Ramblings, ideas, problems, and solutions

Category: Firefox

  • How to remove addresses from Autocomplete in your browser

    One practical, but sometimes annoying, feature in most browsers today, is the autocomplete functionality in the URL field. While it does save you time when you are used to it, it can also send you to a different page than you were intending. Luckily, both Firefox and Chrome has a shortcut to delete entries from the autocomplete list.
     
    Start typing the address, and when the one you want to delete shows up in the list of alternatives, use your down-key to mark it. Then simply delete it by typing Shift+Delete. If you’re on a Mac with a compact keyboard, the keyboard combination fn+shift+backspace will do the same thing.
     

  • Firefox does not save tabs on close on Mac OSX

    My girlfriend recently got herself a shiny new MacBook Pro, and installed Firefox, as that’s her browser of preference. She kept having a problem that her tabs would not be saved when she closed Firefox, and asked me to look into it.

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  • Microsoft Internet Ballot screen candidates

    After a long run of anti-trust suits, Microsoft has finally come to an agreement with the EU about how to solve the internet browser problem. The problem is that Microsoft delivers Windows bundled with Internet Explorer, which competing software developers claim is a breach of anti-trust laws.

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  • Firefox: Get more add-on search results

    When searching for new Add-ons, you are by default shown five results. You might find it more efficient to increase this number.
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  • Firefox: View code in an external editor

    When you want to view the source of a page, it opens up in browser popup. However, if you want, you can make it open in your favorite editor, instead of having to cut and paste. To achieve this: do the following:
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  • Firefox: Auto export bookmarks

    In Firefox 3, bookmarks are automatically saved. The only problem is the way they are stored, as they are stored as places.sqlite, as opposed to saving them in HTML. You can change this easily however, by doing the following:
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  • Firefox – Displaying saved passwords

    One of the pracctical functions in Firefox is the option to save passwords. This also has a backward function, in that you can find out what your saved password is. To do so, simply go to the login-page in question. Then right-click the site and select View Page Info. Go to the Security-tab and find the button View saved passwords. Then click the button View passwords to see all saved passwords.
     
    Now, as I’m sure I’m not the only paranoid browser around, here’s how to set a master password to protect your saved passwords:
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  • Firefox – Use keywords for specialized search

    You’re sitting in front of your computer, surfing the web, and you find a website, let’s say this one, that has a nifty search function which you want to use. However, you don’t want to open the website every time you want to use the search. This is where keyword browsing comes in handy.

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  • Firefox – Tweaking the Awesome-bar

    The “Awesome”-bar, otherwise known as the address bar, has a few nifty little things you can tweak. First off, you can turn it back into a boring old address-bar. To do this you go to the (for now) awesome-bar, then direct your browser to about:config. In the filter enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults, and change its value to -1.
     
    If you only want it to show you websites whose URL you’ve actually entered the address for, go to about:config and find the entry browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped. Change its value to true.
     
    To remove addresses from the Awesome-bar that you haven’t visited, you once more go to about:config. Find the entry places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus, and set its value to 0.
     
    Lastly, to remove all addresses from the Awesome-bar, you go to about:config, find the entry places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus, and set its value to 0.

  • Firefox – Change the close-button for tabs

    There has been so many discussions about where to place the close-buttons for tabs that Mozilla has created a config key for this specific option.
     
    To access the key, open a new tab, enter about:config then press enter. In the filter search for browser.tabs.closeButtons. Change this value according to your choice and the following table:
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  • Firefox – Open mailto:-links in GMail

    I use GMail a lot. I also send a lot of emails, many of those originating from mailto:-links. Hence, it is practical to have mailto:-links open in GMail.
     
    This is quickly and simply achieved by going to Tools, Options, Applications. In the search-field, simply enter mailto, then use the Action-field to select GMail, Yahoo Mail or something else, like so:
     

     
    Some installations of Firefox do not have the GMail-alternative. This is simply fixed. Open a new tab, then enter about:config in the address-bar. Into the filter enter
    gecko.handlerService.AllowRegisterFromDifferentHost, then doubleclick the value so that it is set to true. Then copy/paste the following piece of Javascript to your Addressbar: javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto", "https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Gmail"). When asked whether you want to add GMail as an application, answer “yes”.