firefox

Slow Performing Add-ons In Firefox

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Firefox add-ons

Firefox became popular when the internet was ruled by the Internet Explorer because of the whole lot of add-ons that users can install to get extra features that aren’t built natively into the browser. Since then, all other browsers had to provide similar support for extensions/add-ons to stay alive in the competition. Agree that add-ons in Firefox are a boon to browser but often they are criticized for slowing down the performance of the browser.

As Mozilla says in a blog post,

there are some add-ons that cause extreme slowdowns in Firefox because of poor coding practices, in extreme cases adding 30 seconds to start-up time.i

So if you install 10 such add-ons, Firefox start-up time may even slowdown by some minutes in extreme cases. Mozilla noticed the importance of spotting such add-ons that are causing significant performance issues in the Firefox and they even made the data public. Head over to this page where you will see a list of few top add-ons that are slowing down the start-up time of your Firefox.

firefox slow add-ons

As you can see, if you are a web developer and installed the popular “Firebug” add-on, it slows down Firefox start-up time by 74%. As of now, the list also includes other popular add-ons like “FoxyTunes”, “Video DownloadHelper”, “Xmarks Sync”. If you are a developer, you don’t want your own add-on to be featured in that list, right? Don’t worry, Mozilla wants to work with developers to solve the issues and has even listed some best practices for improving startup performance. If you have installed one or more add-ons that are listed under the slow performing add-ons page, try disabling them to improve your Firefox start-up time and performance.

[Download] Firefox 4 RC Now

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Firefox 4 RC

After releasing numerous minor beta releases of Firefox 4, Mozilla has now officially released the Firefox 4 first Release Candidate (RC1) version which is now available for download. Firefox 4 RC1 will have all the features that have been previously included in the beta releases of Firefox 4 like fresh new UI, Firefox button, app tabs, Firefox Sync, hardware accelerated graphics (Windows and Mac), multitouch support (Windows 7 only), JägerMonkey JavaScript engine etc.. Firefox 4 is said to be more than six times faster than the previous releases (Learn more about Firefox 4 RC features here).

Firefox 4 RC screenshot

While we wait for the official release notes for Firefox 4 RC, you may hit the following direct links to download the Firefox 4 Release Candidate 1 installer for your computer (Windows / Mac / Linux).

Firefox 4 RC Direct Download Links:

Windows [12 MB]

Mac OS X [26.8 MB]

Linux [13.2 MB]

 

You can also try this tip to install both Firefox 3 and Firefox 4 on the same computer.

[Tip] Know The File Size Before You Download It In Firefox

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Firefox logo

Knowing the file size before you could actually start downloading it is good practice as you can plan your work accordingly. For instance if you want to download a relatively bigger file, you might want to postpone it to later without interrupting your current work. Most of the sites especially download portals always show the information about the size of the file before the download. However it is not the same case always. There are times when you download a file and come to know about its size only after the actual downloading begins in Firefox.

Thankfully there is a Firefox ad-on called “Show File Size” that allows us to view the file size information before you download it. Once installed, the extension show information like the type of the file and the size of the file you are downloading it in a separate row just below the name of the file row in the download window as shown:

firefox file download size

It is a basic, lightweight extension (just 4KB !) that just serves the purposes justifying the name. Show File Size add-on works fine with Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 4 versions.

Install Show File Size

[Download] Firefox 4 Beta 10

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Firefox 4 beta

We have a new beta release for Firefox 4 available for download. Firefox 4 Beta 10 has been released with minor improvements.

The improvements in the beta 10 version include better compatibility and stability improvements of Adobe Flash on Mac OS X, improvements in the browser memory usage, support for graphics driver blacklist.

For more details about the improvements in this version, read the Firefox 4 b10 release notes.

While we are nearing the final polished version of the Firefox 4, Mozilla is requesting users to send their feedbacks as much as they can. To provide a feedback to Mozilla, you can either click on the “Feedback” button present at the top right corner of the browser or alternatively, you can enter this feedback page and share your feedback. If you ate on Mac OS X, download the beta update and watch some videos to see the Flash performance improvements.

Download Firefox  4 Beta 10

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[Tip] Edit The Firefox Maximum And Minimum Zoom Levels

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Firefox logo

Readability level is one of the important aspect the modern day browsers stress upon. Different users need different readability levels for various elements on a webpage. The browsers let users to zoom in or zoom out of any webpage and adjusting them according to their comfort. Hence all the browsers including the Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera etc. have incorporated the settings for adjusting zoom levels into the menu settings making them easily accessible. Firefox zoom levels range from a maximum zoom in level of 300% to a minimum zoom out level of 30%. While these are satisfactory for most users, there would still be some users who want to zoom in a page for more than 300% in order to see a particular element of a page like text, image or vide to more precisely, at which they feel comfortable reading it. Some people like web developers would want to zoom out to a level more than 30% to just see how all the elements in a web page are fitting into the screen. Whatever may be the reason, you need to have a choice. Internet Explorer allows you to enter a custom zoom level as you can see in the following screenshot:

Internet Explorer zoom levels

You can edit the Firefox default zoom levels via the about:config settings. Follow the steps to configure your Firefox.

1. Type about:config in the Firefox address bar and hit Enter.

About:config in the Firefox address bar

2. Accept the warning and continue.

Firefox this might void your warranty alert

3. Now search for “zoom.maxPercent’ and “zoom.minPercent”. Both of these should appear as soon as you enter “zoom.m” as search string.

Max and min zoom level settings in Firefox

4. Double-click on each item to change the default values. For instance, you can change the maximum zoom percent to 500 from the default value of 300 p.c. Similarly you can edit the default value for minimum zoom out level as well.

Changing Firefox zoom levels

Click OK when you are done. Restart your Firefox for the changes to take effect.

[Tip] Get Warned Before Closing Multiple Tabs In Google Chrome

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If you are used to Firefox browser for long, you might be aware of the warning message or confirmation message that appears when you try to close multiple tabs as you can see in the following screenshot:

Quit firefox confirm

This is quite useful when you hit the close button accidentally with multiple tabs opened. Unfortunately such feature isn’t there in Google Chrome by default. But thanks to “Chrome Toolbox” extension developed by Google itself, the extension adds this missing feature and can be configured from the extension settings.

To get started, just install the Chrome Toolbox, and open the extension options. Check against the “Confirm before closing multiple tabs” and that is it. Now you will get a confirmation message like below when you try to close multiple tabs in Google Chrome.

chrome toolbox confirm before close

chrome warning before closing multiple tabs

Chrome Toolbox Options is really an interesting extension which is aimed to increase the user’s productivity. You can many find various handy options which you would otherwise feel missing in the browser. For instance when you enable “When the mouse pointer hovers an image, show image floating toolbar” options, you get additional options for each image on a page to view the original image in its natural size, or to use a magnifier or to use it as your wallpaper etc. There are plenty other useful options as well. We recommend that you install this extension from the Chrome extensions gallery to enhance your browsing experience in Chrome(link added below).

Install Chrome Toolbox

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CTRL + Tab Tabs Preview Feature In Firefox

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Firefox ctrl-tab feature

Firefox has changed a lot since the inception of the Firefox 3.6. A lot of features have been added since then. One such feature is previewing the opened tabs. We have already discussed how to enable all tabs preview in Firefox 4. Now  let’s see how to enable the other variant of tabs preview feature, the Ctrl + Tab tabs preview (similar to Windows 7’s Alt + Tab preview) in Firefox 3.6 or later versions. Ctrl + Tab preview is disabled by default and if you hit Ctrl + Tab without enabling this, you can just switch the tabs. With Ctrl + Tab preview enabled, you can actually see the preview of tabs which would be very much useful. Follow the steps to enable the same.

Steps:

1. Type about:config in the Firefox address bar and hit Enter.

2. Accept the warning message and proceed to the Firefox about:config page.

About:config Firefox warning

3. Type the following code in the filter and find the boolean key with the same name.

browser.ctrlTab.previews

ctrl-Tab preview firefox setting

4. By default, the value for this key would be set to “false”, meaning that the tabs preview feature has been disabled. As we want to enable this, just double click on the boolean entry to change its value to “true”.

That’s it! Just hit CTRL + Tab key to preview the thumbnails of all the tabs opened in a current Firefox page as shown in the first screenshot. Just change back the value to “false” in the step-4 to disable the tabs preview feature.

[Tip] Disable ‘Recently Closed Tabs’ In Firefox

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Firefox recently closed tabs

Firefox lets users to quickly reopen few of the recently closed tabs for quicker access. Even though the users can go to the history and access all of the webpages that were accessed or closed previously, the “Recently Closed Tabs” that appears under the “History” menu item is surely a timesaver for many of us. But yes, there are people who don’t like this feature. You can always configure Firefox to not to remember any of your recently closed tabs or manually configure it to remember certain number of the recently closed tabs. Here is what you have to do:

1. Type about:config in the address bar and hit enter.

2. A warnings message will be shown, accept that you would be careful while working the about:config entries.

about:config firefox warning

3. In the “Filter” filed, type the following text code and look for an entry which exactly matches with it.

browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo

About:config settings in Firefox

4. Double click on the entry. By default it will hold a value “10”, meaning that it will remember and show the last ten recently closed tabs. Here we want none. So change the value from 10 to 0.

Change number of tabs closed undo setting

That is it! Firefox will no longer remember your recently closed tabs. If you have entered any other non-zero value, Firefox will let you see that many number of the most recently closed tabs.

[Download] Firefox 4 Beta 8

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Mozilla has released the 8th version of the Firefox 4 beta few days back. As Mozilla had earlier finalized the features list for final version of Firefox 4, this Firefox 4.0b8 build doesn’t come with new features but have few feature improvements over the earlier beta release. The major improvements are:

>> Improved Firefox Sync,

>> Refined add-on manager

>> Speed, functionality and stability improvements to WebGL

Firefox 4 beta 8

To know about all the improvements in Firefox 4 Beta 8, read the release notes. Firefox 4 beta 8 has more than 1400 bug fixes listed.

Download Firefox 4 Beta 8 [7.7 MB]

[Tip] Open Google Page Automatcially With Every New Tab In Firefox

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firefox logo

I got this idea when one of my friends asked me how to automatically Google.com when a new tab is opened. I dug into it as is it indeed pretty useful not just for me, but majority of other Firefox users who wants to see Google.com page automatically whenever they open new tabs.

So here we want to open a default website (be it homepage or google.com for instance) each time we hit the new tab. Firefox by default shows a blank page whenever a new tab is opened. Unfortunately Firefox doesn’t have an in-built provision for achieving this, so we have to go through workarounds. Here is the easiest way in which you can set such a feature in Firefox.

1. Install NewTabURL extensions from the Firefox add-ons gallery.Restart your Firefox.

NewTabUrl install

2. Go to Tools> Add-ons and find “NewTabURL” in the list under “Extensions” tab. Click “Options” to configure options for the add-on.

NewTabURL extensions page

3. In the Options window, enter the URL (ex: http://www.google.com/) in against URL option or you can even set Home page as the default URL to open with new tabs. Click Save to save the changes.

NewTabURL options

Now when try opening a new tab in Firefox and it should load the URL that you had chosen while configuring the options. Isn’t it that simple ?

Other Firefox add-ons offering similar feature: New Tab Homepage, Tab Mix Plus