Ultimate Firefox Tweak Guide

Firefox is one of the best browsers out there. What I really like about it (besides all the plugins) is the ability (via about:config) to set most of the system paramters via the UI. I have been using Firefox for years now, so lets see what I set up and why.

Most of these settings also have an entry in the Mozilla knowledgebase. I have tried to link to that, wherever possible. Some of these may not exist by default. In this case, they can simply be created from the right click menu (Make sure to match the type.) There is no option to delete something in about:config. Simply click "Reset" and the option will be gone the next time you open about:config. Warning Many of these options, particularly the ones which deal with reduced memory footprint and content rendering will slow down Firefox.

Setting	Type	Value	Purpose
accessibility.typeaheadfind	boolean	true	Make Firefox star searching inside the page the moment some text is typed, if a field does not have focus
accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar	integer	0	Prevent fashing the toolbar when typeahead starts
accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly	boolean	true	Searches only links. Equivalent to starting search with '
browser.cache.memory.capacity	integer	15000	How much data can Firefox store in its "in memory" cache. (In KB) (Yes, I know, 15360)
browser. enable_automatic_image_resizing	boolean	false	This controls Firefox's behavior, when displaying a image only (i.e. if the URL itself points to an image). If enabled, images larger than Firefox's window will be resized down automatically.

Setting	Type	Value	Purpose
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction	integer	0	Forces Javascript links to open a tab instead of a new window.
browser. sessionhistory. max_entries	integer	10	How many URLs can you traverse purely through the Back/Forward buttons. Setting this to a high value will make Firefox use more memory, as some data for this is cached. (And this is 10 per tab BTW)
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers	integer	0	The number of pages (per tab) to store in memory to allow fast back/forward. Separate from memory cache
browser.ssl_override_behavior	integer	2	Prepopulate the faulty certificate on the add exception page. Enabling this and xul.error_pages.expert_bad_cert will reduce 2 clicks from the process to add an exception for a bad certificate.
browser.xul.error_pages.expert_bad_cert	boolean	true	Show "Add Exception" on the invalid certificate error page automatically. browser.xul.error_pages.enabled must be true

Setting	Type	Value	Purpose
config.trim_on_minimize	boolean	true	Makes Firefox release most of its memory when it is minimized
content.interrupt.parsing	boolean	true	Periodically interrups parsing a page to check for UI events. Useful if Firefox freezes under high CPU
content.max.tokenizing.time	integer	50000	How much time (in microseconds) Firefox will wait between checking for UI events.
content.notify.interval	integer	1000000	While parsing, how much time (in microseconds) to wait before the currently parsed content will be displayed
content.notify.ontimer	boolean	true	If true, will enable content.notify.interval setting. Dont enable this if you have a high speed connection

Setting	Type	Value	Purpose
content.switch.threshold	integer	1000000	How long will Firefox stay "on alert" when its rendering of a page is interrupted by a user action (say typing or a mouse click)
gfx.color_management.enabled	boolean	true	Enable this setting to make Firefox display richer colors for images
network.prefetch-next	boolean	false	If true, Firefox will (on a hint from a webpage) fetch some links before you actually click on them.
browser.identity.ssl_domain_display	integer	1	Makes Firefox highlight sites using HTTPS by showing their domain name in a blue background(New 10 Nov '08)
geo.enabled	boolean	false	Disables Geolocation(New 30 June '09)

Setting	Type	Value	Purpose
network.manage-offline-status	boolean	false	Prevent Firefox from going into offline mode by itself if you don't have a network connection
browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs	integer	0	Make Firefox 4 load only one tab at a time - inbuilt bartab
browser.gesture.*	string	See Link	Make Firefox 4 support multitouch gestures from the mousepad
dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled	boolean	false	Set this to false to prevent annoying webpages from disabling copy/paste

Some other useful stuff: a list of the winners of the best Firefox 3 extensions is here. If you want Firefox 3 on Ubuntu to look like the way it does on Windows (with the huge back button and all) you can get the required theme here and finally, if you want to use MPlayer as a plugin in Firefox (on Linux) to play streams and media files, you can get it here.

A blog is an interesting way to put out your thoughts, its also an interesting way to store information, almost like a diary :) Well this post leans heavily on the side of the second purpose, to store exactly what custom Firefox settings I keep and why. I will try to keep it updated as I change stuff around...