your version of the browser.

Installing old Firefox Add-on versions

You have several options at your disposal to install an older version of an add-on. The first option is presented on the add-on’s page over at Mozilla. Lets take Video DownloadHelper as an example. Load the page in Firefox and scroll all the way down until you reach Version Information near the bottom of the screen. Click on the link to expand the selection. Locate See complete version history there and click on it.

This opens a new page where the majority of previous add-on releases are listed. Make sure you read the “be careful” section at the top to understand the risks.

You can install an older version of the add-on by moving the mouse cursor over a version and clicking on the Add to Firefox button to start the installation.

Release notes are usually offered for every version listed on the version history page. Just install the add-on and restart the browser afterwards to complete the process. The add-ons manager should now display the installed version and not the latest one.

Alternatives

You can alternatively connect to the public Mozilla ftp server to download a previous add-on version. You do however need the unique add-on ID which is not displayed publicly anymore (Mozilla switched from displaying the unique ID in the url to descriptive names instead). If you do know the ID, you can download it from the ftp server as well.

A third alternative comes sometimes in the form of the add-on homepage on the Internet (not on Mozilla). Developers sometimes offer download links to old add-on versions on their websites. It is however usually a lot easier to use the official Mozilla Firefox site for that.

Disable Updates

You are not done yet. If you would stop right here Firefox would try to install the latest add-on version automatically. Open about:add-ons in the Firefox address bar and click on the More link next to the extension that you have just downgraded.

Locate Automatic Updates there and switch it from Default to Off. This disables automatic updates for the selected add-on. See How To Turn Off Automatic Updates For Individual Firefox Add-Ons for an in depths guide.

Page Queue offers a simple alternative that some Firefox users may prefer. It can be used to add links to a page queue. The advantage here is that the links are saved but not opened directly. The queue works on a first in first out basis.

You can add links from an article that you are reading to the queue to open them later in the Firefox web browser. This is done with a right-click on a link and the selection of PagesQueue > Add link to queue.

Queued links are saved over sessions, and links from the queue are opened automatically in new tabs when the option to open a queued link is selected from the right-click menu.

The extension lacks features that would improve it significantly. There is currently no way to display the list of queued pages. An option to display the list (for instance to open a page further down the queue or to remove pages from it) is missing. Keyboard shortcuts or a button to open a queued page would be useful as well.

Firefox users can download the Page Queue extension from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

The problem stems from a process called “Profile-Guided Optimisation” that is used, in two passes, to compile the code.  In the first pass profile information about the browser’s run-time behaviour is generated while the compilation is taking place.  This “profile” data is then used to create an optimised browser in the second compilation pass.  This process, which was adopted by Mozilla four years ago, improved the browser’s performance by 10%.

Now though the 32-bit builds of Firefox, which are used by 90% of all Firefox users fail because the compiler software requires more than 3Gb of memory, which isn’t supported by the 32-bit operating systems required to compile the code.

Seemingly the problem is caused by the specific compiler software Mozilla use with H-Online saying a move to Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 would solve the problem while inevitably causing minor embarrassment for Mozilla.

Mozilla’s engineers are discussing several options, one of which is to move some code from within the browser itself to external dynamic libraries.  This however would only save around 300Kb.  Another solution would be to find a way to compile the 32-bit version in a 64-bit host operating system (something that the move to Visual Studio would apparently solve).

This isn’t the first time Mozilla has encountered a compiler memory problem.  In early 2010 a 2Gb memory limit caused a similar problem.  This was overcome however and there’s no reason to assume it won’t be overcome this time too.

We’re not going to see Firefox go away, even for a short while, because of this problem.  The browser will continue to be released on schedule, but Mozilla’s engineers will need to find a new way to compile the code while keeping their operation completely open-source.

The next best thing is a solution that mitigates the issue. Some Firefox users close and re-open the browser regularly to flush and reset the web browser’s memory use. Others install add-ons that optimize memory usage of Firefox or perform other operations that reduce the browser’s use of memory.

Memory Restart is one of those add-ons. It is a fairly simple add-on that displays the browser’s current memory utilization in the status bar. The add-on highlights below peak memory usage in red.

A left-click on the icon displays a restart prompt. A click on yes restarts the browser, no closes the prompt without actions being taken.

Memory used by the browser is not updated in realtime, the program seems to update the count once per minute.

The information alone would be useful enough, but Memory Restart brings another feature to the table that might even be more to the liking of Firefox users with memory issues.

The extension can restart the browser automatically if the memory usage goes through the default memory threshold of 500Mb.

This default threshold can be changed in the program’ options. Here it is furthermore possible to enable the automatic restart option when the limit is reached by the browser. This happens without notification or user interaction. A countdown or notification option could improve the process to give Firefox users enough time to save their work on the web before the browser is restarted by the extension.

Firefox users can download Memory Restart from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

Then I discovered that there is an easier way that would optimize that workflow significantly. I started to test holding down Shift, Alt, Cltr plus Enter combinations until I found the combination that would open the typed in text in a new tab page and not the active one.

Firefox users can either hold down Alt before they press enter or the Alt Gr key to open the entered text in a new browser tab. Website addresses (urls) are automatically loaded in the new tab while searches load the results of the default search engine instead in the new tab. Firefox will automatically switch to the new tab and restore the url text in the tab the text was entered in.

Do you prefer to open new tabs in the background instead of the foreground? No problem, all you need to do is to make a slight configuration change. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar and hit enter. First time users need to confirm that they will be careful. Enter the parameter browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground in the filter bar on top. Only one entry is returned.

The default setting is false, which basically means that new tabs are not opened in the background. A double-click on the parameter changes the value to true which has the consequence that new tabs are opened in the background instead.

Double Click Close Tab is an add-on for the Firefox web browser that adds additional tab closing options to the browser. A double-click on a site in the tabbar closes that tab automatically in the browser. While that’s more convenient than using the right-click context menu it is not the most efficient option that the extension provides.

Closing tabs by moving the mouse to the tabbar to either double-click or click on the x icon is inefficient because of that initial mouse movement. The keyboard shortcut works directly but can only close the active tab.

Double Click Close Tab adds two additional tab closing options to Firefox. Users can alternatively triple left-click anywhere on the page to close the active tab. This may interfere with some actions in the browser, for instance double-clicking on text to highlight it. If you click three times instead of two, which can happen, you’d inadvertently close the current website instead.

The options of the add-on provide preferences to change the default behavior. Both the default tab clicking and on page clicking behavior can be altered there. Alternatives are a single middle-click, double right-clicks or triple right-clicks.

It is furthermore possible to disable one of the tab closing options completely, and to change the triple click time (that is the time in which three clicks need to be registered).

Double Click Close Tab can be downloaded and installed directly at the Mozilla add-on repository.