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Firefox 3 features you may not know
While the awesome bar, download pause and resume, malware protection, the new themes, and serious performance improvements are perhaps the most representative features introduced with Firefox 3, here are some other useful ones you may not be aware:
- Duplicate tabs. Press Ctrl while dragging a tab to create a duplicate of the dragged tab including its history. Note that this feature doesn’t work on Mac.
- Move tabs to another window. Just drag a tab and drop it on another window to move it. If the dragged tab is the last one in its window, it will be closed.
- Resize the search bar. When the search bar is placed next to the location bar, you can drag the handler between them (invisible on Windows and Linux) to resize it.
- Add keyword search. Select Manage Search Engines… in the search engines menu to open the Search Engines Manager, select a search engine, press Edit Keyword… and enter a few characters to define one. Now you can enter the keyword followed by your search terms in the location bar to search with that plugin.
- Discontinuous selections. Make a selection with the mouse as you usually do. Then press and hold the Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) key to make additional selections and create a larger discontinuous one so you can copy or print just what you need.
- Integrated add-ons. No need to visit Mozilla Add-ons because Firefox 3 brings it to you directly from the Add-ons Manager new Get Add-ons page: search, find and install with a single click.
- Disable plugins. Crashing? It may be a plugin. To be sure, disable the suspect through the new Plugins page in the Add-ons Manager.
- Check your crashes. Enter about:crashes in the location bar to get a list of crashes submitted by Breakpad (Mozilla’s crash reporter). Click on a crash report to get details provided by Socorro, Mozilla’s crash reports server.
The other Firefox 3 themes
As you may know, Firefox 3 introduces three different themes for all the officially supported operating systems: Firelight on Mac OS X, Tango on Linux, and Strata on Windows, which even comes in XP and Vista variations to better blend with Luna and Aero respectively.
If you are feeling envious of what the other platform or style got or just want to try a different look and have a couple of minutes to spare, you may want to give these themes a try.
Vista on XP, is a theme by Pascal Herbert that lets you use the Windows Vista theme, which is pretty much like the XP theme except all main navigation bar icons are blue and glassy instead of plastic-y.
If you prefer XP’s green plastic, try XP on Vista by the same author.
MacOS X Theme, created by GOLF-AT, brings Firelight’s brushed metal to users in Linux and Windows platforms. You will need a Mozilla Add-ons account though, as it is labeled experimental and awaiting further reviews.
Finally, if you don’t like change and believe Firefox 2 theme was just perfect, there’s also a theme for you: Firefox 2 for Firefox 3 will make you feel as it is 2006 again, yellow location bar for secure sites included.
Enjoy!
Set Mibbit as your IRC client in Firefox
Do you know Mibbit? It’s an awesome web based IRC client. IRC, for those not old enough to recall, meant chat long before instant messaging entered the scene and is still a very reliable option for group and peer-to-peer text communication.
You can take advantage of Firefox 3’s support for web-based protocol handling to make it your default IRC client and handle irc:// links whenever you found one.
Mibbit added the necessary interface short before Firefox 3 final release and I’ve proposed it to be included with Firefox by default. But you can add it right now.
First, you will have to enable registration of protocol web handlers from different domains.
- Enter about:config in the location bar and press Enter to access the advanced preferences.
- Look for gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost and double click it to set it to true.
Now click in the link below to add Mibbit as an irc: links handler.
You will be prompted with a confirmation info bar. Press Add Application.
You can now select Mibbit as your irc:// links handler from the Application page in the Options dialog.
Now when you click on irc: links a new tab with Mibbit and a tab connected to the IRC server and channel.
I suggest setting gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost back to false to prevent malicious web sites offering their own protocol handlers.
In case you need to remove Mibbit as an irc:// handler, go back to the Applications page in the Options dialog. Look for irc in the content type column. Open the menu in the Action column and select Application Details…, select Mibbit and press Remove.
Tweak Firefox 3 full screen mode
Firefox 3 introduces real full screen mode where unlike Firefox 2 where the location bar and tab bar remained visible at all times, now they both automatically hide below the top edge of the screen.
If for some reason you prefer to see the location and tab bars, you can customize Firefox:
- Enter about:config in the location bar to access the advanced preferences.
- Look for browser.fullscreen.autohide and double click it to set it to false.
Or you can just turn off the toolbars slide up animation:
- Look for browser.fullscreen.animateUp, right-click, select Modify and enter 0.
As with all advanced preferences you can reset them to their default values right-clicking and selecting Reset from the context menu.
Just in case, you enter full screen mode pressing F11 or selecting Full Screen in Firefox’s View menu.
Tweak Firefox 3 full page zoom
Firefox 3 introduces full page zoom, that is, instead of just making text bigger or smaller, it resizes the full page including images and layout.
1. If you just want to zoom text, in the View menu, select Zoom and mark Zoom Text Only.
2. Firefox 3 remembers what zoom level you used for viewing pages in a domain and will automatically zoom them the next time you visit any page in the same domain. If you prefer Firefox not to remember it:
- In the location bar, enter about:config to access the advanced preferences
- Look for browser.zoom.siteSpecific and double click it to set it to false.
3. Another change you may quickly notice is that in Firefox 3 pressing Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) and scrolling up and down, zooms the page in and out, unlike Firefox 2 and previous versions which used to work the opposite way.
4. By default when you press Ctrl + = and Ctrl + - to zoom in or out a page (Cmd + = on Mac), Firefox magnifies to 30%, 50%, 67%, 80%, 90%, 100%, 110%, 120%, 133%, 150%, 170%, 200%, 240% and 300%. If you want to define more or less fine steps or need to zoom to larger levels you can customize Firefox full page zoom:
- Enter about:config in the location bar to access the advanced preferences.
- Look for toolkit.zoomManager.zoomValues and replace the default values with your preferences. For example to set quicker values like 10%, 50%, 100%, 200%, 300% and 500% you will need to enter .1,.5,1,2,3,5.
- You will also need to increase the default 300% zoom in level. Look for zoom.maxPercent and set it to 500 to match the highest step set above.
- You may need to to do the same with the lower limit. Look for zoom.minPercent and set it to 10 to match the lowest step set above.
Note that the zoom steps only affect zooming in and out with the keyboard or via View>Zoom>Zoom In/Zoom Out. Mouse scroll zooming uses its own steps but respects the maximum and minum zoom levels.
Also there seems to be no limit to the zoom level. I was able to set a 5000% cap and get a ridiculously large page.
9 tweaks for Firefox 3’s location bar
While Firefox 3’s location bar is perhaps my personal favorite new feature and the one I missed the most when I have to use Firefox 2 for some testing, there are a lot of people who find it weird, obtrusive and don’t like it including bookmarks and history among its results.
An option to restore its old behavior was available for a few weeks during Firefox 3 development but it was pulled basically because it would need a lot of testing and it was thought it was not worth it. The option may come back for Firefox 3.1.
In the meantime, for those who prefer the old way and those who want even more power, here are 9 easy tweaks you can try.
1. Make the autocomplete menu show only typed addresses and not visited or bookmarked
- Enter about:config in the location bar to access the advanced preferences. Accept the “This may void your warranty message”.
- Look for browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped and double click it to set it to TRUE.
2. To set the autocomplete menu to single line suggestions install the oldbar extension, developed by Seth Spitzer. Together with the previous tweak pretty much restores Firefox 2 behavior, except typed characters are searched in all the address instead of just the beginning.
3. Change the number of suggestions displayed in the autocomplete menu
- Enter about:config in the location bar to access the advanced preferences.
- Look for browser.urlbar.maxRichResults and set it to the number of results you want to get.
- Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.
4. Hide the star button if you prefer to use the Bookmarks menu or a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + D)
- Open your userChrome.css file located in your profile folder.
- Add this line to the end of the file: #star-button {display: none !important;}
- Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.
5. Always show the Go button. By default it is only displayed when you are editing the current web address.
- Open your userChrome.css file located in your profile folder.
- Add this line to the end of the file: #go-button { visibility: visible !important; }
- Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.
6. If you enter firfox in the location bar and you try to correct it, the autocomplete menu won’t suggest anything because it only keeps working as you edit the last characters. Install the Edit Middle extension, developed by harikaried, to make it work with edits anywhere.
7. To auto select the first suggestion in the autocomplete menu, install the Enter Selects extension, developed by harikaried. You will need to logon to Mozilla Add-ons to install it as it’s still experimental.
8. Tweak the autocomplete menu title and addresses size and colors by adding these lines to your userChrome.css file. Check for the specific hexadecimal color code to use at WebMonkey.
.ac-comment {font-size: 100% !important; color: #444444 !important; }
.ac-comment[selected='true'] { color: #FFFFFF !important; }
.ac-url-text {font-size: 100% !important; color: #000077 !important; }
.ac-url-text[selected='true'] { color: #FFFFFF !important; }
9. To include Google and Amazon search results in the autocomplete menu install the Searchery extension, developed by Ian McKellar. You will need to logon to Mozilla Add-ons to install it as it’s still experimental.
10. Bonus tip courtesy of Frederick from the comments: To hide the web feed icon from the location bar, add this line to your userChrome.css file: #feed-button[feeds] { display: none !important; }
Happy tweaking!
Thanks Jens, Marius, and Marcelo for the suggestions and corrections which work better indeed. There were unwanted spaces and wrong quotes in the original post but have now been corrected.
Tweak Firefox 3 location bar autocomplete menu
A common complaint about Firefox 3’s location bar is that the autocomplete menu is too long because of the big font sizes, that the page title grabs too much attention compared to the address or that the address is too difficult to read.
While the default colors and sizes is still under review, you can tweak it right now to better suit your taste. Just add this code to your userChrome.css file:
.ac-comment {
font-size: 100%! important;
color: #444444 ! important;
}.ac-comment[selected=”true”] { color: #FFFFFF !important; }
.ac-url-text {
font-size: 100% ! important;
color: #000077 ! important;
}.ac-url-text[selected=”true”] { color: #FFFFFF !important; }
.ac-comment refers to the title styling which I have changed to be the same size (100%) as the address and a lighter gray. .ac-url-text refers to the address which I have set to blue.
It looks like this now:
You can play with different font-size values and proportions and colors. For color codes, check W3Schools.
You can also reduce the number of suggestions in the autocomplete menu with this tip.
Update: Added CSS code to change the text color when selected. Thanks David.
Fix Firefox 3’s location bar
While the new location bar is currently voted the favorite Firefox 3 feature with about 37% of 1,695 votes cast so far, it seems from comments to my recent Firefox 3 Beta 3 review, that a significant number of users are less than happy with it.
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Related Articles at Mozilla Links:
- Keep Firefox’s location bar on sight
- Reduce Firefox 3 location bar autocomplete menu
- Firefox 3 location bar just became almighty
- Firefox 3’s location bar power for Firefox 2
- Minimize web address typos
- Tweak Firefox 3 location bar autocomplete menu