The Secrets of Firefox about:config

jcatcw writes "While Firefox is very customizable, many of its settings aren't in the Options. Each setting is named and stored as a string, integer, or Boolean in a file called prefs.js and accessed via about:config from the nav bar. Computerworld provides instructions on 20 tweaks for speeding up page loads, making tabs behave, reducing memory drain, and generally making the interface act the way you want it to. Customization also comes through the must-have FF extensions (but be sure to skip these)."

Comments

While it's nice..

[microbee]

Do not tune stuff that is hidden unless you know what you are doing.

Re:While it's nice..

[Yvan256]

That's why I prefer Opera. If you think Firefox is bad, try it on OS X.

Re:While it's nice..

[Anonymous Coward]

I particularly love the "pipelining" part. Send requests before getting valid acknowledgments from previous requests. ...

It's rude, annoying and breaks the rules/protocol.

From RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1) section 8.1.1:

HTTP requests and responses can be pipelined on a connection. Pipelining allows a client to make multiple requests without waiting for each response, allowing a single TCP connection to be used much more efficiently, with much lower elapsed time.

Re:While it's nice..

[MrNaz]

Whoa Nelly! Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

Re:While it's nice..

[MrNaz]

If it's valid behavior according to the protocol, and it's faster, and it's not bad nettiquette, then why, pray tell, isn't it on by default?

Re:While it's nice..

[maxume]

It isn't faster for everybody, it doesn't work with all servers...

Re:While it's nice..

[MedicinalMan]

Nice how they have to tell you exactly where to find the prefs.js How about a disclaimer: "If you can't find the file without installing an extension, leave it alone"

Re:While it's nice..

[SailorFrag]

This is a tactic spammers use with mail servers. It's rude, annoying and breaks the rules/protocol.

RFC 2920 is the SMTP extension for pipelining. Pipelining is a perfectly valid strategy to reduce the time it takes to send mail by reducing the number of round-trips.

What's rude is violating the RFC that says that certain round-trips are required and the spammers tend to violate those rules (such as asking if a message body can be sent before actually sending it, and waiting for the server's introduction message before the client introduces itself). Pipelining itself is actually quite good.

I won't comment on HTTP pipelining because someone else did already.

Re:While it's nice..

[smittyoneeach]

http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#in-place-imp ort
Install Subversion, and use it on your config files.
Subversion: it's not just for projects anymore.

Re:While it's nice..

[jesser]

If it's valid behavior according to the protocol, and it's faster, and it's not bad nettiquette, then why, pray tell, isn't it on by default?

Because some servers violate the protocol by responding incorrectly to pipelined requests. At least, that was the reason 2 years ago.

Re:While it's nice..

[hahafaha]

So if these options really make pages load faster, offer less memory drain, and even feed the dog, why aren't they a part of the settings to begin with?

Basically, because, although they may give more speed, they have drawbacks as well. Your question is like asking, ``If people can overclock their processors to so much faster, why isn't it overclocked by default?''

Re:While it's nice..

[RobertM1968]

Why? He's 100% right! Just follow the instructions and you are all set with no chance of there being problems. You see, the instructions on that web page clearly state in bold letters: "Keep a log of everything you change, or make backups."

So, either:

• Firefox acts weird or doesnt run at all, and you restore prefs.js from backup and have no problems
• or it worsens performance, and you restore from backup and have no problems
• or it improves performance and you happily surf away and have no problems

So, because he is correct, he's a fanboy? With IE, you run the possibility of having to do much more than restore a preferences file if you hose something. With Firefox, if you follow the instructions (and something goes wrong), it takes you a few extra seconds to restore the file to original state and "nothing major" happens (other than a wasted few minutes in total trying the tweaks).

So, if he's a fanboy, what does that make you? Just curious.

Re:While it's nice..

[bunratty]

Firefox, while better than IE7, is a fucking hog and getting worse by the release. Why should users, who are already iffy about switching to Firefox, have to go through archaic setup commands in order to have the browser work well?

Firefox works well with the default settings. If you have to go into about:config and twiddle parameters, there is something very wrong with your Firefox setup. Try creating a new profile and see if that fixes the problems. In reality, the settings suggested in the article can slow Firefox down (by setting the initial paint delay too low), cause sites not to display properly (by using pipelining with servers that don't understand it), and get you blocked from servers (by setting the maximum connections way up). You can avoid all that trouble by sticking with the defaults.

Re:While it's nice..

[sortius_nod]

you mean the wrong side of Dig?

Re:While it's nice..

[adrianmonk]

Because some servers violate the protocol by responding incorrectly to pipelined requests. At least, that was the reason 2 years ago.

That was the reason something like 5 years ago. Or maybe even longer. Browsers have had support for pipelining for quite some time, and it's always been labeled as "experimental". The odd thing about this is, it is always claimed this is a really beneficial optimization, but based purely on what browsers recommend, it appears we are not converging towards ever putting it in common use.

I really don't know much about this, but I'm curious: Is server support better than it used to be? Or has it not made much progress? Does the "experimental" warning exist because there are still some servers out there running really old HTTP servers (NCSA httpd 1.4 or something), or are there current versions of mainstream servers that still have issues with it? Or (worse), is there a way web apps themselves could have issues with it? In short, does anyone know what the real status is with HTTP pipelining?

Re:While it's nice..

[jlarocco]

The GGP post wasn't talking about the modifications mentioned in the article, he was talking about about:config changes in general. Obviously, the article isn't going to have "dangerous" about:config tweaks. But then the GP chimed in that more or less no matter what you do, Firefox will handle the changes admirably, which just isn't true. And so, for completely ignoring facts and blindly posting incorrect, positive comments anyway, I said he's a fanboy.

As for the other part of my comment, it's exactly the "ignore the facts in favor of blind praise" type people who drove me away from Firefox. Question anything about their precious, and they take it as a direct personal insult. I'm not joining a religion, I just want a web browser. Every project has them, but somehow Firefox seems to get the lion's share.

So, if he's a fanboy, what does that make you? Just curious.

I guess I'm just a guy who doesn't like bullshit.

Re:While it's nice..

[Yoozer]

If you have to go into about:config and twiddle parameters, there is something very wrong with your Firefox setup.

• The "oomph" noise when you can't find something. Nowhere in the Windows sound scheme. Nowhere in the regular settings. Why?
• Old style tabs - I don't want closing buttons on every tab, I prefer the 1.5 way of handling things.
• 30+ tabs on a screen without having it absorb 'm in a list, I prefer the 1.5 way of handling things.
• (something I haven't killed yet) - the entirely superfluous usage of the apostrophe button to bring up another method of search. No, I don't care if it's handier for vi users.

If you're going to make design changes, give users the option to switch if they want to. Hiding it in about:config is like saying you can adjust it if you just looked in the poorly lit, derelict closet of the cellar with a door saying "Beware of the tiger".

Re:While it's nice..

[jhol13]

Neat. I have been waiting years for e.g. Gnome to store all configuration changes into a VCS. And not only Gnome related but also those in /etc.

This way I could put change labels "This change is because XXX" and rollback to know working set would be much easier.

Re:While it's nice..

[PMBjornerud]

Because it won't work everywhere. Now, have a look at teh original post again...

Smart admins will typically put a filter on With this attitude, you know there are some 'smart' admins out there that have filtered out this rude spec.

Re:While it's nice..

[Zoxed]

> Do not tune stuff that is hidden unless you know what you are doing.

s/Insightful/Redundant/

This is Slashdot: we all think we know we are doing :-)

Re:While it's nice..

[gerrysteele]

A long time ago in a desktop far far away... I used Opera. It was back on windows 98, and eventually XP for a short while and it was awesome.

I then moved to Suse linux about 4 years ago, on which I used Opera ok. Recently I've been running Ubuntu and Opera just doesn't work very well. To my mind it seems to be a threading problem...

I would love to know if anyone else had this issue. It just seems to buckle when a lot of things were going on at once, which is exactly where it excelled on windows.

Re:While it's nice..

[fuzzix]

Do not tune stuff that is hidden unless you know what you are doing.

Is this comment really needed for a website full of Linux geeks? It is not as if this is the Microsoft Bob forum.

It sure is. They rolled out that old pipelining chestnut on page 5. This crap simply exhausts the maximum number of requests a server can handle more quickly. If the server isn't throttling individual connections (and I don't have one configured which does this) then it's probably a complete waste of time and bandwidth. It also makes you a very bad netizen for the sake of a two second wait.

Also, the article is called "Hacking Firefox". This is sure to attract all those who think they know what they're doing and get them all pumped up... They'll just change every value on there - "Whoah, I'm hacking the shit out of this thing!"

I'm tired of "hack" abuse... Even more irritating than the mainstream media's use or the term to mean cracking is the tech media's use to mean "configuring" or "maintaining" or "administering". Some jerkoff takes a few vitamins and he's biohacking. "Yeah, I totally hacked my brain by sleeping an extra 20 minutes"... Hack this, hack that. I realise it makes you believe you're attractive and can ride a skateboard without breaking your jaw but it's getting a little old. Every little adventure in the world (online or off) is not worthy of the word "hack".

Re:While it's nice..

[bytesex]

it's exactly the "ignore the facts in favor of blind praise" type people who drove me away from Firefox.

Hm. I can only say that if life seems empty, perhaps you could find hobby. I hear those computers can be fun. Oh and look - the sun is shining !

Re:While it's nice..

[dhalgren]

If all the Firefox users didn't jump off a cliff, would you?

Just wondering.

(In other words, you're letting others make your decisions for you, and admitting as much in public.)

Torben

Re:While it's nice..

[phaunt]

• (something I haven't killed yet) - the entirely superfluous usage of the apostrophe button to bring up another method of search. No, I don't care if it's handier for vi users.

Setting 'accessibility.typeaheadfind' to true allows you to start finding as soon as you type, without having to press apostrophe.

I've also set 'accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly' to true, so that just starting to type only finds hyperlinks (as was the case in Mozilla); for finding any text, I press '/' (slash). Very useful for keyboard navigation.

By the way, I also set 'accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar' to 0 (zero), probably because the default value was annoying.

Re:While it's nice..

[bunratty]

I can see you wanted to change some parameters to make Firefox work exactly the way you want. But which of those settings did you have to change to make Firefox work well? Anyway, I'm sure someone can write an extension to give those parameters a user interface if lots of Firefox users feel the same way.

Re:While it's nice..

[TFGeditor]

It never fails: Somebody posts something accurate and insightful (such as the parent), and the fanboyz trot out the mod points (how the hell they get them, I'll never understand) and mod the heretic/dissenter into oblivion.

Firefox DOES get more bloated with each release.

Firefox DOES have a huge memory leak, has had it throughout a number of releases going back at least a couple of years, and the developers choose to do nothing about it in favor of adding more whistles and shiny things.

Configuring Firefox to take advantage of the things that make it superior to IE IS clumsy and archaic, and the reason more "average users" will never adopt it.

I love and use Firefox. I use IE only for must-visit sites that work only with IE. That does not change the fact that Firefox is far from the perfect browser, and denying that fact does not change it.

Re:While it's nice..

[smittyoneeach]

Your point is an important one.
However, one might also argue that, as long as you're going to get into versioning stuff, Subversion makes a good general-purpose choice. When you want to get into coding projects, Subversion is ready to take the load.
Who wants to learn Yet Another Command Set?

Re:While it's nice..

[Torvaun]

Huh, I read that as being 'Even if you completely trash everything, you're only a 30 second restore away from being back to normal.' There's no harm to the OS, the biggest things you could lose are saved passwords, and that's it. It's not a matter of 'This program is so damn robust it can take all the punishment you can serve it,' it's a matter of 'Whoops, I trashed it. Restore.'

Re:While it's nice..

[Yvan256]

You really haven't tried both Firefox and Opera on OS X if you think Opera feels less native than Firefox.

At least with Opera the page forms don't look like they're from Windows 98.

Re:While it's nice..

[reed]

I actually like using bzr (http://www.bazaar-vcs.org) for version control on local files. I use it for code and configs and just random text files. You don't need to commit to any server, the whole version history is stored locally. bind it to a parent repository on a remote server if you want, or you you can pull it (like a checkout) from any other machine over ssh. (so two backup options there) Such checkouts are treated as branches and can be easily merged back to the parent branch, or sibling branches, etc.

Re:While it's nice..

[oglueck]

I prefer git for versioning on a local directory.

Re:While it's nice..

[JM78]

Do not tune stuff that is hidden unless you know what you are doing.

Hrm; it seems to me one might learn something from doing just to opposite. I for one learn best through meddling, breaking and then figuring out how to fix it (although it's not always so peachy). Telling those who don't know what they're doing to never bother amounts to encouraging overall ignorance. I don't find that to be a good thing let alone insightful (mod points).

I personally would opt for something along the lines of, "Tuning unfamiliar settings can corrupt an application's ability to function properly. Do so at your own risk."

Just my 2 cents.

Re:While it's nice..

[NightFears]

Not only do they respond incorrectly, but there are also servers that simply don't allow you to pipeline anything to the output stream. I have a first-hand knowledge in this, as I was trying to use this technique - to only find out that there is no way you can flush the data out of a servlet in the Oracle Application Server. All that in direct violation with the Servlets standard, of course, but who cares. Hard stop.

Re:While it's nice..

[LiquidFire_HK]

• (something I haven't killed yet) - the entirely superfluous usage of the apostrophe button to bring up another method of search. No, I don't care if it's handier for vi users.

I, for one, find it very useful. And I don't see how this can annoy you - what else would you rather the apostrophe do? What I mean is, if you don't want the links-only search, then just don't press the apostrophe. Your other points may be valid, but this one seems to me completely out of place.

Re:While it's nice..

[RobertM1968]

The GGP post wasn't talking about the modifications mentioned in the article, he was talking about about:config changes in general. Obviously, the article isn't going to have "dangerous" about:config tweaks. But then the GP chimed in that more or less no matter what you do, Firefox will handle the changes admirably, which just isn't true. And so, for completely ignoring facts and blindly posting incorrect, positive comments anyway, I said he's a fanboy.

I dont see anywhere in his post where he infers that. And regardless, whatever you do using about:config, if you have that backup, then his point is correct.

As for the other part of my comment, it's exactly the "ignore the facts in favor of blind praise" type people who drove me away from Firefox. Question anything about their precious, and they take it as a direct personal insult. I'm not joining a religion, I just want a web browser. Every project has them, but somehow Firefox seems to get the lion's share.

So, you are saying that because you think he and others subscribe to the "ignore the facts in favor of blind praise" category, that you would be childish enough to not evaluate the situation yourself and come to your own conclusion? And please dont claim now that that isnt what you meant - it is exactly what you said: "it's exactly the "ignore the facts in favor of blind praise" type people who drove me away from Firefox. "

So, if he's a fanboy, what does that make you? Just curious.

I guess I'm just a guy who doesn't like bullshit.

Ah, so much so, that you admit to bullshit yourself? So much so, that you decided you thus cannot evaluate the software yourself to come up with your own opinion? So much so, that you assume that just because there are fanboys out there, with fanboy attitudes (not claiming the GGP was such), that you are unwilling to use Firefox? If your comment and stance on such things were anywhere near mature - much less a good way of determining such things, then no one would use IE, Windows or Linux - as each have their fanboy communities.

Here's the other part I suspect you are missing. Each such community's fanboys are probably right on many points, regardless of what reason they came to them. Just because a fanboy says something doesnt mean... well, anything. You obviously have a brain... use it to make your own conclusions. It doesnt matter what a fanboy, zealot or even a well informed/educated tech geek thinks. In such things, their thoughts are irrelevant. As an example, I despise (most versions of) Windows (Vista, XP, ME, 98, 95, 3.x)... but the truth is, for many people it is the appropriate solution to their needs - even for me, there are tasks I prefer to do in Windows, over doing in Linux, eComStation or on a Mac. When I came to that decision, it wasnt based on what a fanboy or fanboys said - and it wasnt even based on a comparison of the technical strengths of the OS's. It was based on best tool for the job. It's like comparing a motorcycle to a pickup truck. If it's snowing out (or I have a lot of groceries to bring back from the supermarket), guess which I would pick? The faster, smoother riding, far more fuel efficient, far more enjoyable to ride one? Nope. The one that suits the task at hand - the pickup.

Thinking for oneself seems to be a commodity few people want to buy anymore. You should try it though. And not because I am a "thinking for oneself" fanboy (though I am), but because you may like the results.

Re:While it's nice..

[jlarocco]

So, you are saying that because you think he and others subscribe to the "ignore the facts in favor of blind praise" category, that you would be childish enough to not evaluate the situation yourself and come to your own conclusion? And please dont claim now that that isnt what you meant - it is exactly what you said: "it's exactly the "ignore the facts in favor of blind praise" type people who drove me away from Firefox. "

Oh don't worry, that's exactly what I meant. To clarify, I'm saying that I've heard one too many people argue that Firefox using 5 times more memory than any other browsers is a "feature". Been told to replace my relatively new hardware one too many times after saying Firefox is slow and unresponsive. And been flamed more times than I can count for questioning Firefox's standards compliance. If I were the only person saying those things, I would deserve the flaming. But I'm not, and I still get flamed.

It's not all bad. There are many logical, thoughtful people who will actually think about complaints they hear, but they're much less vocal than the zealots.

Thinking for oneself seems to be a commodity few people want to buy anymore. You should try it though. And not because I am a "thinking for oneself" fanboy (though I am), but because you may like the results.

See, that's the thing, I am thinking for myself. Maybe, just maybe, it's the people flaming me for perceived insults against Firefox or its "community" who aren't thinking for themselves? I have a hard time believing that I'm the one blindly following group think here.

Re:While it's nice..

[RobertM1968]

Thanks for clarifying... makes a lot more sense now.

But, nonetheless, I would still have evaluated the situation myself, your reasons not withstanding.

Yes, Firefox does (appear to) use more memory. It used to have a very big memory leak - which has since been near eradicated (confirmed through testing and reading other's results). It appears to take more memory to run - but this is because, unlike IE, it doesnt use the already loaded IE components to run. IE takes as much memory, but many core functions are also used by the OS and thus already loaded, thus opening an IE window doesnt increase the memory usage as much as opening a Firefox window. This might be reason to choose IE over Firefox based off memory requirements/availability - but otherwise (to me) is a moot point (especially when considered memory bloat, which the situation is definitely not). Firefox uses far more memory to cache objects and (historical) pages than IE... then again, IE uses far more disk space (regardless of what you tell it to do) to cache the same. Thus, to me, this aspect of memory usage is also irrelevant; both browsers allow you to delete the caches and free the memory and/or disk space utilized. A winning aspect for Firefox on this, is, (as noted in the article referenced in the original post) you can control how much memory Firefox uses for each aspect of web surfing - and Firefox adheres to these rules - while IE does not. A few hundred meg to a gig or two of temp files seems to be the norm for IE after intensive surfing regardless of what settings you choose in IE, forcing you to pull up the Internet options and delete the cached info. Firefox wins when it comes to that as well - a lot less clicks to do the same thing, and easier to find "Tools -> Clear Private Data", and a lot more user control as to what data/cache info you delete.

Firefox (for me) wins in respect to conforming (better) to web standards... something MS still has not managed to match. Yes, neither are perfect in this respect, but Firefox comes closer. While to most people, that would make IE the choice for surfing since it has the market-share, and things (web pages and apps) are more likely to work using MS's broken and/or proprietary "standards", I prefer supporting a model that (as closely as possible) meets those standards to help further promote such adherence, and since in doing web design, that means also supporting IE's ever changing method of handling such things, I find Firefox an easier browser to write to, as it rarely breaks standards compliance when updated, while IE has with each release.

When it comes to security, I also prefer Firefox... again, it too isnt perfect and has suffered from it's share of exploits, but they are (usually) far less severe and less numerous than the ones on IE. And certain classes of exploits are safer to be hit with when using Firefox over IE... such as exploits that hijack or hose the browser. Firefox is simple to re-install... Windows isnt that fun to re-install which is usually the required action if IE truly gets hosed. The Firefox community also seems much more prone to respond to exploits (in general, though not always) than MS is for IE. They usually (but not always) seem to work on fixing the issues at hand, while MS usually (but not always) tries to make a patch to work around it, until someone figures out a way to work around that, which restarts the patch->hack->patch cycle ad-infinitum (such as buffer overflows - which MS's patches seem to usually only deal with the specific exploit instead of actually fixing the broken memory model that allows it, hence patch after patch after patch dealing with buffer overflows alone).

Firefox I also find to be much more customizable than IE, with tons of third party widgets, extensions and apps for it. And (brings me back to another point) if I hose Firefox by improperly installing an add-on, or improperly configuring it, or improperly selecting one (that isnt compatible with my version - which is near impossible

Extensions to Avoid?

[CharAznable]

I thought we agreed that ComputerWorld article was mostly crap...

Re:Extensions to Avoid?

[flimflammer]

It most certainly is crap. It tells us to avoid Adblock/Adblock Plus so they can continue to serve us advertisements.

Re:Extensions to Avoid?

[Random832]

First off, they admit their bias: Obviously, we have some bias when it comes to ad-blocking extensions, as Computerworld is an ad-supported site. And they do have a point. If _everyone_ blocked all ads, we wouldn't be able to go to their site at all, since it'd be subscription only or something. We're freeriders - or, as Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) once said, on the subject of the value of rare comic books, "we're pretty much all hoping everyone else's mom throws them away" And, really. How does a banner ad hurt you? Or a google text ad?

I just want

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to make it stop going to Google when it's looking up a URL. If it can't find it in DNS, I want it to return a 404, not ask some fsking company where they think I should go.

I tried changing every entry that mentions google.com, and sometimes it still queries. WTF!

Re:I just want

[rustalot42684]

IIRC, Firefox gets ~$50 * 10^6 (US) from Google every year because of stuff like that, and while I'd like there to be an option for that, having a steady supply of money from Google with which to pay developers results in a higher quality app. I'd rather have a high-quality (FLOSS) alternative to the dreaded Internet Exploder than not being able to set a default search provider for the address bar*.

*NOTE: I don't actually know if you can or not; Google works for me so I've never investigated it.

Re:I just want

[Fry-kun]

try this setting:
browser.xul.error_pages.enabled

set it to "true"

Re:I just want

[rustalot42684]

No, I'm being a realist: Software development goes better when you have people working on it full-time, and people need money to buy food, pay rent, etc. People can't work on something fulltime when they aren't being paid, because they need income. Firefox being given money means that they can:

a) hire fulltime developers

b) pay for commercial marketing (in addition to the free grassroots marketing they get for having a better product)

c) pay operating expenses (eg servers, bandwidth, etc)

d) other things I haven't thought of...

Re:I just want

[jlarocco]

So you're saying that IE is superior to FF in this regard. After all, I can tell IE to not search from the address bar, and you know what? It doesn't. I try telling FF the same thing and it says F.U.?

Sigh. It's not like you can't change the source code. You know, the source code? That stuff that people are always blabbering about being "open"? Why bother with open source if you don't even take advantage of it for something this simple?

I want what I ask for, not what some for-profit company wants me to see.

With that attitude, even. Sad.

Re:I just want

[the_cowgod]

Set "keyword.enabled" to false.

Re:I just want

[westlake]

Sigh. It's not like you can't change the source code. You know, the source code? That stuff that people are always blabbering about being "open"? Why bother with open source if you don't even take advantage of it for something this simple?

If open source is for programmers only, than the proprietary software vendor has absolutely nothing to fear from the competition.

Re:I just want

[jlarocco]

If open source is for programmers only, than the proprietary software vendor has absolutely nothing to fear from the competition.

I hate to break it to you, but open source is for programmers. Other people can use it too, obviously, but the general idea, going back to the 70s with RMS, is that programmers can have the code for the programs they use, so they can tailor the software to their specific needs. If you lack the ability to modify the code, there's really no point in even having the code.

In any case, the "Fuck you, I want everything my way, free of charge, just because I say so" attitude of the GP post is stupid any way you look at it. Unless he's going to put in the effort to actually fix and customize the software just the way he wants it, he's going to get what ever he's given, and he's going to like it, because that's the only choice he has.

Re:I just want

[Enlightenment]

My browser thinks that's the default value... what's the deal?

Re:I just want

[lhaeh]

Same here.

The "set "keyword.enabled" to false" suggestion by "the_cowgod" worked for me though. I didn't see any difference with browser.xul.error_pages.enabled set to true or false.

Re:I just want

[jonasj]

If it can't find it in DNS, I want it to return a 404

404 is an HTTP status code. If firefox cannot find the server you want to connect to, where do you want that 404 to come from?

Re:I just want

[nevermore94]

Thank cowgod, finally! Someone mod parent up, I never seem to have points when I need them.

Re:I just want

[Fry-kun]

Whoops, my bad! Was thinking of another setting. The one I suggested is for making the errors show up on page instead of a popup error message.
I didn't realize that the OP meant that (s)he typed in something without ".com" (which is when it went to google). keyword.enabled set to false will take care of that: instead of going to google, firefox will start trying to append .com, .net, .org to whatever is in the address bar - until it finds one that works or until all of them failed.

Tabs

[rustalot42684]

In Soviet Russia, Firefox keeps tabs on YOU!

Re:Tabs

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, these jokes never understand you.

Re:Tabs

[clever_moniker]

In Soviet Russia, you laugh anyway, or you get a bullet in the head. Look up Yakov Smirnov on wikipedia

Re:Tabs

[Bwana Geek]

That's the best Russian reversal I've seen on Slashdot yet! Very nice.

Camino?

[commodoresloat]

I still use Camino, a Mozilla-based browser for OS X. Is there a similar guide to configuring Camino options or do most of these work as is?

Re:Camino?

[froggero1]

I have a related question...

I'm using Iceweasel w/ debian (only reason I'm using this is because apt-get install firefox installed iceweasel instead, don't know why... giving it a fair shake though) and the only thing that's bugging me, is how can i get back the "i'm feeling lucky" search function to typing in a sentance in the address bar?

I used that all the time with firefox... just type in the name of the buisness and bypass most every typo/domain squatter site out there.

I took a look in the about:config breifly, but didn't see anything in particular, does anyone know how to get that feature back?

Re:Camino?

[maxume]

I think this is what you want:

http://www.firefoxtutor.com/39/loc-bar-search/

And really, they should have called Iceweasel IreOx, at least until mozilla.org asked them to stop.

Re:Camino?

[froggero1]

nope, that doesn't work... and that keyword.enabled is set to true... it just says, "The URL is not valid and cannot be loaded."

Re:Camino?

[maxume]

my keyword.URL is set to:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sou rceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

(without the pesky space)

Re:Camino?

[froggero1]

so is mine :(

I google'd this forever this morning, no idea what the hell they did to break that functionality, maybe it's just me?

Re:Camino?

[644bd346996]

Did you even bother to try it out? Camino's about:config page is almost identical to FF's page. Any options that are named the same in Camino as in FF will do the same thing. (Camino is just a different front end on Gecko, and about:config options are almost all Gecko options, not browser specific.)

Re:Camino?

[commodoresloat]

Did you even bother to try it out? Camino's about:config page is almost identical to FF's page. Any options that are named the same in Camino as in FF will do the same thing. (Camino is just a different front end on Gecko, and about:config options are almost all Gecko options, not browser specific.) Yes I did bother to try, but not before posting ;) Some of the options are actually not the same at all -- there is no integer preference browser.tabs.closeButtons, for example, which is described in the article. I have actually played with config before in Camino but was baffled by what most of them mean, and had a hard time finding docs describing most of the options.

Re:Camino?

[Zantetsuken]

Umm... In case you didn't see the descriptions in whatever GUI package manager you have, Iceweasel IS Firefox, just rebranded due to legal crap because Debian recompiles it and makes Debian specific optimizations...

Re:Camino?

[Hooded One]

about:config options related to the Firefox UI (e.g. tabs, but also other features that necessarily have a different implementation) will generally have no effect in Camino. The reason they show up at all is that purging them would be a lot of work. However, most options dealing with page rendering, javascript, etc. work the same across all Mozilla browsers. As for the missing browser.tabs.closeButtons (and undoubtedly others), the latest Camino release is from a branch made long before the introduction of said options.

The list of about:config entries has lots of info on what the various options do, and some of the detail pages specify whether the pref has an effect in Camino. I can't vouch for the thoroughness of the "has an effect in" sections however, and AFAIK there's no list dealing just with Camino-compatible prefs.

Re:Camino?

[commodoresloat]

Thanks - that list is very helpful!

Re:Camino?

[froggero1]

I didn't read any sort of GUI description.... it was just after a clean install:

apt-get install xorg xfce4 firefox

Ha, I can reduce my "must have" FF list to one

[hal9000(jr)]

1) Install Stumble Upon 2) Set your topic to FireFox 3) Stumble Dollars to donuts, the first Stumble you hit is someone elses TopN list of must have extensions, which is pretty much a mirror of FF most popular extensions, so there ya go.

link to one page article

[maj1k]

here

Re:link to one page article

[thc69]

Who modded that offtopic? maj1k posted the "print this article" link so we didn't have to wait seven times for ad-ridden pages to load.

Re:link to one page article

[remmelt]

Well, since we're using firefox with adblock enabled, the load times were pretty decent. Then, after the tips + tricks on that page were incorporated into our browsers, the pages loaded so quickly that the one page link became totally moot.

It went from on-topic to off-topic when the FA got read. (I must be new here, etc)

Foons!

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Well, a lot of these "tweaks" will have negative effects.

Example: nglayout.initialpaint.delay as 0. This will slow rendering of the page as it causes reflows. Fools.

Re:Foons!

[daeg]

Dicking around with the pipelining and max connections will also get you blocked from some web servers and routers/firewalls. Not worth it IMO.

Re:Foons!

[ATwentyCharacterName]

How does Opera not get blocked when it has pipelining enabled by default?

Re:Foons!

[daeg]

Opera has sensible pipelining defaults. Most "Firefox tip" articles have you set them to values that when combined with other network settings makes your browser appear like a misbehaving robot, proxy, or hacking attempt. Firefox with sensible values doesn't get blocked.

Re:Foons!

[MedicinalMan]

Damn right. Here's what mozilla says about nglayout.initialpaint.delay

Lower values will make a page initially display more quickly, but will make the page take longer to finish rendering. Higher values will have the opposite effect.

Re:Foons!

[norton_I]

The problem is the setting for maximum outstanding pipeline requests / maximum concurrent connections. Pipelining itself is fine, as long as the server supports it.

Re:Foons!

[AcidPenguin9873]

Example: nglayout.initialpaint.delay as 0. This will slow rendering of the page as it causes reflows. Fools. From the article, just below the section on nglayout.initialpaint.delay:

Reduce the number of reflows
When Firefox is actively loading a page, it periodically reformats or "reflows" the page as it loads, based on what data has been received. Create a content.notify.interval integer preference to control the minimum number of microseconds (millionths of a second) that elapse between reflows. If it's not explicitly set, it defaults to 120000 (.12 of a second).

Too many reflows may make the browser feel sluggish, so you can increase the interval between reflows by raising this to 500000 (500,000, or 1/2 second) or even to 1000000 (1 million, or 1 second). If you set this value, be sure to also create a Boolean value called content.notify.ontimer and set it to true. Seems like setting nglayout.initialpaint.delay to 0 and bumping up the reflow interval can get you the page quicker and avoid too many reflows.

Re:Foons!

[Ant P.]

Is that maybe why I see so much favicon.ico spam in my server's logs?

Sometimes I was seeing cases where over 2/3 of all the hits from certain Firefox users were all favicon.ico - which was a 404 error (it's a redirect to bugzilla #120352 now). It was never other browsers, always Firefox.

Re:Foons!

[daeg]

Late reply but that's due to some bad handling by Firefox. If you have keep-alive on, it'll annoy you and waste a tiny fraction of bandwidth/server CPU, but that's about it.

Instead of redirecting, you're better off putting a 1 pixel by 1 pixel "icon". Or, actually make an icon. Once Firefox fetches it, it won't ask for it again for a while (cache clear, etc).

Nothing really to do with pipelining or network settings, it's just Firefox trying too hard.

Re:Foons!

[rubycodez]

to the moderators: fork you.

Which option to make the Firehose work again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Firefox on FC6, the Slashdot firehose stopped working for me a while back.

The thumbs-up/down thingies don't do anything anymore. I tried turning off the NoScript extension, but that didn't seem to help. I also have Adblock+ installed.

Any clues?

Re:Which option to make the Firehose work again?

[larry bagina]

set org.slashdot.dont_make_changes_on_the_live_server_ yes_im_talking_to_you_cmdrtaco=1

A bigger question

[DoofusOfDeath]

Is why useful tweaks are hidden behind and obscure and risky-to-use interface like about:config. If the tweaks are worth doing, shouldn't they have first-class support in the main configuration GUI?

Re:A bigger question

[jj110888]

Perhaps these tweaks are hidden because they are *not* worth doing?

Re:A bigger question

[leathered]

Listen sonny, as a network admin I perform 'miracles' every day with a CLI and hidden options in config files. It impresses the PHBs, earns respect and keeps my salary up. And now you want to further trivialise my job with more GUI options. Oh for the good old days when all we had were ones and zeroes.

Re: A bigger question

[Black Parrot]

Is why useful tweaks are hidden behind and obscure and risky-to-use interface like about:config. If the tweaks are worth doing, shouldn't they have first-class support in the main configuration GUI? One philosophy is to nanny the unwashed masses away from "advanced" options. A second is that there's not a lot of reasons to support every possible option in a UI, especially if some of them are rarely used.

FWIW, I used to change some stuff and it would be back to the default next time I started the broweser. Ditto if I changed it in the config file. It finally took when I changed it in the GNOME configuration manager; I guess it was masking the application-specific configs.

Re:A bigger question

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with the fact that they aren't worth doing. Ever since I upgraded to the newest version of FF, I've disliked how the tab-closing buttons are now on each tab, rather than having one at the end of all of the tabs like in previous versions. Being too stubborn to downgrade, I suffered through it. TFA showed how to set it back to the old way, plus a couple different ways. Definately worth doing and not in the options GUI.

Re:A bigger question

[flappinbooger]

I did a few of these tweaks described in a lifehack article, and it DID provide an improvement in page load speed. But, I also coupled that with an increase in the windows TCP maximum connections. Either way, it seems to have helped.

The article I found didn't really hype the changes as hacks, more just taking advantage of broadband connections - as firefox is (apparently) by default configured for dialup.

Re:A bigger question

[complete loony]

You had ones and zeroes? Luxury.

Re:A bigger question

[KimmoV]

oh don't forget the nulls! don't forget the nulls! *** there are only 10 different types of people, those understand binary and those who don't ***

official mozilla reference

[wizardforce]

http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries

Why aren't these real options?

[Sigma 7]

Some of these tweaks cut down on memory usage. Given that there are still plenty of computers with 512MB of ram (e.g. notebook computers), you don't want applications pinning 100% CPU or memory as it slows down the rest of the system. This is more important with notebook computers, since a second lost through CPU usage or hard drive thrashing is a second lost from battery charge.

The notebook I'm using right now has this amount of memory, and was easily available in stores 1 year ago. Last time I checked, a web browser should never require the absolute latest system for day-to-day operations (which include having another application in the background, such as a word processor or even MSVC 2005.)

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[Associate]

Try a PIII 667MHz with 256MB of PC-133 RAM running Windows XP Pro, Outlook, Symantec AV, various corporate spyware, SAP and FF.

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[telso]

If you don't want to lose CPU cycles (and therefore battery power) from using your browser, why are you on Slashdot?

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[Sigma 7]

If you don't want to lose CPU cycles (and therefore battery power) from using your browser, why are you on Slashdot? I could ask you the same question. In addition, I do experience the same symptoms when attempting to do actual work.

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[the_greywolf]

The notebook I'm using right now has this amount of memory, and was easily available in stores 1 year ago. Last time I checked, a web browser should never require the absolute latest system for day-to-day operations (which include having another application in the background, such as a word processor or even MSVC 2005.)

My system has 3GB memory. Within a few hours of my typical usage of Firefox, the process has balooned to over 512MB in size. If it remains unchecked (i.e., it sits idle overnight), it becomes sluggish, unresponsive, and unusable. With only 10 tabs open, I have to wait over 5 seconds after opening a tab to begin typing a URL. Then, the entire process locks up for a second or so before it even makes the DNS query.

In fact, I noticed that when I upgraded from 1GB to 2GB and then to 3GB, Firefox's performance got noticably worse, nearly to the point of being completely unusable. I'm literally afraid to upgrade to 4GB now.

It's gotten so bad, that I deliberatly avoid loading it any more, and I've been using Opera and Konqueror far more often.

(Konq still has some problems with its JavaScript engine that make it a pain to use, but at least it doesn't take 5 seconds to respond to my input!)

I'd run gprof on Firefox, but compiling it for profiling would take far too much time (and slow it down even more!) for me to bother investing in it to figure out why the hell it's so goddamn slow to begin with.

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[the_greywolf]

Want to see something funny? Read /. in Opera with the new discussion system turned on.

(Opera slows down so much that it becomes nearly unusable.)

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[bunratty]

Last time I checked, a web browser should never require the absolute latest system for day-to-day operations

Given that Firefox already seems to use fewer resources than other browsers, what's your point? Do you know about some memory issue or CPU usage issue in Firefox? If so, report the details so it can be fixed.

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[thephotoman]

Oh, Firefox just stops the JavaScript. The new discussion system is a farce. Some good ideas, but very badly implemented.

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[Sterling Christensen]

Some of FF's default settings change depending on how much ram you have, like this one:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionhistory.m ax_total_viewers

You could try searching for such settings and turning them back down 1-gig-of-ram levels.

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[Richard_J_N]

Admittedly I have quite a lot of open tabs (approx 200), but firefox is using approx 3GB. I have 2GB of RAM on a very fast PC, and a 6GB swapfile in order to keep it happy.
What I don't understand is this: each tab should only consume a few kB for the actual tab state; the rest ought to be cached on *disk*. Also, storing just the html source of the page would be sufficient - it can re-render in near realtime anyway. So why such vast memory usage?

[The irony is, having a huge swapfile is essentially making firefox do what it should do anyway, namely using the disk for long-term storage]

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[Sigma 7]

Do you know about some memory issue or CPU usage issue in Firefox? If so, report the details so it can be fixed. You posted a link to a utility that "stress-tests" mozilla. An even harder stress test is to load all of those sites at once rather than putting them through some form of rotation. As of now, Process Explorer detects a working set size of ~100MB, which doesn't really decrease after all 100 of those tabs were closed (that is, the windows containing those tabs was closed).

Filing a report requires a special version of Firefox with an included memory leak detector that can write reports at any time. If I was able to compile Firefox, I wouldn't be complaining about the program as a whole and would instead complain about a specific aspect of it.

By the way - if Firefox is supposed to use less resources than the competition, then resource leak problems are more severe as it cannot leverage it's claimed advantage.

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[bunratty]

Filing a report requires a special version of Firefox with an included memory leak detector that can write reports at any time. If I was able to compile Firefox, I wouldn't be complaining about the program as a whole and would instead complain about a specific aspect of it.

Speaking as someone who has filed memory leak bug reports, I can assure you that you do not need any special version of Firefox to file a memory leak bug report. If you merely come up with a sequence of steps that can cause Firefox to use much more memory than other browsers, or a sequence of steps that can cause Firefox to continue consuming more memory without limit, you can file a bug report on the problem.

At most, people generally use the Firefox memory leak detection tool. All you need to do is set one or two environmental variables and run a standard version of Firefox. Then after quitting Firefox, you run the leak detection tool. After finding a leak, you then come up with a sequence of steps that can cause Firefox leak memory.

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[Vegeta99]

200? that gives me like... 4 pixels for each tab. How do you know what you're looking at?

Re:Why aren't these real options?

[Richard_J_N]

about 20 windows.

a little OT kinda, but the video downloader ext...

[3seas]

...works really well if you first watch the video you want to download, putting it in your cache. Then going to video downloader, and regardless of the file size, takes just a few seconds and you are done. Apparently it can grab it from your cache and make it a file on you system (very little for it to really do - very low bandwidth to convert).

In fact, it seems to me that when it doesn't work, "service not available" only happens when I don't watch it first, not in my cache.

Tee Hee

[Richard Dick Head]

Set general.config.obscure_value to 42 for a special treat :D

Re:Tee Hee

[flyingfsck]

What does it do? It doesn't seem to be the answer to anything.

Re:Tee Hee

[SeanMon]

Haha, nice try, but general.config.obscure_value simply is

"An integer to use when obscuring the AutoConfig file saved to and read from disk. Default value is 13 (effectively, ROT-13 the content)."

The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[sillivalley]

A long time ago, when computers remembered using little donuts made of rust, I worked on on a mainframe computer system (CP/V) that supported batch, timesharing, realtime, the works. It had performance monitoring tools, and a large basketload of parameters for sys admins to twiddle.

One of our favorite parameters was SL:BB, documented as batch bias, an input to the process scheduler. When someone called or wrote to us saying they were having problems with performance tuning, we usually suggested they redo their tests varying the setting of SL:BB and let us know what happened. Try different values, 0, 1, 5, 20, 50, 100, things like that. Try it and get back to us.

And lo, they would go off and redo performance runs, and report back.

And we would collect their results and go and muse over them, usually over beer.

SL:BB told us a lot about the user, because SL:BB was a knob that wasn't connected to anything. Oh, the value was range-checked by the parameter setting tool, and dutifully stored in memory, and displayed on performance displays, but it didn't change system performance in any way at all.

That's not what the documentation said, but who believes documentation? We had plans for SL:BB, we just hadn't gotten around to writing the code yet.

So if the user reported that setting SL:BB to 25, but not 24 or 26 gave them incredibly better (or worse) results, we definitely factored that into our analysis.

Those that reported back that the setting of SL:BB didn't make a damn bit of difference, and there were some, we honored as brothers, took into our confidences, and shared beer with at the soonest opportunity. Their bug reports and feature requests received far more attention, for they had passed an important test.

And how many of these Firefox parameters are like SL:BB?

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[flyingfsck]

The general.config.obscure_value seems to be one of those.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[MulluskO]

"The general.config.obscure_value preference specifies how the configuration file is obscured. Firefox expects that each byte in the file will be rotated by the specified value. The default value is 13. If this value is left unchanged, then the configuration file must be encoded as ROT13. Autoconfig will fail if the cfg file is not encoded as specified by this preference. A value of 0 indicates that the file is unencoded-- i.e. it is unobscured plain text. It is recommended that you set this value to 0. (This will allow you to skip the encoding step in part 3.)"

Hee.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[Anonymous Coward]

Some, sort of. Example: network.http.pipelining.maxrequests has a maximum 8, if you set it to a higher value it will just use 8; and yet people will claim they see a difference in performance. Other "performance tweaks" lists floating around have settings that are no longer used or that don't do anything like what people seem to think they will. Of course, the same goes for windows tweaks, compiler options, linux kernel /proc settings, etc.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[zeroduck]

I guess someone didn't get invited out for beers.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[Ant P.]

If they got varying results, then they obviously weren't following his instructions. People like those (you) are the dangerous ones.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[Compholio]

The general.config.obscure_value seems to be one of those.

Just tell users that the value you enter must be 26*n where "n" is an integer, then it fits the bill.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[bunratty]

And how many of these Firefox parameters are like SL:BB?

There's browser.cache.memory.capacity which many people swear "fixes Firefox's memory leak." If you look at the instructions on sites, you'll see suggested values ranging from 16384 to 65000. For systems with less than 1 GB of RAM, any of those settings will only increase memory use for Firefox 2. Obviously, anyone who says that setting fixes a memory leak were imagining the problem to being with (or were causing it in the first place with an absurdly huge value for browser.cache.memory.capacity).

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[syousef]

YOU are the IT expert, not the end user. If they're not following instructions you're suppose to help them, not hang them out to dry or make them an object of ridicule. You have the professionalism and people skills of a grizzly bear.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[Ant P.]

If you'd bothered to read the OP you'd notice the "end users" _are_ IT experts.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[syousef]

So that means when I have a problem with an aircraft requiring a service, I should go find an auto mechanic?

The guy's job was obviously to look at the performance of the system and help users out when they had problems. They might be IT users, but system performance isn't their area. In this context they are end users even if they are also programmers. They just aren't specialists in what this guy does, and it's not their job to do his specialised job on top of theirs.

Trust /. to mod me as troll for saying this. Right here, THIS is the reason why Linux isn't on every fucking destkop. Idiotic.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[Nefarious Wheel]

CP/V? Hmmm.... Xerox Data Systems (ex Scientific Data Systems)? Sigma 5/7/9? Max Palevsky, first priority interrupts, head-per-track RAD virtual memory? Aviation Blvd in El Segundo?

Never heard of it, and it's a damn lie that I worked in the mail room for a few years.

Although It's amazing what you can pick up when you read other people's work-delivered magazines though, or have total access to all areas including watching large computers built from the ground up. Can give a punk kid big ideas, that.

Re:The Art of Performance Tuning -- a Fable

[freedom_india]

Ahhh..... those were the good days...

Still can't turn off favicons in the bookmark menu

[Andy_R]

I really don't like favicons in the bookmark menu. Added in firefox 2.0, they force the menu linespacing to be bigger, so I fit less items in a screenful, and the site that I used to know was 6 inches down the screen isn't where I'm expecting it to be anymore. I understand why some people like them, but for me they are a distracting rainbow coloured mess.

Guess which one of the billion or so features in the UI I can't turn off? I can use about:config to remove them from the URL bar, and the tool bar, where they were actually somewhere between bearable and useful... but in the bookmarks menu where they annoy me, I'm stuck with them.

I've installed a plugin that turns custom ones off, so they all look like 5 cyan jellybeans (wtf?) so they are a bit less annoying, but why can't I banish them?

kdawson...

[TiCL]

KDawson is the new Zonk? Given the quality of the articles he is approving these days, he would soon surpass Zonk in crap-o-meter.

Re:kdawson...

[Ant P.]

I agree, this "article" is utterly retarded drivel written by a windows ricer.

Funnily enough I saw this just today.

Hacking Firefox

[Dominare]

Gah. Why is it that these people insist on calling anything not found on the main options page "hacking"? As for the above questions - usually the reason things like that are 'hidden' is to stop people fiddling with them. A good example is the old 'coolbits' entry in the registry for nVidia cards - the overclocking functionality was there, but you had to do something non-standard to enable it. That way, the company's ass is covered if you melt your card; you can't pretend you enabled the options accidentally. Since Firefox is free and nobody is paying tech-support, I'm not sure why these things aren't available - but the fact of the matter is, anyone messing around with fundamental parameters should _not_ be the kind of person who lets random articles on the internet tell them what to change.

Re:Hacking Firefox

[maxume]

Each additional option in the UI makes it harder to find all the other options. There is a straightforward way to access them for people that insist on it. It's a good compromise.

Thunderbird also...

[thejuggler]

You can configure many settings in Thunderbird using a similar interface. However, in Thunderbird you can get to the config section from the Options menu Advanced tab. I have reduced the size of the attachment icons this way. set mailnews.attachments.display.largeView to False.

userChrome.css

[pile0nades]

#bookmarks-menu .bookmark-item .menu-iconic-left {
    display: none !important;
}

Re:userChrome.css

[Andy_R]

Getting close! That's getting rid of non-custom favicons, but only when I have no windows open. As soon as I open a window, they reappear :-/

great timing, I needed this article today...

[siliconwafer]

This morning at work (don't ask why I was surfing the web at work!) I launched FF and opened six tabs, each with a fairly common site: NOAA, TD Ameritrade, Yahoo Finance, etc. Later in the day, perhaps 6 hours later, I noticed my machine (IBM T42) was swapping and noticeably. The Windows XP Task manager, with tasks ordered by memory usage, showed that FF was using 270MB of RAM, far more than any other application. During the day I had closed and opened a few tabs, and reloaded a few pages, but my god -- 270MB of RAM? I am using FF 2. Tomorrow morning I'll try changing browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0, and hopefully that will resolve my issue. I'll report back.

Re:great timing, I needed this article today...

[bunratty]

To see if the memory usage is really an issue with Firefox, try opening the same sites in another browser. If the other browser uses about the same amount of memory, it doesn't seem like it's an issue with Firefox specifically. If the other browser uses much less memory, post what the sites are so Mozilla developers can investigate a possible memory issue in Firefox.

Re:Still can't turn off favicons in the bookmark m

[FudRucker]

about:config

change from true to false on the two following items:

browser.chrome.favicons

browser.chrome.site_icons

Re:Still can't turn off favicons in the bookmark m

[Dracos]

In Firefox 2.0.3, I opened up the DOM inspector, chose the main window, and started drilling down in to the element tree: I found the icons which you loathe.

Open up userChrome.css (in your profile: [profile dir]/chrome/).

In it, the following CSS rule should work to hide the icons:

.bookmark-item > .menu-iconic-left > image { display: none; }

(This selector appears in chrome://browser/skin/browser.css, if you know where that is).

Re:Still can't turn off favicons in the bookmark m

[Andy_R]

As hinted in my earlier post, those controls turns off the lfavicons in the url bar, and in tabs. They do *not* turn off favicons in the bookmarks menu.

Configuration of plugins missing..

[giorgosts]

The one thing that you cannot configure in FF is the order or preference of plugins. Say that you have 2 or 3 plugins that support the same filetypes, you can't configure if which filetype opens with which plugin. In situations where the support is broken by a plugin, as it often happens in linux with eg. streaming windows media, you are stuck with the plugin that doesn't work and you can't change it. If you remove it, then you loose functionality, because the others might not work with filetypes that this one supported well.

Re:Configuration of plugins missing..

[ChrisMaple]

This is (for me) an important problem. My problem was mplayerplug-in overriding RealPlayer. Fortunately, searching the net yielded a workaround which involved editing some config files.

about:plugins shows mimes and should be the place to change things, but I've been unable to edit it.

The edit->preferences section that deals with mimes only allows deleting a very limited range of stuff, not adding anything. No help there.

Re:Configuration of plugins missing..

[giorgosts]

For mms or rtsp there is the option of launching external players through about:config as in http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty#How_to_h andle_mms_protocol_in_Mozilla_Firefox
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty#How_to_h andle_rtsp_.28realmedia.29_protocol_in_Mozilla_Fir efox

But there is no option for the plugins, ie viewing the content inside the browser.

Konqueror is more helpful in that respect, ie it can associate immediately with mimetypes because of its integration with the KDE desktop manager.

Opera Version

[Deliveranc3]

opera:config

Re:Opera Version

[Anonymous Coward]

In Opera, typing "about:config" will take you to "opera:config", too.

"Be sure to skip these"

[Zhe Mappel]

No, thanks. Following the parenthetical link I landed at TFA, which was little more than Computerworld whining about how people using the Adblock and AdblockPlus extensions would deprive it of ad revenue.

Computerworld actually had the gall to suggest switching to blocking software that's more selective, allowing you to cherrypick ads to block "while continuing to support the sites we love by allowing most ads to appear." Oh, what a cynical dearth of principles: block our competitors' ads, but NIMBY!

Nope, I'm an equal opportunity Scrooge, and for my free-as-beer money these are two of the most useful Firefox extensions around.

Re:"Be sure to skip these"

[swilver]

How about writing a nice adblock extension which downloads the ads, but never actually displays them. Bandwidth is there to be wasted after all :)

Re:"Be sure to skip these"

[wildstoo]

Yep, looks like the poster didn't actually read the comments of the earlier post, where the general /. consensus was that it was a shitty self-serving article, full of corporate self-interest and lacking in technical merit.

From that article:

"Most typical Web surfers who install this extension remove it after the novelty wears off."

Did Peter Smith just happen to have the opinion of "most typical Web surfers" at hand? Looks to me like he is writing his own opinions as if they belong to some majority. The article contains several similar lame excuses and generalisations along the lines of "I didn't like this so neither should you.", and it undermines the few reasonable points he makes.

I think "most typical Web surfers" use some form of IE, and those who have chosen Firefox probably did so precisely so they could have more control over their browsing experience, which is exactly what addons like NoScript and AdBlock provide.

For me, that article served to flag computerworld.com and particularly writer Peter Smith as "not worth reading".

So don't "be sure to skip" those extensions, as some of them are amongst the best extensions available for Firefox.

Re:"Be sure to skip these"

[Zhe Mappel]

For me, that article served to flag computerworld.com and particularly writer Peter Smith as "not worth reading".

Agreed, I'll be blocking more than just Computerworld's ads from now on. ;-)

and their website, so ...

[weighn]

I thought we agreed that ComputerWorld article was mostly crap... ... here's the "print" link

Hidden slashdot tweaks THEY don't want you to know

[noidentity]

I've found some secret hidden tweaks you can make to Slashdot articles, just by editing this thing called a URL. For instance, you can set the comment threshold HIGHER than 5 by editing the number after "threshold=", ensuring only the absolute best comments (apparently none in this story meet that standard yet). Why do they hide useful options like this from us?

The real scandal is Firefox's cookie options.

[cunina]

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure you will), but I seem to remember that Firefox had an option in its cookie preferences dialog that allowed you to restrict cookies to those set by the originating site. It's a nice option, as it marginally increases privacy, and probably should be on by default. But as of 2.0, that option is gone. It still exists in the about:config, but less-sophisticated users are stuck with the default "allow sites to set just about any cookie they want" setting.

One must wonder: why would the Firefox team remove that option? The only conspiracy theory I can dream up is Google's involvement...

Re:The real scandal is Firefox's cookie options.

[Don_dumb]

Yes, I thought it was there before but isn't now.
Can I ask what the about:config edit is to enforce this again?

Re:The real scandal is Firefox's cookie options.

[BenoitRen]

As has been said before, even on Slashdot, it was removed because it didn't work that well. It was decided that it'd be better removed than install a false sense of security/privacy in the user.

Can I get one script

[Rsriram]

Can I get a single script/installable/whatever to tweak all these in one shot?

Firefox off track

[tonicxt]

about:config is the worst method of changing preferences that I have ever seen.

about:config is evidence of feature creep, and hence evidence of Firefox turning into the Mozilla browser.

Past versions of Firefox have added additional features such as image resizing. And guess, what, users are not given the ability to disable this; they must enter into the cryptic about:config.

about:config is an HCI catastrophe.

Re:Firefox off track

[BenoitRen]

about:config is evidence of feature creep, and hence evidence of Firefox turning into the Mozilla browser.

I see people still believe that groundless propaganda. The Mozilla suite never had feature creep, that's just what some pro-Firefox people exclaimed, without any basis or argument to back it up.

Please knock it off already.

Re:Firefox off track

[treeves]

about:config has hydrochloric acid in it?! That IS bad.

Delete all cookies when browser is closed

[Hyperhaplo]

Consider all of the sites you go to in a single day.
How many do you actually need cookies for? Right. A handful.
The default behaviour, given how the technology is abused these days, should be to delete all cookies and purge the cache when the browser closes - except for the sites specified by the user.

It still irks me that IE (yes, we have to use it at work) still doesn't have an option for 'delete all cookies on exit' - but it is perfectly capable of clearing the rest of the cache.

I agree that the option to accept from originating site is good, but these days I don't care. Either way the cookies are purged every day.

The only about:config secret I need

[ljhiller]

Is how to turn off that fricking auto typeaheadfind. I'm not typing apostrophes on a blank web page. I'm typing them into a text box. I'm typing them into the GOOGLE TEXTBOX (plain-vanilla homepage era). This is not a feature. A feature is an added capability. This is a BUG. I'm not disabled; I don't need accessiblity assistance. If I want to find text, I'll type ^F. If I'm typing an apostrophe into the Google text box, I don't want to search for text on that empty page, I want to search for my quoted text. Maybe they could add an accessiblity.typeaheadfind.goawayandnevercomeback. Or maybe they could even obey the EXISTING typeaheadfind options. Or map the key to a ~. Or, even, now this is a radical idea, stop erasing people's bug reports telling us it's a feature, and fix it.

Re:The only about:config secret I need

[Legion303]

Just doesn't happen on FF 2.0.3 for Windows.

Re:The only about:config secret I need

[Ash-Fox]

You can toggle it in (not enabled by default in firefox2.x):
Preferences -> Advanced tab -> [ ] Search for text when I start typing

I don't have the issues you're experiencing by the way. Nor do I have it turned on in the preferences dialog.

Re:Opera!

[Ash-Fox]

about:config and about:opera have existed in Opera for ages.

• about:config has always existed in Firefox and Seamonkey
• It's opera:config in Opera.

I love how firefox/mozilla takes features that existed in Opera for years and try to hype them up as new "features" in firefox!

I've never seen Mozilla hype this.

Another reason firefox is over-hyped and doesn't compare to Opera really.

Here is why Opera doesn't work for me.

• I need an equivalent to Google browser sync that can synchronize between browsers on Linux, Windows and OS X.
• Opera doesn't work with certain bank sites while Firefox (and even Konqueror) does
• I need something like flashblock, which I can even get in IE (through a registry setting) and Konqueror (built in).

In particular, the first point is the most important to me.

How to change scroll speed (works for Gnome!)

[AncientPC]

about:config
mousewheel.withnokey.sysnumlines -> false
mousewheel.withnokey.numlines -> any number, personally I use 6.

about:config ..

[rs232]

"about:config is the worst method of changing preferences that I have ever seen"

The alternate being a mass of sub-menus and click boxes. At least they are all in the one place.

Re:Hidden slashdot tweaks THEY don't want you to k

[Dogtanian]

For instance, you can set the comment threshold HIGHER than 5 by editing the number after "threshold=" It works the other way too; you can set the threshold to -2 or lower via the URL. Most people never get to see such posts, which is the whole point- you'd be shocked if you knew what was there. Things modded down to -2 include:

• Secrets of the Illuminati
• The truth behind the JFK assassination
• Clear evidence that Steve Jobs is not God, Bill Gates is not the devil and Steve Ballmer is not *actually* a chair-throwing ape
• Anything linking to Zonk's blackmail pics of Taco and Cowboy Neal

always mention the memory leak issue .. :)

[rs232]

"The Windows XP Task manager, with tasks ordered by memory usage, showed that FF was using 270MB of RAM"

See my other posts, lots of Windows and tabs opened and closed, went up over 75 MB and then back to 58 MB and hung there. Maybe mine is a magic computer.

Re:always mention the memory leak issue .. :)

[bunratty]

There are sites you can open that will make browsers eat up hundreds of megabytes. The thing is that when people open those sites in Firefox and see the memory usage, they say "Oh, it's that horrible memory leak I keep reading about." Then they post that they, too, see the memory leak problem and ask when it will be fixed, thus reinforcing the belief that Firefox has horrible memory leaks so the next person can complain. And so the cycle continues...

They don't bother to check how much memory other browsers use browsing the same sites. If they did, they would see that Firefox generally uses no more memory than other browsers. If anyone takes offense at my statement, feel free to post sites that will make Firefox (but not other browsers) gobble up huge chunks of memory, so the rest of us can finally see this problem.

browsing slashdot ..

[rs232]

Why is is that when I click the on the main slashdot page, it takes ages and hangs on sites like e.nvero.net, images.slashdot.org, zdmp.net, smartgetting etc. I know it doesn't matter on your fast connection, but it does mean I [waiting for images] don't [waiting for images] have [waiting for pages2.googlesyndication.com] to [waiting for images] wait [waiting for doubleclick] so [waiting for images] long [waiting for adserver] for [waiting for images again] a [waiting for google analytics] complete [ f*****g finally] page to appear ..

It's not just slashdot but most sites, clicking the back button doesn't make a difference as it still reloads from the web site. I thought the cache stored pages for resuse.

Re:browsing slashdot ..

[bunratty]

Why is is that when I click the on the main slashdot page, it takes ages and hangs...

Dunno. It takes 3-4 seconds to load for me with Firefox, about the same time Opera takes to load it. You should probably go to the MozillaZine forums for support.

Re:browsing slashdot ..

[kalirion]

Sounds like adblock and noscript should be the extensions of choice for you.

Re:browsing slashdot ..

[rs232]

It's not the browser, it sticks on links to third sites which go non responsive and the main slashdot has to wait. Waiting on ads.doubleclick etc ..

Oh, for a Zero

[handy_vandal]

We used to dream of zeroes.

In my day, all we had was a pile of bones, each bone representing "one".

If some joker stole all the bones, we were, like: "What happened to all the bones?"

This went on for millenia, you can't imagine the frustration.

What's worse, before the damned zero got invented, we first had to invent Roman numerals!

All deceptions invite trouble

[handy_vandal]

You make a good point, in a poorly phrased way.

Encouraging users to tweak a "meaningless" parameter is a deception; all deceptions invite trouble.

Whatever might be gained (identifying the "smart" users) is compromised by other losses (failing to educate "dumb" users, alienating users who sense the deception, wasting company time).

That said, phrases like "dangerous twit" undermine your argument, shutting the ears of your potential allies before they hear what you have to say.

-kgj

Documentation

[DaveV1.0]

My question is simple: Is there good, concise documentation of the about:config page and it's options?

If yes, where is it and is there an an easy why to find it?

If no, why not? If this is all about choice, should people be able to learn about their choices?

Re:Documentation

[bunratty]

My question is simple: Is there good, concise documentation of the about:config page and its options?

Yes.

If yes, where is it and is there an an easy why to find it?

MozillaZine Knowledge Base Article on about:config entries

It is the first page Google finds when you search for "about:config". I'll let you decide whether that's easy to find.

If no, why not? If this is all about choice, should people be able to learn about their choices?

If there wasn't, you'd be able to put it in the Knowledge Base yourself.

Re:Documentation

[DaveV1.0]

Suppose I am Joe user and don't know anything other than I use Firefox. How am I supposed to know about it? How am I supposed to even know there is an about:config section. How am I supposed to know about the MozillaZine Knowledge Base, and why would I go there? I use Firefox, no Mozilla.

How am I supposed to know to do a google search for "about:config"? There is nothing in the documentation that came with Firefox about "about:config". Why would I even do that. I might do a google search on "firefox config"

If there wasn't, you'd be able to put it in the Knowledge Base yourself.

Hey, I am Joe User. How am I supposed to put information on something I know nothing about into the KB?

You are proving my point for me and you don't even know it.

Re:Documentation

[bunratty]

Suppose I am Joe user and don't know anything other than I use Firefox. How am I supposed to know about it? How am I supposed to even know there is an about:config section.

Joe User is not supposed to know about it. It is dangerous to go through about:config and make changes without knowing what you are doing. Joe User should not be doing that in the first place. That's why those settings are hidden. It's a feature, not a bug.

How am I supposed to know about the MozillaZine Knowledge Base, and why would I go there? I use Firefox, no Mozilla.

Perhaps by going to the Firefox support page?

Hey, I am Joe User. How am I supposed to put information on something I know nothing about into the KB?

We don't need Joe user to put information into the Knowledge Base, because very knowledgable people have already put the information there.

You are proving my point for me and you don't even know it.

Where exactly did you do that?

Re:Documentation

[DaveV1.0]

So, to get better performance out of Firefox, one must use about:config, but only experts are supposed to use about:config. So, only experts are supposed to have good performance in Firefox?

Joe User is not supposed to know about about:config, but in order to become an expert he has to know about about:config. So, Joe User can never become an expert?

If there wasn't, you'd be able to put it in the Knowledge Base yourself.

We don't need Joe user to put information into the Knowledge Base, because very knowledgable people have already put the information there.

Which is it?

Your arguments for about:config sound a lot like MS's arguments for the Windows registry.

Re:Documentation

[bunratty]

So, to get better performance out of Firefox, one must use about:config, but only experts are supposed to use about:config. So, only experts are supposed to have good performance in Firefox?

No, generally dicking with settings does not give better performance. The defaults are set that way for a reason; the defaults work best in most situations. In the rare case that twiddling a setting can increase performance, extensions should be used to shield the user from the harm they can cause from changing a setting incorrectly. One example of such an extension is FasterFox, although that is a poor example because it in fact causes the sorts of problems such extensions should avoid.

Which is it?

End users should completely stay out of about:config, period. They have no legitimate reason to tweak it. If there is a legitimate reason to tweak a setting, it should be in Firefox's user interface or accessible through an extension.

Hidden configs in general

[billcopc]

My opinion about hidden configs is that if they were meant for the end-user to dick with, they'd be on a friendly Options dialog.

If there's a very useful hidden option, it should be promoted to a visible widget. The fact that Firefox devs are often lazy about such "little" things is the main source of problems. They spend too much time building flashy (and useless) features instead of tightening the existing experience, which is why you see a new FF 3.0 attention-grab every couple of days. They've gone completely Microsoft!

Re:Opera! It's opera:config in Opera.

[Ash-Fox]

Type in about:config in Opera's address bar, & it WILL automatically resolve out to/change to, opera:config!

Ah, didn't work in the past for me.

As far as performance goes though, overall, across many OS platforms (especially Win32, the most used platform there is by far)?

Opera IS the fastest browser there is!

I agree, Opera certainly is noticeably more snappier. However, performance is only something I really care about when lack of it hinders my productivity.

So far I'm more productive on Firefox because of the lack of features in Opera.

The overall winner? Opera "uber alles"...

The fact that my bank site even works in Konqueror but not in Opera, does not make it seem like a 'overall winner' to me. Even when I switch the browser identification, it doesn't work.

"These go to six."

[ABoerma]

Nigel Tufnel: [pointing to the moderation] ...the numbers all go to six. Look, right across the board: six, six, six, six...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most comments go up to five?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's funnier? Is that any funnier?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one funnier, isn't it? It's not five. You see, most... most blokes, you know, will be modded up to five. You're on five here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up... you're on five on your comment. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know...
Nigel Tufnel: ...nowhere! Exactly! What we do is if we need that extra... push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to six.
Nigel Tufnel: ...six. Exactly. One funnier.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make five funnier, and make five be the top... number, and make that a little funnier?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause, blank look and snapping chewing gum] These go to six.

Re:Opera! It's opera:config in Opera.

[DoktorSeven]

Until Opera lets me turn on/off Javascript/Flash/etc per source (not per-site) like I can with Firefox and Noscript, I can't switch to Opera. NoScript is the *only* thing keeping me on Firefox.

Re:Opera! It's opera:config in Opera.

[Ash-Fox]

(Granted, I do not belong to that bank, so I am not sure if FULL functionality will be restored via that, but it seems to work... get back to me on it, if you have the time to install the latest Opera 9.21.xxx etc.)

You need to login on the site, using the link in the top right corner (login in english). Which you probably can't do since you likely don't have a account with them.

Re:Opera! It's opera:config in Opera.

[Ash-Fox]

You might want to see if you can logon to your banking page (making sure Javascript is turned on for that site, OR, all sites wholesale (I don't allow this for security reasons))!

Nope, doesn't work. I get a javascript dialog telling me there was a error with my browser and it logs me out.

The 'internal' site itself is just a popup window that has a bunch of frames and relies heavily on javascript.

The latest model of Opera is 9.21.8776 so you know, as you may wish to download & install it

Yep I have it installed.

Looking at the javascript (and this is just lightly skimming through it), it seems to check if the browser is Safari, IE, Firefox, Mozilla etc. (no Opera listed) -- and throws out that error when it's a undefined browser.

Apparently changing the browser identification doesn't change how Opera identifies itself in Javascript. I get the feeling this site would work fine if they had Opera defined.

Re:Opera! It's opera:config in Opera.

[DoktorSeven]

Opera blocks each component on the entire site you're currently on. So if the site itself has some scripting and you want to enable it, go to NoScript and say Allow from (sitename). But if there is some javascript, flash, or java from an external source (ads, for example), these won't get enabled unless you also go into NoScript and select Allow From EvilAdServer. With Opera, you only get Enable and Disable, and that means everything gets enabled, which I don't want.

It's something you just need to try out with NoScript. Until Opera gets something like that, I can't use it.

Official? Um, no...

[BenoitRen]

http://www.mozillazine.org/about/

I want to...

[Traf-O-Data-Hater]

...be able to drag any about:config entry to the toolbar, whereapon boolean antries become toggle buttons, numerics become spin buttons, and editable values become, well, editable values :)
This way you can set any tweak anything quickly, and see the result. Now whatever happened to 'disable image load'?