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The Firefox Handbook

[updated: Oct 16, 2009] 

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Better Browsing with Firefox
 

Essential Firefox Setting Tips
- In general set history to 0 Days
- Set to open a blank page.
- Check 'Clear private settings when I close Firefox' and Unckeck 'don't tell me when Forefox clears my private data'
- In security tab, uncheck save forms and passwords

How to Increase the Speed in Which Firefox loads pages
1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return.
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30.

This means it will make 30 requests at once.
 

3. Kill the amount of RAM Firefox uses for its cache feature
1. type "about:config" (no quotes) in the browser.
2. Find browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer
2. set its value to "0"

4. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New- Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0".

This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you are using a broadband connection you will load pages faster now
More options for your about:config (you might have to create some of these entries by Right Click 'New Integer' or String

network.dns.disableIPv6: set "false"
"content.notify.backoffcount": set "5"
"plugin.expose_full_path": set "true".
"ui.submenuDelay": set "0" (zero)

How to stop RAM usage to 10mb when FF is minimized
1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New - Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

 

Great Firefox add ons
Turn Gmail into an online hard disk

Download every link or linked image from a web page in one fell swoop, filtering out unwanted file types automatically - DownThemAll
Read RSS and Atom feeds in Firefox - Sage
Open IE within a Firefox tab (Windows only) - IE Tab
Change the user agent string to avoid Browser sniffers - User agent Switcher
Use FTP from inside your browser - FireFTP
A toolbar containing useful tools for web developers - Web developer toobar
Browse the web in stealth mode - Stealther
Modify behavior of websites you visit using javascript - Greasemonkey
Use other people's logins into sites that need registration - BugMeNot
Block annoying Flash animations on website - FlashBlock
Post blog posts from Browser to multiple blog hosts - Scribefire
Download embedded video clips - Fast Video Download
Manage Cookies on websites - TACO http://taco.dubfire.net/

ShareThis: Share any type of online content with your friends, family, and colleagues with ShareThis.

Who Is This Person?: highlight a name on any web page and find information on that person on a variety of different sites.

del.icio.us: This official add-on will allow you to save your bookmarks on the web.

Security Add Ons for Firefox

Search various malware related databases for selected (highlighted) text on a web page - Malware Search
Avoid keylogging in Office and Public terminals - KeyScrambler

Block scripts and other executable content from sites you don't trust - NoScript

Nuke Anything: Hide almost anything using this add-on in the context menu

XSS Me 0.3.0: Protect yourself against XSS vulnerabilities in various web applications.

Torbutton 1.2.0.rc6: This shortcut quickly connects users to Firefox;s Tor, which heightens security on the browser.
 

Shopping and Money Add Ons for Firefox
Price It. Compare prices from tons of popular online merchants.

MyShopSpace.com Deal Finder. This tool helps you find coupons, discounts, and sales with over 3000 online merchants.

Pluribo: Instant Summaries - summarize all the reviews of a particular product on Amazon.com so you can quickly get a feel for what others have to say about items, saving you time spent reading all the reviews and money for purchases that are not worthwhile.
Amazon.com Price Drop Alert -This tool alerts you when the price of your purchase from Amazon goes down so you can take advantage of their 30-day refund policy.

Use Yapta add-on to compare flight prices. If the price of your flight goes down before purchasing, this tool will let you know

FareFirst Monitor airfares with this tool that captures the daily fare updates from airlines.

Currency Converter  this tool instantly convert a price into over 180 different currencies so you know exactly how much you are spending.
StockMashup provides stock charts, quotes, and news from Yahoo! Finance and Google News.

Keep track of your personal finances with this add-on from Buxfer