Ubiquity and Firefox

I have recently found an extremely cool extension for Firefox, called Ubiquity. This is like Launchy for Firefox - select something and you can mail it, translate it, map it - a whole lot of stuff. Just open the control window and you do quick Google/Wikipedia searches, find definitions of unknown terms, all without losing context of the page you have open.

New commands can be found from the herd. Lifeacker seems to have fallen in love with this - every few days, there is another tutorial on what you can do with Ubiquity.

Head over to the Ubiquity User Tutorial to install it. Word of advice - its still a bit buggy, occasionally throwing up an error message that is always on top and requires you to kill the browser from the task manager to get rid of it (which means that when you next open Firefox, it force reloads ALL tabs)(Fixed in 0.1.1). An updated version (0.1.1) is available, you may have to check for updates in Add-Ons to find it after installing the base version (0.1)...

However, once you see the sheer value Ubiquity provides, I dont think you will be able to live without it :)

By the way, Tab Mix Plus has gone stable and can now be downloaded from AMO. However, if you are using Widefox, you will still need to update the jar to make it work with 0.3.7...

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...

Firefox 3 Released

Well I guess just about everyone has upgraded to Firefox 3 by now, considering they have over 15 million downloads. India has over 200,000; I think a lot of Indian ISPs install a transparent proxy... Mine certainly does :) That must be lowering the number quite a bit. Also I guess we Indians use computers mostly for work, there are relatively fewer people who use computers and have a passion for it, or are in a environment where all the software installed is not locked down :) Even at office, a lot of my developer friends stick with IE (some with IE6!)

For those who actually participated in the world record attempts you can get a certificate here. By the way, Firefox RC 3 was silently re-released/rebranded as Firefox 3 final. So amazingly, just checking for update with Firefox RC 3 installed will lead to it starting to call itself Firefox 3.

As for add ons, most are now working with Firefox 3. Google Toolbar was updated in the nick of time - a few hours before Firefox 3 final. Still not toolbar 5 for Firefox users so, the button gallery is useless... If you still have something not working, you can use this tip.

One critical add on I found missing is Tab Mix plus. I combine it with the information given here to convert my Firefox to Widefox. A developmental but stable build of Tab Mix Plus that is FF3 compatible can be gotten here. (Direct link). Unfortunately, Widefox does not work with Firefox 3 and Tab Mix Plus. One solution is to use the experimental Tab Kit addon (You have to log in, and its not compatible with TMP). Alternately, you can follow the instruction here.

1. Navigate to your Firefox profile - %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles.
2. Inside this there will be a folder ????????.default (the ??? will be random characters). In the extensions folder inside this, there is a folder - possibly {dc572301-7619-498c-a57d-39143191b318} - having a tabmixplus.jar inside of it.
3. Open the jar file in WinRAR. Navigate to content\tabmixplus\tab\ inside it
4. Open the file tabmix_3.xml in a editor.
5. Change the line saying
   <xul:scrollbox class="tabs-frame" anonid="scroll-tabs-frame" orient="horizontal" flex="1">
   to say
   <xul:scrollbox class="tabs-frame" anonid="scroll-tabs-frame" orient="vertical" flex="1">
6. Replace the file back in the jar, restart Firefox and presto - Widefox is back...
   

FF3 has its own nifty new skin :) Actually the skin is different for each OS. If you want the Vista skin on Windows XP, you can download it here. If anyone is using Opera, then I am sure you have seen its new skin also; I had to download the classic skin and reinstall it as my parents use Opera and they are used to that one.

On Firefox 3 Beta 2

I have been trying out Firefox 3 Beta 2. The first issue I came up against was that most of my extensions simply stopped working. So lets go over the first steps when you want to switch to Firefox 3 Beta 2.

1. Step 1: Look for updates to your extensions that work with Firefox 3 Beta 2. Visiting the developer's site or support forums can be incredibly useful.
   • Get Mouse Gestures here
   • Get Tab Mix Plus here
2. Step 2: If no update is available, try adding a boolean field "extensions.checkCompatibility" to about:config. (More info here)
3. Step 3: Your skin will mostly stop working on installing FX3, so switch to another skin, but hey you can still get Personas for Firefox
4. Step 4: Install Weave, create an account, setup an encryption password.
5. Step 5: If you are concerned about <a ping> (I certainly am), know that it is on by default in all Firefox 3 builds before Feb 1 (which includes Beta 2). There are no visual cues or warnings on a ping link being clicked. You can disable it from about:config by the following method:
   • Set browser.send_pings to false
   • Just to be safe, set browser.send_pings.max_per_link to 0
   • If you feel paranoid, set browser.send_pings.require_same_host to true

This whole ping controversy reminds me of the furor when it came out that the default eBay search plugin for Firefox 1.0 (German Version) sent the search first to a "monitoring" site then to eBay itself. This was soon fixed, and the "monitoring" URL for the search was provided by eBay itself, but that did not stop many people (including yours truly) from accusing Firefox of being spyware. See the related article on mozillazine here(via the Wayback Machine). And a translated version of the discussion in the German Firefox forums here.

As for the current ping issue, as per send_pings page, this is disabled by default as of all builds of Firefox post 1st February 2008. (Which means Firefox 3 Beta 2 users still have to turn it off manually, current builds are Beta 4)

Addendum: I looked up the post I made on the German Firefox topic at the time on my (now defunct) Yahoo 360 blog and suddenly came upon this nugget of information: I am a Facts Curator. (Whatever that means).

More interesting stuff: Yahoo 360 will soon be gone forever.

Running Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 simultaneously

Well I usually have a ton of tabs open on my Firefox. One of the sad things I found on trying to upgrade to Firefox 3 Beta 2 was that most of my extensions just stopped working.

So I decided to stay with Firefox 2 as my main browser, till at least Tab Mix Plus starts working.

The problems I found ere:

1. Running Firefox 2 while 3 was running or vice versa would open another window in the currently running version.
2. Running one after the other would clear all my cookies in the case of the downgrade (i.e. 3 --> 2) and force reload all the pages (as it does after a crash) i.e. a HUGE waste of time

So I looked for a bit of help, and did the following things:

1. Started the profile manager and created a new profile for Firefox 3, "f3"
2. Since the profile manager does not allow copy profile and I wanted all my settings to go to Firefox 3 with me, I copied all the data from the Firefox 2 profile ("default") to f3.

On Windows, this can be found in %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

The profile folder name is random, the extension is the actual name of the profile. BTW, the same folders exist in %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles also, but these are used for the disk cache.

Now to the running part. The issue is, once you select a profile with the profile manager, both versions will use it. So, what you have to do is pass the profile name to Firefox as well as a flag telling it to allow multiple instances. With a little help from the Firefox KB, I altered my Firefox shortcuts to say the following:

Firefox 3:
"E:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 2\firefox.exe" -P f3 -no-remote

and

Firefox 2:
"E:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P default -no-remote