Juzer Burhani

The about:config page in Firefox allows you set preferences and tweak certain settings that are otherwise impossible to edit via the regular Firefox Options dialog. For instance, you can alter the default behavior of address bar, set your own domain guessing rules, change user-agent strings, and so much more.

The only problem is that about:config settings are too technical and packed in a geek interface which can be slightly intimidating to most Firefox users.
Luckily, there’re some excellent add-ins that add a visual interface (GUI) to about:config settings thus enabling anyone and everyone to "hack" Firefox without being a geek.

1. GUI Config - This lets you change the default behavior of mouse clicks, browser cache, download window alerts and a dozen other settings. You can hover the mouse over a setting to know in simple English how that change will affect the browser behavior.
GUI Config is accessible from Tools -> Advanced Settings.

2. Configuration Mania - While GUI Config gives you access to only a limited set of Firefox hidden settings, Configuration Mania supports a more comprehensive list though the help system is not that great.
The extension is nevertheless very powerful and combines features of several add-ins into one. You could change user-agents (to read magazines or WSJ), perform virus-scans after file downloads, disable security checks to install older extensions, etc.
Configuration Mania is accessible from Tools -> Configuration Mania.

"For those of you using newly released Firefox 3, or willing to give it a try, you can take advantage of a new feature that lets you set Gmail as the default for all email links -- those that contain "mailto:" in them. If you're like me and don't have a default email client set up, then clicking these links typically launches an installation wizard for a destkop mail client, or opens some email software that you don't actually use.



Now you can configure Firefox to launch Gmail when you click on email address links and avoid the hassle. The folks over at Lifehacker published these tips on how to set it up:



1) Go to Gmail and sign in.



2) While in Gmail, copy and paste the following into your browser's address bar and hit enter.



javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Gmail")



Google Apps users can use this code (but be sure to replace yourdomain.com with your Google Apps domain name):



javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Gmail")



3) Click "Add Application" when you are prompted¹. Congrats, you just added Gmail to your browser's list of mail clients.







4) To set Gmail as your default, click on this link and you will be prompted with a dialog box listing available email applications. By selecting Gmail and checking "Remember my choice for mailto links" you won't have to tell your browser again. (You don't actually need to send an email after you click that link.)







You can always change this setting by going into "Tools" > "Options" (or "Firefox" > "Preferences," for Mac users) selecting "Applications" and going to the "mailto" option. There's a drop down next to the option that lets you change your default. Clicking "Application details" will take you to a settings page where you can completely remove Gmail or other mail apps.







¹If nothing happens when you type in the code, double check that you copied the entire snippet correctly, and if nothing happens, you probably changed an advanced setting (maybe without even knowing) and need to set it back to default. To do it, type about:config into your browser and make sure that network.protocol-handler.external.mailto is on the default setting: true."

"The Firefox community is the proud new owner of a Guinness World Record — each and every one of you!   Mozilla today received confirmation from Guinness World Records that we’ve officially achieved the record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.”   From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3!

This is another wonderful accomplishment in a long line of them for our community!  Ever since Firefox was launched in 2004 we’ve relied on our community to help us spread the word, and thanks to projects including crop circles, newspaper ads, giant stickers, videos, blogs and more we now have over 180 million users in more than 230 countries.  Incredible work!"

If you use Google Toolbar for Firefox only because you like the bookmarking feature, there's a much better option: GMarks. While there are other extensions that provide an interface for Google Bookmarks, John Marshall's GMarks adds a lot of value to Google's basic bookmarking service.



GMarks can display the bookmarks almost the same as Firefox's native bookmarks: in a separate menu and in the sidebar. There's also a dropdown that can be added to Firefox's toolbars. The sidebar is useful when you want to perform full-text searches in your bookmarks without having to visit Google's site, while the GMark menu has an excellent option for managing bookmarks. If you click on "Organize bookmarks", you'll be able to import bookmarks, edit or delete bookmarks and create Gmail-like filters. For example, you can automatically add the label Google for any bookmark from this blog.





The extension can show the number of bookmarks for each label, a list of recent bookmarks and the most frequently visited bookmarks. To bookmark a page, use the familiar shortcut Ctrl+D or the GMarks menu.



One of the most frequent user requests for Google Bookmarks is nested labels and GMarks uses a little trick to simulate hierarchical labels: separate the labels with >. For example, if you want to label a bookmark as Shopping and Comparison, where Comparison is a sublabel of Shopping, just enter Shopping>Comparison when you create the bookmark. Since Google Bookmarks doesn't support this feature, the labels will appear to be nested only in GMarks.



And the cool features don't stop here: the extension suggests labels based on the web page's title, you can hide the bookmarks that have certain labels and there's an option for integrating the starred items from Google Reader.



Since the last time when I wrote about GMarks, the extension added the most interesting ideas implemented by the "competition" and managed to become THE Google Bookmarks extension. If there's anything that could be added, maybe it would be useful to completely replace Firefox's bookmarking system by hiding all the interface elements related to the native bookmarks and replicating all the changes to Google Bookmarks locally.

After Google announced that Browser Sync will no longer be updated and will stop working at the end of the year, many people looked for an alternative. The closest project to Browser Sync is Mozilla Weave, a Firefox extension that synchronizes local data from your browser with a server so you can access your data from multiple computers. Unfortunately, Weave is still an experimental prototype, so it can be buggy and unreliable.



Weave 0.2 has been released today and it supports new data types: cookies, passwords, saved form data and sessions, in addition to bookmarks and browsing history. After installing the extension and restarting Firefox, you need to create an account and enter a key used for encryption.





Unlike Browser Sync, Weave doesn't synchronizes data in real-time. "After the initial data transfer is completed during setup, Weave connects to the server periodically when it accumulates enough changes that need syncing or when enough time has passed since the last sync (at least once every 20 minutes if any data has changed). Weave also syncs when you start Firefox, when you quit it, and when you click on the "Sync Now" button in the Weave menu or the preferences."

As promised by Google in a comment on my post about Firefox 3 last Tuesday, Google has quietly fixed it so the Google Earth plugin (which lets you run a subset of Google Earth in your browser on a web page) now works with Firefox 3 (as of today - Sunday, June 22). Digital Earth Blog gets points for being the first GE blog to post about it. Google's Paul Rademacher (the chief architect behind the Google Earth API and plugin) posted an announcement about the support for Firefox 3 and that it does NOT require you to download a new plugin binary. Wanna check it out? Try the Milktruck game!

Wondering what to do until we hear back from Guinness? How about taking a moment to celebrate all the hardwork that went into Download Day and the launch of Firefox 3. Check out Mozilla Party Central for a party near you or to host your own.

With the same enthusiasm that went into spreading the word about Download Day, the Firefox community has been planning parties with gusto! There are over 700 parties planned worldwide. Here are some of the highlights:

• Catch a viewing of Kung Fu Panda with its director Michael Osborne in Palo Alto this Saturday.
• Fancy that Firefox 3 robot? Come build one in Dolores Park in San Francisco on Sunday.
• The MVGeeks are planning a huge party in the Maldives on June 26th (editor’s note: the Firefox will need appropriate tropical attire stat!)
• Community members in Bucharest will be toasting Firefox 3 and the Mozilla 10-year anniversary!
• Bob Chao of MozTW will be hosting a Firefox 3 party for the Taiwan community on July 19th!

This is just a sampling…and please be reassured that it’s not too late to plan one!

Thanks to OLPC for throwing a Firefox 3 party on launch day!

One of the most useful but also very annoying feature in Firefox 3 is their new location bar. It’s useful because you can bookmark and tag websites from the address bar itself. It’s annoying because it pulls down site suggestions from your bookmarks.

If you like to stop Firefox 3 from displaying bookmarks in the address bar alongside search history, here are the possible options:

Option A: Disable autocomplete drop-down entirely

Use this if you don’t want Firefox to display any kind of suggestions in the Address Bar be they from your browsing history or from saved bookmarks.

Open the about:config page and set the value of browser.urlbar.maxRichResults as –1. Restart Firefox and your Firefox 3 address bar will behave just like that of Firefox 2.

Option B: See web addresses that you have typed

In this option, the drop-drop remains enabled but it will only suggest website addresses / URLs that you have previously typed in the location bar.

Open about:config and set the value of browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped to False. Now none of the entries from your browser history or bookmarks will appear in the ‘awesome’ address bar.

Option C: Remove Bookmarks Completely from Address Bar

This is probably the option you are looking for. Firefox 3 uses the Frecency score to determine sites that should appear in the drop-down. We can set frecency value for bookmarks to zero and thus they won’t appear in the location bar.

Open the about:config page, and set value of places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus to zero.

Setting places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus to 0 will prevent bookmarks from appearing that you have never visited while places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus will prevent display of bookmarks that you have visited since the last time you cleared private data in Firefox.

Restart Firefox. Anything that has a frecency value of zero doesn not show up in autocomplete results and thus your bookmarks won’t turn in the suggestions anymore.

Another simple yet inspiring under-the-radar Firefox 3 feature hit our inbox today: a more useful and attractive interface for browsing FTP sites. The FTP update tweaks the layout significantly, but what's most useful is that you can now sort items in an FTP directory by name, size, or modified date. (Here, check out the Mozilla FTP site to give it a try; click on the column names to sort them.) No, it's not a top 10 Firefox 3 feature, but like multi-line text selection, little tweaks like this make all the difference.

Firefox fans, you just helped Mozilla set a unique Guinness World Record for the “Most downloaded software in 24 hours.”

Though the official body of Guinness World Records is yet to approve this record attempt, Firefox is celebrating with certificates that also carry a Guinness World Records logo.

To print your own certificate, go to spreadfirefox.com, type your name and download the certificate in PDF format.

Attention Firefox fans: Now is your chance to help set a Guinness World Record! We’ve already collected over 1.7 million pledges and served up several thousand Firefox 3 downloads. Phenomenal — let’s see what the next 24 hours has in store!

To be part of the record please download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) on June 18th. Remember that Guinness is only counting complete downloads. If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.

Please help us document this history-making event with photos and videos. Please tag images and videos with “Firefox 3,” “Download Fest,” “World Record,” and “Download Day.”

Navigating between Websites with Firefox
1	alt+home	Go to homepage (typically people's favorite search engine)
2	alt+arrow left or back	One page backwards
3	alt+arrow right	One page forward
4	alt+d or ctrl+l	Jump to address bar and selects all text in it
5	ctrl+enter	Complete .com address in the address bar. Type in for example "firefox" and press ctrl+enter
6	shift+enter	Complete .net address. Type in for example "firefox" and press shift+enter
7	ctrl+shift+enter	Complete .org address. Type in for example "firefox" and press ctrl+shift+enter
8	ctrl+b or ctrl+i	Show bookmarks. After that you can press tab and use the arrow keys to navigate between bookmarked pages. arrow left and arrow right will expand/shrink bookmark folders marked with the little '+' or '-' signs. Pressing this keyboard shortcut a second time closes the Bookmark Sidebar
9	ctrl+d	Add bookmark
10	ctrl+shift+d	Bookmark all tabs
11	alt+b+a-z	Jumps to any bookmarked website in your main bookmark folder which begins with the letter you specify. Example: I have one bookmark which I named "LEO" (which is my favorite German-English Online Dictionary dict.leo.org). I press alt+b+l and I am on the LEO website within a second. If you have more than one bookmark with the same letter, it jumps to the first entry and you have to press enter to after alt+b+letter to get to the website. It will take you a minute to setup and organize your bookmarks but save you hours in the long run.
12	ctrl+h	Show history. Then you can press tab twice and use the ARROW KEYS to navigate between visited sites. Pressing ctrl+H again closes the History Sidebar
Working with the Firefox Browser Tabs
13	ctrl+t	Open new tab in the same Window
14	ctrl+tab or ctrl+page down	Jump to next tab
15	ctrl+shift+tab or ctrl+page down	Jump to previous tab
16	ctrl+1 - ctrl+9	Jump to tab 1 - 9
17	ctrl+w or ctrl+q	Close Browser Tab
Navigating within websites with Mozilla Firefox
18	arrow down	Down one line. The ideal way to scroll through websites
19	arrow up	Up one line. The ideal way to scroll through websites
20	tab	Jump to next link when cursor is positioned in browser window. Other than that, jumps between address-bar and browser-tabs
21	shift+tab	Jump to previous link when cursor is positioned in browser window. Other than that, jumps between address-bar and browser-tabs
22	enter	Open selected link
23	shift+enter	Open a selected link in new window
24	enter	Open selected link
25	shift+enter	Open a selected link in new window
26	alt+enter	Download a selected link (replaces right mouse-button, "save as" and "return"
27	ctrl+enter	Open a selected link in a (new background) tab
28	ctrl+-	Decrease text size
29	ctrl++	Increase text size
30	ctrl+0	Default text size
31	f5 or ctrl+r	Reload Page
32	ctrl+f5	Reload Page with Cache override
33	escape	Stop loading page. Can also be sued to close search window if it is open
34	f6	Go to next frame (or switches between address bar and browser window if page has no frames)
35	shift+f6	Go to previous frame
36	F7	Turn caret mode on/off (navigation with keyboard)
37	shift+f10	Open Context Menu. If you are for example on a link within a website, you could press shift+F10 and then C to copy link location
Working with Forms in Mozilla Firefox
38	tab	Jumps to next Form Element
39	shift+tab	Jumps to previous Form Element. If an entry in the previous field is already made, the complete entry is marked. If you want to enter something new, simply start to type and the new entry replaces the old form entry. If you want to keep the old entry, Simply press the home or END keyboard shortcut to go to the beginning end of the entry.
40	space	Activates and/or deactivates Radio Buttons and Check boxes
41	alt+arrow down	Select Select from a drop down menu. Then use arrow up and arrow down plus return to make your choice
42	ctrl+x	Cut (when working in forms)
43	ctrl+v	Paste selected text when working with forms
Find text and links in websites
44	ctrl+f or '	Open search window and find key phrase in page (as you type)
45	/	Open search window and find link in page (as you type)
46	f3 or ctrl+g	Find next
47	escape	Close search window
48	shift+f3	Find previous
Working with the Firefox Browser Window
49	ctrl+n or alt+f+n	Opens new Browser Window
50	ctrl+shift+w or alt+f4	Close browser window
51	alt+space	Opens the Title Bar Menu (applicable all Windows Application)
52	alt+space+enter	Restores Firefox Window to smaller size if window is spreading on full screen (replaces the "restore button" on top right corner of title bar)
53	alt+space+x	Restores Firefox Window to maximum size if window is not maximized (replaces the "maximize button" on top right corner of title bar)
54	alt+space+n	Minimizes Firefox Window to (replaces the "minimize button" on top right corner of title bar)
Accessing and working with the Firefox Menu Bar
55	alt or f10	Jumps to the menu bar. From here you can use arrow left, arrow right, arrow up and arrow down plus enter to navigate and activate between the menu items on top of the browser window. Usually the same in all Windows Application.
56	alt+f	Opens File Menu
57	alt+e	Opens Edit Menu
58	alt+v	Opens View Menu
59	alt+g	Opens Go Menu
Other Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts
60	ctrl+a	Select all. Useful, if you want to for example copy text out of websites. I use it often to copy articles in a plain text editor, remove the advertising and print it out.
61	ctrl+c	Copy selected text
62	ctrl+p	Print
63	alt+f+v	Print Preview - File - Print Preview
64	ctrl+o	Open file
65	ctrl+u	Show page source
66	ctrl+s	Save page as
67	f1	Firefox Help
68	f11	Full page view
69	ctrl+j	Show Download Window. Pressing ctrl+J again (or alt+F4 closes the window again
70	ctrl+e	Jump to search bar (usually located in top right corner)
71	ctrl+k	Jump to search bar (usually located in top right corner)
72	ctrl+arrow up	Toggle Search Engines when in search field (after ctrl

Mozilla released Firefox version 1.0 to relative obscurity in November of 2004, and four short years later, the much-anticipated Firefox 3.0 will hit the streets with ambitions of setting a new world record tomorrow. In honor of tomorrow's 3.0 release, let's take a look back at a visual history of Firefox, version 1.0 to 3.0.

The Themes

The most significant change you'll notice in Firefox 3 off the bat is the new themes. Mozilla has skinned Firefox 3 to integrate with your operating system of choice. Firefox 3.0 in Vista now fits more into the aesthetic of Vista, Firefox in OS X likewise fits more with the look and feel of native OS X apps, and so on. Here's a quick look back at the changes from the Firefox 1.0 to 3.0 chrome.

You'll notice a subtle change in the theme from Firefox 1 to 2, but nothing to write home about.

On the other hand, the changes between Firefox 2 and 3—and even between Firefox 3 on different operating systems—are significant.

Another huge change to the look and functionality of Firefox 3 is the new and improved Location bar. Not only can you find a web page in your history by address, but you can also search the location bar by page title. It's smart, too, so the more you go to a site, the higher it'll show up in your results.

Options Dialog

Between Firefox 1 and 2, the navigation sidebar in the Options dialog moved to the top and Mozilla added new options for handling RSS feeds and tab management, among other small tweaks.

The biggest change in Firefox 3's Options window comes through re-thinking the Feeds tab as a complete application-management tab. You can now easily set how you want Firefox to handle any filetype through this interface as opposed to just tweaking how it handles feeds.

Add-ons Management

In Firefox 1.0, extensions were extensions, themes were themes, and you managed them separately.

In Firefox 2.0, Mozilla designers lumped extensions and themes together into a new Add-ons dialog.

In Firefox 3, the Add-ons dialog hit the weight room, beefed up, and added a Plug-ins tab and the Get Add-ons tab, an add-ons store of sorts. Instead of searching the depths of the internet when you're looking for a new extension, you can go straight to the Get Add-ons tab, search for it, and install it without ever opening a web page.

Bookmarks Management

There's very little difference—if any—between the bookmarks management in Firefox 1 and 2.

Firefox 3, on the other hand, has completely revamped the look of the bookmarks manager and included support for some of Firefox 3's newer bookmark features, like smart folders and tags. (As you can see, I haven't tagged many bookmarks yet.)

In Firefox 3, you can easily add or edit any bookmark while you're visiting a bookmarked page by clicking the new star in the address bar. Clicking it automatically bookmarks an unbookmarked page or provides you a simple avenue for removing a bookmark or adding tags.

Download Manager

The Downloads manager didn't change much between 1 and 2, but Firefox 3 has added a slight visual refresh, swapped out text links (like Cancel) for some buttons, and added a handy little search box to the bottom of the Downloads window to filter through your recent downloads.

Password Management

Like bookmarks, we didn't see any change in the way that Firefox 1 and 2 handled saving new passwords when you logged into a site.

Firefox 3 provides a much less intrusive mechanism for asking you what you'd like to do with the login credentials you use to log into a site. Rather than triggering a pop-up window that requires a response before you can continue, the new password bar allows you to continue on your merry way without attending to it immediately. You can even ignore the prompt altogether if you prefer.

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For more details on what you'll get with tomorrow's Firefox 3 release, see our top 10 Firefox 3 features.

If we missed a change that you think needs pointing out between Firefox versions 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, tell us about it in the comments. No matter how you slice it, looking back at where Firefox has been, how far it's come, and where it's going, there's no question that it's a phenomenal browser that's never stopped evolving.

Firefox 3 will be up for grabs here at 10 AM Los Angeles time.

If you are in a different part of the world, refer to this world time map and know the exact time when Firefox 3 will become available in your region. Happy Firefox 3 Download Day.

With Firefox 3, you can easily select multiple and non-consecutive pieces of text from a web page as shown in this GIF screencast.

The secret is the Ctrl key. Select a line in Firefox with your mouse and then press the Ctrl key before selecting the second line.

Unlike other browsers like IE or Opera, Firefox will not clear your previous text selections if the Control key remains pressed at the time of selection. This feature will definitely come handy while clipping web pages. Thanks Keith.

For some reason, the trick did not work for me on Google Search pages and Google News but I guess the culprit is Firebug.

We’re just over 12 hours until the start of the long-awaited Download Day! Our Guinness World Record attempt will start when Firefox 3 is officially launched at approximately 10:00 a.m. PDT (17:00 UTC) on Tuesday, June 17th.
At that time, please check out the official Download Day site to download Firefox and for a map of worldwide downloads!

Are you using a Firefox 3 release candidate but you miss the Google Toolbar? Well, it’s now working and available.

Our Guinness World Record attempt for the most software downloads in 24 hours is just around the corner! As soon as we roll out Firefox 3 on June 17th you’ll have until the same time on June 18th to download Firefox 3. Don’t worry about forgetting — our friends at Mozilla Hispano and Felipe Gomes of Brazil have created countdown tickers for your blog or Firefox! Felipe’s ticker add-on will also count down the 24 hours as soon as our attempt starts!

Please remember that we’re only counting complete downloads. If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.

Don’t forget that Guinness would like to see images and videos of our global Download Fests. Please tag images and videos with “Firefox 3,” “Download Fest,” “World Record,” and “Download Day.”

Thanks for all of the hard work — we’re almost there!