Among the changes in the official Firefox 3.6 release is a change to where new tabs open from clicked links—to the right of the tab they launched from. Liked it better the old way? Here’s the quick fix. More »
Firefox only: If you’ve already started using the Firefox 3.6 Beta release, you’re going to need more than the old checkCompatibility trick to get your extensions working again. More »
If you frequently examine the source code of web pages while using Firefox, this handy trick will load the source code directly in your favourite editor. More »
Firefox 3.5 includes support for the multi-touch features of the latest and greatest MacBooks, but leaves out a “twist” motion that moves forward and back through browser tabs. A quick about:config hack brings it back. More »
In our latest browser speed tests, I half-heartedly complained that Firefox eats up memory over long periods of use. Our lovely, helpful commenters pointed out that there is, indeed, a tweak to help with that. It’s important to note that this about:config tweak doesn’t actually change how Firefox uses (and hoards) memory over actual use. For the purposes of user speed, then, it’s not much change. But while Windows can normally grab memory back from applications that are minimised, Firefox prevents that and keeps all the memory it acquired during your multi-tab wanderings—unless you enable this tweak, which some have claimed also makes Firefox scale down the big memory pile it had going upon re-focusing.
The Mozilla Links blog reports that Firefox’s next release, version 3.1, will ship with colour profile support turned on by default. Colour profile support shows richer colours in certain images in your browser; if you can’t wait for 3.1 to drop, here’s how to enable it in your copy of Firefox 3 now.
Don’t like Firefox 3′s built-in download manager’s default behaviour? The Mozilla Links blog points out five configuration tweaks that can customise it. Our two favorites: in about:config set browser.download.manager. showAlertOnComplete to false to remove the taskbar pop-up notification of a completed download. Also, on Windows, you can keep downloads from cluttering up your My Recent Documents folder by setting browser.download.manager.addToRecentDocs to false. For more on about:config fun, see our useful Firefox 3 configuration tweaks. Tweaks for Firefox 3 download manager [Mozilla Links]
Firefox 3 comes with several preferences baked into its options dialogs, but there are still a few you can only access by rolling up your sleeves and digging into its configuration manually. Power users have been diving under Firefox’s hood to get their browser to behave just how they like since version 0.9, but Firefox 3 offers some new settings that customise its new features. Let’s take a look at our favourite Firefox 3 about:config tweaks for customising your browser.
