Make Firefox behave independent from its options
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.
Change how Firefox displays Websites
Did you know that it is possible to override the way a website is displayed by default in Firefox. This can be useful for instance if a webmaster decided to use CSS code to remove the underline of links, change the color for links that open in new windows or display additional information for certain file type downloads.
The first thing that you need to do is locate or create the file usercontent.css in your Mozilla Firefox profile directory. It can usually be located in %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
Secure Login with Firefox
Secure Login is a Firefox extension that is similar to Opera's Wand feature. Instead of logging into a website by filling out the username and password form you login by clicking a button or using a shortcut. This is a great way to prevent the execution of malicious Javascript code that could "phish" your data.
Javascript will be temporarily disabled during login and the data is send right to the website that you want to login to. The Domain that you are currently on and that you want to login to are compared to ensure that you are indeed at the right website. A mismatch would result in a popup warning.
Scan downloads automatically in Firefox
I was looking for a way to automatically scan specific file types immediately after finishing the download instead of scanning them when unpacking or executing them. This way I could sort out malicious files immediately without having to worry about some files that contain viruses or other sorts of malware sitting on my hard drives for a longer period of time.
Firefox: Open Links and Mailto's in external applications
I prefer to watch videos in my favorite video player VLC instead of watching them embedded on the web. If you click on a video file on a website you open it either in your default video viewer or view it right in your browser using a plugin. You may also open websites in different browsers which is great for developers who were using several add-ons to view a website in different browsers.
Just right-click the link and select the application that you want to use to view it from the menu. Launchy, that is the name of the Firefox add-on, supports more than 60 applications right out of the box with the ability to add more applications using an XML file.
Use Keywords to search faster in Firefox
Firefox is already really comfortable when it comes to searching the web. One search box is displayed by default which is great if you want to do a fast search for something. Did you know that there is another way, even faster and better than this one ? Firefox supports so called keyword searches which means that you define a keyword for a certain search engine and can use that keyword to search it without visiting the website of that search engine.
Let me give you an example to clear things up. You may right-click any form field in Firefox and select the menu entry Add a Keyword for this search. Selecting this opens a new Add Bookmark menu which asks for a name and a keyword. I went to ebay.com and did a right-click on their site search. I entered the keyword "e" and the name eBay.
15 cool Firefox Tricks
I found this interesting article at the Lifehacker website. The articles lists 15 tweaks and tips for Firefox of which several have not been known by me. Did you for instance know that you could move a page down by pressing the spacebar, that you could move around tabs by pressing CTRL + TAB or that you could use so called smart keywords for searching IMDB in the Address Bar (try typing in imdb Johnny Depp) ?
How to write European Special Characters
It is not happening that often that you have to accented characters or umlauts but it sometimes happens. Maybe you want to write a name like Søren or a unique German street name such as Bachstraße. If you never had to type those characters before you might wonder how it would be possible to write them down using your keyboard. They are obviously not printed on the keys of it.
Monitor Websites for Updates with Firefox
If you want to make sure that you never miss a change on your favorite website again and stay ahead of the crowd by always knowing when the website has been updated you do need the Update Scanner Firefox extension. It basically monitors any website that you have added to it and informs you whenever a change has been made on the website. You may alter the change threshold so that you are not informed about minor changes on the website.
Tiny Menu Firefox Extension
I'm always looking for ways to reduce the toolbars and menus to have more space for the websites. I have already written about extensions such as Hide Menubar or the Firefox UI Tweaker that change the appearance of Firefox. The Tiny Menu Extension is another great add-on to this list. What it does is that it compresses all entries from the menu toolbar (File, Edit, View, History and so on) into one entry that lists the compressed items beneath each other. Take a look at the screenshot to get an impression of how this looks like.
Firefox Hide Menubar
Some users prefer to have as much space in Firefox for websites as possible. One way to get rid of some of the toolbars and menus temporarily would be to press F11 which removes the title, the bookmarks toolbar and the menubar. Another way would be to just remove the menubar which is not needed most of the time anyway. To do that you simply need the Firefox extension called Hide Menubar which removes the menubar once installed.
Share Bookmarks between IE and Firefox
Some users are switching between Firefox and Internet Explorer on their computer depending on the task at hand. It is for instance essential for webmasters to check their websites in the most commonly used web browsers. I thought it would be nice to share bookmarks between Firefox and Internet Explorer to use the same bookmarks in both browsers. This can be done easily with the Firefox extension Plain old Favorites which adds the favorites from Internet Explorer to Firefox. The favorites menu is placed next to the bookmarks menu in Firefox.
Advanced Firefox Configuration Tips
I'm still using Firefox and I thought it would be nice to share some advanced configuration tips that helped me a lot with you. This article was inspired by Lifehackers Top Firefox 2 config tweaks but adds advanced tips to the mix. Rest assured that the configuration tweaks will not list the same tips that you see on every other site nowadays, I promise new unseen tips.
Show 100 Search Results on Google per page
Google displays 10 search results by default which is probably enough for most users who statistically use the first ten results most of the time ignoring the rest of the results. I on the other hand tend to view more than one page normally and was looking for a way to increase my productivity by displaying more than 10 results on a single search result page. I found a Greasemonkey script which changes the value from 10 to 100 for normal Google searches.
Detect and Delete Duplicate Bookmarks in Firefox
If you have hundreds of bookmarks in different folders like I do you might know the problem that bookmarks are added from time to time that already exist in your list. It is not that easy to manage the bookmarks and keep an overview over them all. A complicated folder structure with many subfolders is adding to the problem. It really does not help to check your bookmarks manually every know and then, this takes to long and does not prevent that duplicate bookmarks are added at a later date again. The Firefox extension Bookmark Duplicate Detector is helpful for users with a lot of bookmarks.
Firefox Image Batch Downloader
It is not that easy to download all images from a page with many images in Firefox. It would be possible to use a download manager or wget to get all the images but this would mean that you would have to rely on external tools and know how to use them. A far easier method is to use the Firefox extension Batch Downloader. It does exactly what the name suggests, it downloads all images that have a resolution of 200x200 or more in one batch to your hard drive.
Display websites next to each other in Firefox
Did you ever have the problem that you needed information from two websites at once and had to switch between them all the time to access them ? I usually have the problem when I write a new article for Ghacks and have to take a look at another website to find the information that I need for my article. This gets extremely irritating if many tabs are open at once and I miss the tab that I want. To much clicks in my opinion, that is why I was searching for a way to display two websites next to each other in Firefox.
Apple Trailers Downloads
I visit Apples Trailers website occasionally to take a look at the newest upcoming movies and get a first impression that helps me decided whether I want to see a movie or not. It happens that I sometimes come upon a trailer that I want to download to watch again, or show a friend who does not have internet. There are unfortunately no download links at Apples Trailers site and I was beginning my search for an easy way to download the trailers I wanted in the quality I selected.