Firefox Browser Hacking
Ok, its no secret..Firefox is my favorite browser.. infact, if you are not using it (for example using... Gasp, IE) you need to change. Well I decided to write an article on how to "hack" Firefox to make it even better. Using a few tweaks here and there, we can make FireFox considerably faster, enable advanced tab options, make newer versions compatible with older extentions, run directly from a flash disk, and on and on.
First, Lets change some hidden options to make it faster...
1. Open Firefox 1.0 and in the address bar type: about:config 1. Find browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs and double click on it so it = true
2. Find network.http.pipelining and double click on it so it = true
3. Find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests double click on it and change it from 4 to 100
What do these changes do?
1. Then enables advanced tab options in your Tools/Options page
2. This enables option #3.
3. This makes FF use 8 threads to each page.. Bascially, if you thought FF was fast before, try it after this.
Second, lets make it look better...Visit the Mozilla Firefox theme page and select a theme that looks good to you.I personally like the Noia eXtreme skin, but choose one that looks good to you.
Now lets make it work FOR us...
One of the sweetest things about Firefox is the ability to use extentions. At the time of this writing, there are 226 extentions that we can use to make it better.. I will only touch on a few of them that I use. (Alphabetically Sorted)Adblock: Remove inline ads. BugmeNot; Fills in those annoying password fields at places like NYPost.com with passwords already submitted by other users so you dont have to register. Bookmarks Synchronizer: Save your bookmarks to an XML file, and sync with an FTP server. Keep your work/home bookmarks current!Digger: Navigate to parent directories, switch to ftp equivalent of site, climb subdomains, etc.. Very helpful in "scouting" a site.Download Sort: Automatically send downloads to specific folders based on file's extention.Gmail Notifier: Lets you know if you have new gmailGoogle Pagerank Status: Lets you see the Google PageRank of the page you are visiting.refspoof: "Spoof" your referer.Spiderzilla: Download an entire site to a local directory.Super DragAndGo: Drag a link to blank space on a webpage, and it will open it in a new tab.SwitchProxy: Manage and switch between multiple proxies. Make sure to read my article on finding and useing proxies.User Agent Switcher: Switch the user agent of your browser.MouseGestures:This is the "Mouse Gestures" firefox extension. Basically, to go forward you draw a line from left to right while holding down the mouse button, to go back you draw a line from right to left while holding down, to close draw a L, to open a new page, from bottom to top - there are other options such as switch tabs, source, view cookies, etc. I have personally found this to make my browsing experience much easier and much more reflexive (I don't think about pressing the back button, so much as automatically drawing it); when I use internet explorer oftentimes I right click by accident.x: Gives a Toolbar "paranoia" button, click it and it can clear history, form info, saved passwords, download history, cookies, & cache.
Firefox on a USB ThumbdriveCheck out the article on Portable Firefox 1.0Tell Firefox what we want to see (and what we don't)Sick of Google Ads on everyone's page? Well lets tell firefox that we don't want to see them anymore. This hack will remove 95% of all Ads, including google Ads. (Yes, even from Gmail. Warning, Removing these ads may violate the TOS of Gmail)This hack uses the magic of CSS and a Firefox configuration file named UserContent.css. We are going to edit this file, I suggest you download the plugin ChomEdit to make your job easier. (Go install it now & come back after restart)Ok, now that you have ChromEdit installed, open Firefox and click on Tools / Edit User files. A new window will appear that has five tabs across the top. Click on the tab that is labeled userContent.css. Next click on the link below and copy all the text. Then paste it into the userContent.css file, then click the Save button.Code Now restart your browser.. Tada, Google ads are gone!From Digital Media Minute:The above rules make use of the *!important* property value to override any rules that may already exist within the page that is being loaded. In the first rule, GMail has an element with an id of rh and we are setting the tables that have a class equal to metatable within that element, to not display (ie . display:none) A word of caution, we are only hiding the ads from displaying. They are actually still there, just not visible. This means that Google is still indexing your email messages to provide you with “targetted ads”. It is also worth noting that as this hack is based upon creating CSS rules for existing GMail code, it is very possible that this hack will break as GMail continues to evolve.
First, Lets change some hidden options to make it faster...
1. Open Firefox 1.0 and in the address bar type: about:config 1. Find browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs and double click on it so it = true
2. Find network.http.pipelining and double click on it so it = true
3. Find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests double click on it and change it from 4 to 100
What do these changes do?
1. Then enables advanced tab options in your Tools/Options page
2. This enables option #3.
3. This makes FF use 8 threads to each page.. Bascially, if you thought FF was fast before, try it after this.
Second, lets make it look better...Visit the Mozilla Firefox theme page and select a theme that looks good to you.I personally like the Noia eXtreme skin, but choose one that looks good to you.
Now lets make it work FOR us...
One of the sweetest things about Firefox is the ability to use extentions. At the time of this writing, there are 226 extentions that we can use to make it better.. I will only touch on a few of them that I use. (Alphabetically Sorted)Adblock: Remove inline ads. BugmeNot; Fills in those annoying password fields at places like NYPost.com with passwords already submitted by other users so you dont have to register. Bookmarks Synchronizer: Save your bookmarks to an XML file, and sync with an FTP server. Keep your work/home bookmarks current!Digger: Navigate to parent directories, switch to ftp equivalent of site, climb subdomains, etc.. Very helpful in "scouting" a site.Download Sort: Automatically send downloads to specific folders based on file's extention.Gmail Notifier: Lets you know if you have new gmailGoogle Pagerank Status: Lets you see the Google PageRank of the page you are visiting.refspoof: "Spoof" your referer.Spiderzilla: Download an entire site to a local directory.Super DragAndGo: Drag a link to blank space on a webpage, and it will open it in a new tab.SwitchProxy: Manage and switch between multiple proxies. Make sure to read my article on finding and useing proxies.User Agent Switcher: Switch the user agent of your browser.MouseGestures:This is the "Mouse Gestures" firefox extension. Basically, to go forward you draw a line from left to right while holding down the mouse button, to go back you draw a line from right to left while holding down, to close draw a L, to open a new page, from bottom to top - there are other options such as switch tabs, source, view cookies, etc. I have personally found this to make my browsing experience much easier and much more reflexive (I don't think about pressing the back button, so much as automatically drawing it); when I use internet explorer oftentimes I right click by accident.x: Gives a Toolbar "paranoia" button, click it and it can clear history, form info, saved passwords, download history, cookies, & cache.
Firefox on a USB ThumbdriveCheck out the article on Portable Firefox 1.0Tell Firefox what we want to see (and what we don't)Sick of Google Ads on everyone's page? Well lets tell firefox that we don't want to see them anymore. This hack will remove 95% of all Ads, including google Ads. (Yes, even from Gmail. Warning, Removing these ads may violate the TOS of Gmail)This hack uses the magic of CSS and a Firefox configuration file named UserContent.css. We are going to edit this file, I suggest you download the plugin ChomEdit to make your job easier. (Go install it now & come back after restart)Ok, now that you have ChromEdit installed, open Firefox and click on Tools / Edit User files. A new window will appear that has five tabs across the top. Click on the tab that is labeled userContent.css. Next click on the link below and copy all the text. Then paste it into the userContent.css file, then click the Save button.Code Now restart your browser.. Tada, Google ads are gone!From Digital Media Minute:The above rules make use of the *!important* property value to override any rules that may already exist within the page that is being loaded. In the first rule, GMail has an element with an id of rh and we are setting the tables that have a class equal to metatable within that element, to not display (ie . display:none) A word of caution, we are only hiding the ads from displaying. They are actually still there, just not visible. This means that Google is still indexing your email messages to provide you with “targetted ads”. It is also worth noting that as this hack is based upon creating CSS rules for existing GMail code, it is very possible that this hack will break as GMail continues to evolve.
posted by Matt at 16:33
1 comments
