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Firefox Secrets
Craig Maloney writes "By now most readers have probably heard about Firefox, the Open Source browser that poses a serious challenge to Internet Explorer. They've probably even installed it on a few machines, and no doubt have customized it pretty much to their liking. They're pretty comfortable with how it works in their day-to-day browsing activities. Plus, Firefox is pretty open, and about:config, extensions, and themes have many pages dedicated to their use. What more could there be to Firefox? Firefox Secrets is a collection of tips and tricks to help wring out that last kernel of performance from Firefox, with specific ways to increase users productivity with Firefox. It also contains plenty of tips for new Firefox users to guide them to learning what Firefox is, and how it can improve their browsing experience." Read on for Craig's review.
Firefox Secrets
author
Chean Chu Yeow
pages
297
publisher
Sitepoint
rating
8/10
reviewer
Craig Maloney
ISBN
0-9752402-4-2
summary
Firefox tips and techniques for new and experienced users.
Firefox Secrets presents the material in a well thought out manner. Each chapter starts with a specific task in mind, with helpful tips in performing that task listed throughout the rest of the chapter. In the chapter entitled "Revisiting Web Pages" (something we are all bound to do at some time in our lives), Firefox Secrets starts the chapter with sections on importing bookmarks from other programs, creating new bookmarks, and using the bookmark manager. (Pretty basic stuff which most Slashdot readers have no doubt mastered). The power, though, lies in the rest of the chapter, where the book lists out how to add a bookmark for a group of tabs, how to create several types of keyword bookmark, how to use the bookmarks tool bar, and how to use the bookmark manager and sidebar. It then talks about Firefox's RSS and Live bookmarks, and how to create them using the RSS icon, and create them manually. Finally the chapter finishes off with the cookie and history managers, as well as the password manager. Each section is described in detail with clear directions on how to use the feature, and clear explanations on why readers would want to use the feature.
Expert users need not worry, though, as this book has plenty for them too. One of the more powerful features of Firefox are the Extensions, which allow incredible recognizability in Firefox. The chapter on Extensions starts with an introduction to what Extensions are, and why they're so important. Next the author describes installing an extension, and uses the miniT extension (an extension that allows drag-and-drop tab placement) as a sample extension to install. The author begins by directing the browser to the extensions site, installing the extension, and configuring the extension once the browser has recognized it. From there the author discusses installing from sites other than the Mozilla Extensions site, installing from a local file, and using the extensions manager to track and configure extensions. As someone who has installed many extensions that proved less than useful, or prevented Firefox from even starting properly, the next section on uninstalling and entering Firefox's safe-mode could prove profile-saving. (I have had several occasions where knowing about safe-mode would have saved me a half-hour's work in rebuilding my profile). The author moves from this introductory material to a list of his personal favorite extensions. Unless the reader has an RSS feed tuned to the Mozilla Extensions site, there's bound to be several extensions that the reader will find useful. (I downloaded the Spellbound Spell Check, and Download Status bar extensions during the course of this review).
Of course no book on the secrets of Firefox would be complete without mentioning about:config. about:config holds a treasure-trove of configurable options for Firefox, many of which are not self-evident without a guide of some form. Firefox secrets does not provide a comprehensive look at about:config, but instead shows what about:config is, shows how to use it, and presents a few neat tips that can be set by about:config. Other somewhat hidden preference features include the .css and .js files under the user profile. Firefox Secrets quickly glosses over some key tips, such as CSS examples for marking unread tabs, and shifting the sidebar to the right. Also included are tips for customizing the user interface, and incorporating web development features which developers will no doubt find extremely handy in their daily development rituals. The book finishes off with best practices for downloading and using the Firefox nightly builds, and what sorts of issues to expect.
Some people out there may feel that Firefox Secrets doesn't offer any tips that can't be found on the web. It's a fair assessment that some of the ideas presented in the book should be pretty routine for expert Firefox users. However, unless you have RSS feeds to every Mozilla development site, and maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of every configurable doo-dad and Extension, you'll likely find many good tips and best practices for enhancing your browsing experience. I'll admit I was skeptical this book would provide me anything of value, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how insightful this book is. Firefox Secrets balances between beginning users who have yet to install their first extension, and experts who want to take their browsing to the next level."
You can purchase Firefox Secrets from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Firefox Secrets presents the material in a well thought out manner. Each chapter starts with a specific task in mind, with helpful tips in performing that task listed throughout the rest of the chapter. In the chapter entitled "Revisiting Web Pages" (something we are all bound to do at some time in our lives), Firefox Secrets starts the chapter with sections on importing bookmarks from other programs, creating new bookmarks, and using the bookmark manager. (Pretty basic stuff which most Slashdot readers have no doubt mastered). The power, though, lies in the rest of the chapter, where the book lists out how to add a bookmark for a group of tabs, how to create several types of keyword bookmark, how to use the bookmarks tool bar, and how to use the bookmark manager and sidebar. It then talks about Firefox's RSS and Live bookmarks, and how to create them using the RSS icon, and create them manually. Finally the chapter finishes off with the cookie and history managers, as well as the password manager. Each section is described in detail with clear directions on how to use the feature, and clear explanations on why readers would want to use the feature.
Expert users need not worry, though, as this book has plenty for them too. One of the more powerful features of Firefox are the Extensions, which allow incredible recognizability in Firefox. The chapter on Extensions starts with an introduction to what Extensions are, and why they're so important. Next the author describes installing an extension, and uses the miniT extension (an extension that allows drag-and-drop tab placement) as a sample extension to install. The author begins by directing the browser to the extensions site, installing the extension, and configuring the extension once the browser has recognized it. From there the author discusses installing from sites other than the Mozilla Extensions site, installing from a local file, and using the extensions manager to track and configure extensions. As someone who has installed many extensions that proved less than useful, or prevented Firefox from even starting properly, the next section on uninstalling and entering Firefox's safe-mode could prove profile-saving. (I have had several occasions where knowing about safe-mode would have saved me a half-hour's work in rebuilding my profile). The author moves from this introductory material to a list of his personal favorite extensions. Unless the reader has an RSS feed tuned to the Mozilla Extensions site, there's bound to be several extensions that the reader will find useful. (I downloaded the Spellbound Spell Check, and Download Status bar extensions during the course of this review).
Of course no book on the secrets of Firefox would be complete without mentioning about:config. about:config holds a treasure-trove of configurable options for Firefox, many of which are not self-evident without a guide of some form. Firefox secrets does not provide a comprehensive look at about:config, but instead shows what about:config is, shows how to use it, and presents a few neat tips that can be set by about:config. Other somewhat hidden preference features include the .css and .js files under the user profile. Firefox Secrets quickly glosses over some key tips, such as CSS examples for marking unread tabs, and shifting the sidebar to the right. Also included are tips for customizing the user interface, and incorporating web development features which developers will no doubt find extremely handy in their daily development rituals. The book finishes off with best practices for downloading and using the Firefox nightly builds, and what sorts of issues to expect.
Some people out there may feel that Firefox Secrets doesn't offer any tips that can't be found on the web. It's a fair assessment that some of the ideas presented in the book should be pretty routine for expert Firefox users. However, unless you have RSS feeds to every Mozilla development site, and maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of every configurable doo-dad and Extension, you'll likely find many good tips and best practices for enhancing your browsing experience. I'll admit I was skeptical this book would provide me anything of value, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how insightful this book is. Firefox Secrets balances between beginning users who have yet to install their first extension, and experts who want to take their browsing to the next level."
You can purchase Firefox Secrets from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
In the old days of Slashdot, that would've been "Most readers have probably worked on Firefox" Sheesh, this place really is on the way down.
While I can understand writing a book about a web browser, shouln't it be a webpage that teaches how to use it interactively?
I like Firefox, but at what point is something so extendible that it's to confusing?
I normally use Opera, and love the features it has. I've been able to make Firefox mimic Opera in functionality, but I was somewhat overwhelmed by ALL of the plugins.
I figure if someone who is fairly sophisticated technically is overwhelmed then God help someone like my wife or my co-workers (sorry, this is slashdot, my "cow-orkers"). They would be completely confused!
Open source is great, but now we need to have some time spent to "friendlyify" it for people who are between being a newbie and a power user.
Some people out there may feel that Firefox Secrets doesn't offer any tips that can't be found on the web. It's a fair assessment that some of the ideas presented in the book should be pretty routine for expert Firefox users.
This is a hardcopy book to be sold in bookstores to normal people.
It makes the information plainly available to lots of people.
At least, that's the way I look at it.
Disable back/forward caching in about:config:
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers 0
Enables trimming Firefox memory usage when you minimize all Firefox windows:
config.trim_on_minimize true
Though there is a section on about:config and the .css & .js files, is there any information here that could not be found with 2 minutes of your time and google? I doubt it. And, this book, unlike the information you can find using google, will be out of date in a matter of months.
<shrugs> I'm not saying this book is bad.. I'm just saying that the author of this review doesn't seem to understand what an "expert" is. From the review, I see little here that most /.'ers won't already know.
/dev/random
Talking of firefox extensions this one is a must have https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=1457 It lets you see thumbnails of your open webpages.
seems like 90% of the book is things most of us know already.. I for one wish it went over CSS and JS hacks more and the different things you can do.
And perhaps explain some of the options and values in about:config (stuff that's not easily recognized from the name)
Are there some secrets that will keep my Firefox stable? ;-)
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
I'd sooner use the cancelled Internet Explorer...
FYI, your worm-laden machine silently posted this without your knowledge. Perhaps you should stick to surfing with MS Word.
For those who do extensive research using a browser, Firefox has serious problems. Opening and closing many Firefox windows and tabs causes crashes and CPU and memory hogging. That kind of heavy user often sees Firefox using 99% CPU and/or more than 400 Megabytes. See these Information Week articles:
Firefox 1.5: Not Ready For Prime Time?
Firefox 1.5 Stability Problems? Readers And Mozilla Respond
The problems are the same in the Mozilla browser. Both have had a CPU and memory hogging bug for more than 2 1/2 years.
The evidence is that Mozilla leaders don't care. Quote from the second article linked above: "Schroepfer and Beard admitted that Mozilla is not working on any of the problems in our bulleted list except for the high memory usage issue. So problems like high CPU usage, program freezes and lock-ups, and long pauses before a tab or the browser opens from hyperlink clicks in other applications might not be fixed in the next version of the program."
For both Firefox and the Mozilla browser, there is a lot of talk about crashes and how to avoid them. Here are some quotes about crashes from the Known Issues for SeaMonkey 1.0 Beta page:
"A significant number of SeaMonkey crashes are actually caused by Java. Please make sure you are using the latest available version of Java."
"Sun's JRE will crash at startup if your useragent does not begin with Mozilla/5."
"Some SeaMonkey crashes are actually caused by Flash. Please make sure you are using the latest available Flash plugin (Bug 211213)."
"On Windows the Adobe SVG plugin crashes. Workaround: Don't copy it (NPSVG3.dll, NPSVG3.zip) into your plugins folder. If you want to view SVGs, SeaMonkey builds (except Linux GTK1) include native SVG support. (Bug 133567)"
Mozilla developers refuse to consider bugs that bug reporters cannot characterize completely. See this Slashdot comment: Leadership problem? See this list of excuses: 1) Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly version. 2) Yes, this bug exists, but it isn't important. 3) No one has posted a TalkBack report. (If they read the bug report, they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too.) 4) If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. 5) This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. (The other bugs aren't specified.) 6) You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. 7) I don't like the way you worded your report. 8) You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself.
The thing to keep in mind that the target audience for this book is not going to be a a power-user who reads Slashdot.org twice-daily and hooks up a webcam to watch the office coffee maker from their cubicle.
This is the sort of book that you put in your parents, relatives, or friends stocking to introduce them to Firefox and make it super-easy for them to get started.
- The Publisher.
http://sitepoint.com/books/firefox1/ (4 Free Sample Chapters Available).
P.S. The book includes a CDROM with Firefox, Thunderbird, and all the extensions mentioned in the title.
_______________
add {
extension:ridiculous body kit
extension:Big-Ass Wing
extension:18" rims w/spinners
extension:ground effect lighting
extension:thumpin' stereo
extension:in-dash DVD player
extension:VTEC sticker
extension:fake boost gauges
extension:fire extinguisher (fake, to hold your Ecstasy/weed)
extension:remote starter
extension:suicide doors (or scissor doors)
extension:wiper fluid nozzle lights
extension:extra chrome
extension:calvin peeing on something sticker
extension:some type of rear window sticker proclaiming you to be a bling-bling homey
extension:some type of sticker with kanji on it (that you can't read)
extension:Momo or Recaro seats with multi-point seatbelts (which you don't wear)
extension:under-dash LED or neon lights that plug into the cigarette lighter (for that touch of class)
}
et voila, a ricer Firefox!
I think they call it 'Flock.'
I don't see the point. Toolbar, webadres , thats it. Some people are just to verbose for me.
Windows x64 edition versions here.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
Windows moderators bring on the OT mods all you want, the *nix-running mods will appreciate this shit.
It's a good review, but the book seems a little misconceived. How many people are really going to spend $25-30 on a book about how to use a web-browser? The market must be very small. I could understand if the book was about how to program a browser and get in real deep but the book doesn't sound as if it might appeal to such readers. Using a web-browser is not that hard, and if it is hard then the chances are good that the browser has been poorly designed (certainly not the case with Firefox). That said, maybe the best Firefox tip is to switch over to Opera, at least until the Firefox team get the memory usage under control. It's a real drag on more modestly specced PCs.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
And a nickel would get you a three course dinner!
Comment of the year
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well you're right on one account, I wouldn't let Windows handle my certificates if I didn't absolutely have to. And its not that IE integrates with windows bookmarks, IE is Windows bookmarks.
( I
-Firefox could have stopped the Kennedy assassination, had it not slept late that day
-Firefox has a secret button that converts all your web requests to look like you're using your company's timekeeping system
-Firefox killed a hobo with a brick
How about copy/paste crapping out?
I see this happening after having an instance or two open for a couple of days with 6-12 tabs.
I notice it mostly when using Google Maps; I'll try to copy/paste an address from another tab into maps and vice versa and it seems it has stopped working. Pasting into other apps or going from other apps and pasting into Firefox doesn't work. It affects all tabs and nothing helps but quitting all instances of Firefox and restarting it.
Maybe your firefox 1.5 crashes all the time, Mine however doesnt. My version stuff gives me this "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051220 Firefox/1.5". I find alot of the time when people's firefox is crashing all the time that they have 1 to many extensions, or a buggy extension. Good luck tracing down the problem.
This is an attitude that's bugged me to no end.
/. doesn't actively promote it. If you really want to save your eleven cents and make sure your money goes to stupid patents, then I'm sure you can find Amazon on your own.
Cheaper is cheaper. Why is it that so many people consider cheaper to be the ONLY criterion for shopping? Customer service? Ethics of the company? Convenience? Nope, if it's not cheaper, we're not buying it.
Given Amazon's long history of questionable behaviour, I think it's GOOD that
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
"... occasional crash due to mem leaks after ff has been running for days..."
That's the problem that occurs for people who do a lot of research using Firefox.
The article is a bit confused, that's true. Actually, the CPU use becomes essentially 100% even though Firefox is completely idle, slowing all programs and the operating system to a crawl.
You may be right, but it's really too bad that the typical digg submission makes the typical Slashdot submission look like a Graduate thesis.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
In the good old days Firefox wasn't crippled by the gtk file dialogs and the insane gnome ui "design".
The Farewell Tour II
Mozilla browser (SeaMonkey) has the SAME problem with CPU and memory hogging.
You said, "I'm not saying there aren't problems that need to be acknowledged..."
First, I am very thankful for Firefox. I am very thankful that we have open source developers.
However, maybe there is a need for change. Maybe the Mozilla Foundation needs better leadership and someone to raise money so that important issues that aren't favored by volunteers can be addressed.
Second, look what you've done. It seemed in the beginning of your comment that you were giving an informed answer. However, in fact your answer is completely uninformed about the issue to which you were responding. You didn't read the articles in Information Week, and you apparently have no theory about why there are such SERIOUS problems in Mozilla browser and Firefox.
Some bugs are very difficult to characterize. Those require a developer to be a true scientist. However, Firefox developers apparently look for bugs that are easy to fix. Bugs such as this one, which is now more than 2 1/2 years old, are ignored.
You said, "... too many people file bugs and then can't give us the answers we need."
No developer has asked me for more information, but they have marked the CPU and memory hogging bug reports as invalid.
You said, "If you use awful grammar and difficult-to-read style, well, why do you expect us to put hours into fixing a bug when you don't bother to spend 5 minutes properly reporting it?"
Every month I make part of my living as a writer, and have done so for more than 18 years. I did a very clear test using both Windows XP and Linux, and found the same problem.
You said, "... many users use extensions, which basically invalidate their bug reports since we can't possibly debug under the effects of the many changes extensions make, ESPECIALLY if we don't know what extensions and versions of extensions you're using."
As many other people have asked, why is it possible that an extension can crash all open windows and tabs in Mozilla or Firefox browsers? Shouldn't the browser reject use of the extension, rather than just crashing?
You said, "It takes the user 5 minutes to try a nightly. I think asking the user to get a nightly build is reasonable."
Again you have shown that you didn't bother to inform yourself about the issue being discussed. My best guess is that NO developer has bothered to read the bug reports I've filed. Once developers realize that it won't be easy to characterize or fix, they give some excuse, and mark the bug invalid. That's been my experience.
It sometimes takes DAYS to re-create the bug. The bug happens during normal use. Many people leave Firefox open during the time they are researching a subject, so they can come back to their research as they left it. Then, when Firefox crashes, or begins taking all the CPU power or begins using so much memory that the hard drive thrashes, they lose all of their work!
You said, "Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the userbase."
That's a new excuse! I've added it as number nine in my list. That excuse does NOT apply here. The CPU and memory hogging bug is being discussed publicly in long articles you apparently didn't read.
Nothing you said will make this subject go away! The problem has received lots of attention from the public, and the attention is building.
If you have no serious interest in a subject, please don't post comments. Please don't use Slashdot as a way of acting out anger. Please don't pretend to have an interest in a subject so that you can have a platform for expressing annoyance.
This is an outrage! I say you demand your money back.
Firefox has problems. So does IE. So does Opera.
As a professional web developer, I care very much about browsers. I also deal with demanding users such as yourself who nitpick and who are on some kind of power trip or something. Think about it: is someone who is coding an application for you on their free time going to spend even ten minutes reading a badly reported problem? I sure wouldn't, not when there are ten other things I can fix that are just as important to someone else. You do the most good you can do in the shortest amount of time and move on.
You may be frustrated, but you won't get anywhere assuming you submit bug reports with this same tone. I'd venture that many Mozilla developers are professional developers who do Mozdev on their own time, and probably get enough of that crap at work. It's a web browser, not a car or a space shuttle or a nuclear power plant. Deal with it, fix it, or move on to something else. Personally, I have gripes with Firefox, but I deal with them. If something better came out, I don't know about you, but I'd be all over it. But the fact that you typed this in the first place shows that you haven't found anything better. Stop trying to rake people over the coals.
blah blah blah
That's what he's refering to likely. Many of them come out with a new edition every year, or every other year. Ok, so this is needed for, say, modern history but I am talking about calculus here. When I took freshman calc, I had to buy a new book. There were no used ones available, because it was a new edition. At the end of the year, I tried to sell my book back and was turned down, you see there was a new edition comming out next year.
Ok what the fuck? This is introductory calc, that shit hasn't changed much since Newton first unveiled it to the world, and not at all in the 20th century. NOTHING changed in teh span of one year.
Well I had a look at the new edition as compared to mine. The changes were nothing but superficial. Chapters were shuffled, questions were renumbered, with some new ones intruduced. There might have been some corrections or whatnot, but the parts I looked at the text and diagrams were the exact same.
It's a real racket, and that's on top of the already high prices.
You're almost certainly trolling, but I'll reply to some points anyway.
Some bugs are very difficult to characterize. Those require a developer to be a true scientist. However, Firefox developers apparently look for bugs that are easy to fix. Bugs such as this one, which is now more than 2 1/2 years old, are ignored.
I think everybody believes it's many bugs that add up to cause the problems users see, not just one single bug. That makes it much harder to track down the individual issues.
It's insulting and ignorant to claim that developers ignore the hard bugs.
No developer has asked me for more information, but they have marked the CPU and memory hogging bug reports as invalid.
There's probably a reason (if only that your bug report is the same as hundreds of others and equally useless). Care to post bug #s?
Every month I make part of my living as a writer, and have done so for more than 18 years. I did a very clear test using both Windows XP and Linux, and found the same problem.
People sometimes write novels for bug reports, with great detail about the useless tests they conducted and irrelevant statistics they measured during the test. That doesn't make them good or valid.
You said, "Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the userbase."
That's a new excuse! I've added it as number nine in my list. That excuse does NOT apply here. The CPU and memory hogging bug is being discussed publicly in long articles you apparently didn't read.
You didn't specify what bugs you were talking about. I don't think people would say huge leaks are unimportant, but many people file pointless bugs or bugs on things that could just as well be considered features. I was responding in a generic way to your generic "excuse".
You didn't read the articles in Information Week, and you apparently have no theory about why there are such SERIOUS problems in Mozilla browser and Firefox.
I read the articles (they didn't say anything interesting). I read multiple forums where people talk about Firefox leaks. I know what issues people complain about. But users just go on and on about the same symptoms, never providing specific testcases that reproduce issues. Multiple people often decide that they're experiencing the same bug when they clearly are not. They perceive changes between releases that don't exist (e.g. claiming certain changes occurred between 1.0.6 and 1.0.7 that, if you look at the code, could not have). Addressing complaints on issues like these tends to be a hopeless task.
If you could just create one page that, when reloaded repeatedly demonstrated increasing memory usage, that would be incredibly helpful. A testcase in which you load a page in a tab, close the tab, and repeat to demonstrate increasing memory usage would also probably be useful. But nobody does.
You claim it can take days to reproduce the bug, and it happens through normal use. Well, steps to reproduce such as "surf for a day" for you might be checking forums for new trolls about why Firefox is bad. For someone else, it might be contributing to Wikipedia articles. For another user it might be using LXR to trace through some code. Even if a developer DOES experience the problem, how does he/she track it down? Tools such as valgrind make the browser run 100x slower while being debugged - can you possibly surf for a week like that? Other tools give you too much data to have the slightest hope of wading through it all to find the problems. It's a hard problem. People DO work on it, and memory leaks are constantly being fixed. But there are probably a lot of them, and they all take time.
The article talks about setting a specific memory cache size... if you read the source code, you'd know that Gecko is smart enough to already pick cache sizes based on the amount of RAM you have, AND it picks small values - if I remember correctly, SMALLER than the ones suggested in the article. The author of the article probably saw the tweak mentioned on some forum where nobody bothers to conduct scientific comparisons.
My server