Accessing your about:config page
In your Firefox, type
about:config in the address bar.
You will be shown a warning page. Click the “
I’ll be careful, I promise!” button to proceed.
On the main page, you will see a long list of configuration entries. Enter the name of the key you want to update in the “
Filter” field. The list will narrow to only the entries that match your keyword as you type.
To modify the value, simply double click on the entry value field and update the entry. That’s all!
Isn’t that simple? Now, let’s get to the tweaking.
1) Adjust the Smart Location Bar’s Number of Suggestions
In Firefox 3, when you start typing in the location bar, a drop-down list of suggestion URLs will be shown. If you want it to show more than 12 suggestions (12 is the default), you can adjust the
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults keys and get it to show the number you want.
Config name:
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
Default:
12
Modified value:
Set to your desired number of suggestion. If you want to disable it all together, set it to -1
2) Disable the session restore function
Firefox 3 automatically saves your session every 10 secs so that whenever it crashes, it can restore all your tabs. While this is a useful feature, some of you might find it irritating. To disable this function, toggle the value of
browser.sessionstore.enabled to
False
Config name:
browser.sessionstore.enabled
Default:
True
Modified value:
False if you want to disable the session restore function
3) Adjust the Session Restore Saving Frequency
Same as above, if you decided to keep the session restore feature on, but want to reduce the session saving frequency, change the value of
browser.sessionstore.interval so that Firefox will save the session at a longer interval.
Config name:
browser.sessionstore.interval
Default:
10000 (in msecs, equivalent to 10secs)
Modified value:
Set it to your desired value. 1000 means 1 sec and 60000 means 1 minute.
4) Enable Advanced Color Profile Support
Firefox has this advanced color profile features that display higher image quality. It is not enabled by default as it has a negative effect on the performance of the browser. If you are concern with the image quality rather than the performance, you can activated it via the
gfx.color_management.enabled setting
Config name:
gfx.color_management.enabled
Default:
False
Modified value:
True (if you want to activate the color profile support feature)
5) Disable Antivirus Scanning
This is mainly for Windows users. By default, Firefox 3 automatically scan the downloaded file with the default anti-virus application to make sure it is free of virus. If you download a big file, it could take a long time for the whole scanning process to complete. To increase the performance of the browser, you might want to consider disabling the anti-virus scanning via the
browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone key.
Config name:
browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
Default:
True
Modified value:
False (if you want to disable it)
6) Configuring The Scrolling Tabs
When you opened many tabs, Firefox will not keep on reducing the tab width. Instead, it shows a scrolling bar so that the min width (100px) is conserved and you can scroll to find your tabs. If you are those who don’t like the scrolling tab function and prefer Firefox to show all the tabs, regardless how small it is, you can set the value of
browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to 0 to disable it. Similarly, if you want Firefox to display more tabs before showing the scrolling button, you can reduce the default value to a lower value, say 75 pixels.
Config name:
browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
Default:
100
Modified value:
0 if you want to disable the scrolling functions, other values to set the min width value
7) Show/Disable Close button on Tabs
Some people love to see the
Close (the red X) button on every tabs, but some hate it. Whatever is it, you can configure it to your preferences via the
browser.tabs.closeButtons setting.
Config name:
browser.tabs.closeButtons
Default:
1
Modified values:
- 0 - display a close button on the active tab only
- 1- display close buttons on all tabs
- 2- don’t display any close buttons
- 3- display a single close button at the end of the tab strip
Extend Scripts Execution Time
In Firefox 3, a script is only given 10 seconds to respond, after which it will issue a unresponsive script warning. If you are hooked on a slow network connection, you might want to increase the script execution time via
dom.max_script_run_time to cut down on the frequency of the no script warning.
Config name:
dom.max_script_run_time
Default:
10 (in secs)
Modified value:
20, or any values greater than 10
9) Handling JavaScript Popups
When you come across a site that executes a javascript open new window function, and if the popup window is without all the usual window features, i.e.
back/forward/reload buttons, status bar etc, Firefox will automatically treat it as a popup and will not open it as a new tab. However, if you find this to be a nuisance and wanted to open all new windows in a new tabs, you can specify it via the
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction setting.
Config name:
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction
Default:
2 - Open all JavaScript windows the same way as you have Firefox handle new windows unless the JavaScript call specifies how to display the window
Modified values:
- 0 – open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows
- 1 – do not open any new windows
- 2- open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows unless the Javascript specify how to display the window
10) Enable Spell Checking In All Text Fields
The default spell checking function only checks for multi-line text boxes. You can get it to spell-check for single line text box as well.
Config name:
layout.spellcheckDefault
Default:
1 (spell checker for multi-lines text boxes only)
Modified values:
- 0 – disable the spell checker
- 2 – enable the spell checker for all text boxes
11) Open Search Box Results In New Tab
When you search using the search box at the top right hand corner of the browser, it will display the search results in the current tab. If you don’t want the search to interfere with your current tab, you can tweak the
browser.search.openintab to make it open in a new tab.
Config Name:
browser.search.openintab
Default:
False
Modified value:
True (open search box results in new tab)
12) Lower The Physical Memory Used When Minimized
This tweak is mainly for Windows users. When you minimize Firefox, it will send Firefox to your virtual memory and free up your physical memory for other programs to use. Firefox will reduce its physical memory usage, when minimized, to approximately 10MB (give or take some) and when you maximize Firefox it will take back the memory that it needs.
The preference name does not exist and needs to be created.
Right click on the background and select
New->Boolean.
Enter the name when prompted:
config.trim_on_minimize
Enter the values:
True
13) Speed up your Firefox
Several tweaks required for this
Config name:
network.http.pipelining
Default:
False
Modified value:
True
Config name:
network.http.proxy.pipelining
Default:
False
Modified value:
True
Config name:
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Default:
4
Modified value:
any value higher than 4, but not more than 8
Config name:
network.http.max-connections
Default:
30
Modified value:
96
Config name:
network.http.max-connections-per-server
Default:
15
Modified value:
32
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A Few Firefox Tweaks
Is FF supposed to be such a hog...?
Linear Mode
