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Tip firefox settings
Introduction
There are a number of settings you can change in the 'about:config' dialog that might be useful to some users. These settings, gleaned from a recent article in Linux Journal, allow you to change various options as described below.
about:config
The first step is to start up firefox and type the string 'about:config' in the address bar. A property-attribute dialog should come up, which reads settings from ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/prefs.js. Unfortunately, this will only show values that have already been set in some way (the full listing of options is not to be found on the disk, sadly) but there were some covered in the article which have some neat effects.
Caching
Maximum memory setting
File: about:config
browser.cache.memory.capacity = integer in KB /* default is to expand as nec. */
Change overall caching behavior
File: about:config
/*
0 = Once per session
1 = Every time I view the page
2 = Never
3 = When the page is out of date (default)
*/
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency = 0|1|2|3
Disabling default script behavior
Note: This really is useful if you need a script to run for a long time for debugging, etc.
File: about:config
dom.max_script_run_time = integer in seconds (default 5, -1: infinite)
Disabling site icons (favicon.ico and 'link rel')
File: about:config
browser.chrome.site_icons = boolean /* (default true, fetches icon) */
browser.chrome.favicons = boolean /* same ------^ */
Gecko behavior
There are some gecko settings you can change as appropriate for the speed of your machine:
[edit]
Initial delay
File: about:config
/* default is 250, quarter-second delay before web content begins to draw
if you have a fast internet connection, set this to a lower value,
however if you have a slower connection, this can make things worse as it
will attempt to draw before the page is finished loading, and it will have
to redraw several times
*/
nglayout.initialpaint.delay = integer in milliseconds
Rendering interval
File: about:config
/* set to 5,000 for testing...chunking process that saves cpu. dont set too low or you= :( */
content.notify.interval = integer in MICROseconds
Pipelining
Pipelining is useful for sites with many images. With pipelining the browser tries to download more images at the same time and the speedup is insane.
Warning: Using pipelineing is against the HTTP standards. The reason is that it has the same effect as a very low level DoS attack, use this very carefully or not at all.
Note: One of the sites I had problems with using this setting was this one (and also gentoo-portage since its the same server). If I had to guess I'd say that opening a whole lot of tabs and sending a whole lot of requests prompted the server to ignore me. So use with caution or don't use at all.
Activating pipelining
File: about:config
network.http.pipelining = boolean /* true to activate pipelining */
Please note: If you have problems with Online-Banking and other high-secure sites, test them with this switch set to 'FALSE'.
Maximum number of requests for pipelining
File: about:config
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = integer /* default is set to 4, try 8 (the maximum value) */
Registering additional protocols
Hate it when you click on links and get "not a registered protocol" error messages?
mailto is not a registered protocol
You can have firefox use external programs to handle them or have firefox display the file as raw text.
Each protocol you want to register consists of two settings:
network.protocol-handler.external.protocol = boolean
network.protocol-handler.app.protocol = /path/to/program
The first setting tells firefox whether to use an external program (true) or have firefox display it (false). The second setting tells firefox what program to run if you told it to use an external program. Please note that you can not use -'s in the path to program. See Bug #321306. protocol is the protocol you want to register, for example mailto, irc or aim:
File: about:config
network.protocol-handler.external.mailto = yes /* mailto:// links from firefox */
network.protocol-handler.external.irc = yes /* irc:// links from firefox */
network.protocol-handler.external.aim = yes /* aim:// links from firefox */
network.protocol-handler.app.mailto = /usr/bin/thunderbird /* use thunderbird */
network.protocol-handler.app.irc = /usr/bin/xchat-2 /* use xchat */
network.protocol-handler.app.aim = /usr/bin/gaim-remote uri /* use gaim */
To integrate Firefox and Thunderbird, read Integrate Thunderbird and Firefox. This tip will show you how to open URLs from Thunderbird automatically in Firefox, and open Thunderbird when a mailto: link is clicked from within Firefox.
To integrate Firefox and xchat, read Integrate xchat with firefox.
In-Browser Error Pages
Hate it when you mis-type a URL and that annoying error box pops up? You can have those errors display right in the browser window with this:
File: about:config
browser.xul.error_pages.enabled = true
Note: firefox >= 1.5 has it enabled by default
Disable window resize
Get annoyed by sites which resize/move your firefox? here is workaround:
File: about:config
dom.disable_window_move_resize = true
Disable popups from plugins
Annoyed by popups from plugins?(for eg, flash popup) here is a workaround:
File: about:config
privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins = 2
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