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Mozilla The Internet

Firefox Undocumented Settings Compilation 70

Posted by timothy from the firefox-tucks-me-in-to-sleep dept.
aceh0 writes "TweakFactor has a Firefox Tweak Guide up that that summarizes some undocumented settings in Firefox and recommended configurations (depending on the computer type and connection speed) for those that don't want to dig through a 17-page thread"
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Firefox Undocumented Settings Compilation More

Firefox Undocumented Settings Compilation

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  • Thunderbird? (Score:5, Informative)

    by choi ( 189590 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:23PM (#9701841)
    > Originally called Thunderbird, Firefox ran into
    > some name problems and was renamed Firebird.
    > Running into further name problems, Firebird was
    > renamed to Firefox.

    Someone didn't do his homework right. Actually, Thunderbird is mozilla.org's standalone mailer.

  • Awesome stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mnoel2 ( 711420 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:34PM (#9701930)
    (Haven't R'ed TFA)

    I'm a student working in my University's Computing Services department (only Unix geek there -- and almost the only Comp Sci major, too), where we're looking at deploying Linux workstations and whatnot. My boss recently asked me to replace the Win2k image on the Union's email kiosks.

    I was using KDE (wanted Blackbox, but that's a long story), so I figured I'd use Konqueror's kiosk mode lockdown (see here [kde.org]). But after googling around and finding this one for Firefox [lib.mi.us], I was sold. XUL makes it so easy to modify the interface and ban commands (like bookmarking or opening local files). And my boss was even impressed. (( Dorky '50s ad grin )) Thanks, Mozilla!

    It'll never get me laid though...
    • That document is the best one around to 'dumb down' a Mozilla (based) browser. However there are some issues left out. It's a pity that the mozilla.org team is not working on a kiosk mode.

      When I have some more time and get the permissions from my boss I will write a step-by-step HOWTO for making a Mozilla based kiosk browser (on Debian GNU/Linux).
      • Well, the one thing that I'm really left worrying about is protocol handling: that document allows the file:, about:, and a few other protocols. However, this link [mozillazine.org] shows you how to alleviate that problem as well. I'm also kind of worried about what happens whenever the user tries to download a new filetype, and is given the option to save to disk or select a program -- they could, for instance, select Konq or xterm when downloading (say) .Z zipped files, and there's no way I can set up valid rules for every
        • I could solve the issue with unknown/unhandled filetypes, I just had to comment out a few lines of javascript to disable the dialog. Not quite elegant, but it works. I don't have the code right at the hand now, but if you are interested, drop me a mail:
          t.csoegoer AT web.de
    • LSU, by any chance? (mnoel2, "Computing Services", "Union")

  • blank page (Score:3, Funny)

    by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:36PM (#9701946)
    i just get a blank page (empty space where presumably article should be) in Opera, and in IE. Do you need Firefox to view this page? No wait, what am i doing. On to the next story!

  • Poor advice (Score:5, Informative)

    by joebp ( 528430 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:36PM (#9701948) Homepage
    This is a poorly written article.

    The changes to, in particular:

    user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
    user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server ", 16);

    Is extremely rude and bad practice.

    • Re:Poor advice (Score:5, Informative)

      by SpaceLifeForm ( 228190 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:56PM (#9702090)
      Yes, those values are too high.

      A side note: The writer mentions that IE had this feature and that Mozilla was slower for that reason. That is not correct. Very old versions of Netscape had this feature.

      • Yes.

        IE makes at most two concurrent connections to any given server.

        • IE uses two by default just like firefox does because the RFC forbids using more (by default). However, the RFC permits using more if there is a compelling reason to do so, which (arguably) includes the fact that the user has hacked around with their configuration to change the number. This is why both IE (google for the MaxConnectionsPerServer registry value) and Firefox give you a way to create a setting to increase it if you really want to, but don't make it easily accessible through the control panel or
    • type about:config in the address-bar

  • Pretty hopeless article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Artega VH ( 739847 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:43PM (#9701985) Journal
    First was the whole Firefox used to be called Thunderbird gem...

    The keyboard shortcuts were sorta useful (but I knew most of them anyway and probably won't need to remember more)

    But the "Advanced Configuration Options" consisted of two changes that I consider fluff at best as both are not required at all..

    Then the performance settings seemed to be the same tip rehashed for some reason without actually explaining what each config setting does.. Most unprofessional imho.

    Then the Themes, Extensions and Conclusion was nothing but fluff...

    All in all I rate the article as an underesearched peice of fluff, possible suitable for someone who probably hasn't heard of firefox and hence isn't going to bother with anyone more than the keyboard shortcuts... Why can't people who do these things figure out what their audience is and write to that?
    • Perhaps we are *not* their intended audience, even if, at the moment, we ARE the only Firefox audience. Perhaps the writer was doing trying to mimic the "undocumented windows tricks" articles that run rampant (and errant) through the user world.

      Cragen

      Sorry. I can never remember clever jokes or sigs.

  • Control - U? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by eviljav ( 68734 )
    The article didn't mention it, but maybe someone here knows:
    Is there a way to set control-U in the MS Windows to work like it does on X? (clearout the URL line, instead of opening up the source view)

  • Firefox? What about Mozilla Mail? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spacecowboy420 ( 450426 ) * <rcasteen@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:12PM (#9702237)
    Browser tweaks are all fine and good, but I find the real leverage in managing data via "tweaks" is within email. Thunderbird has gobs of extensions and what not - but what about Mozilla Mail? Due to Mozilla Mail handling imap a bit better than Thunderbird, I have my company using Mozilla. Now when it comes to extending Mozilla Mail, you're kinda limited to what you can do. Doing a search for "Mozilla Mail extensions" will turn up tons of results, but invariably seem more directed to Thunderbird. Thunderbird extensions don't always work well within Mozilla Mail. Am I missing something? Is there some hidden repository of Mozilla Mail extensions, or minor tweak you can do to Thunderbird extensions to make them useful within Mozilla Mail?
    • Somewhat offtopic, but what does Mozilla Mail do that Thunderbird does differently regarding IMAP? I ask because I currently use Thunderbird for my IMAP mail and havn't really noticed a problem, though it could be better in some areas.
      • The main thing was that the "Server is disconnected" notice happens less - only when you try to do something on the server when it has been idle, instead of seemingly every thirty seconds. For some reaseon, my users absoloutley hated this more than anything...I am still looking around to try to squash the message all together.
        • > The main thing was that the "Server is disconnected" notice happens less

          (note: I am not the person who asked you the question, but I was also wondering.)

          Interesting. Under what conditions does the above message appear? I use Mozilla and Thunderbird with IMAP and I have never seen that even once.
        • I've seen that message appear when Mozilla uses more connections to the IMAP-server than the server provides.

          If you control the IMAP-server you can try to increase the number of connections, otherwise make Mozilla (or Thunderbird) use less connections via Edit -> Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings. In the Server Settings for the account, click 'Advanced'. 'Maximum number of server connections to cache' is default 5, try to decrease that value.
          • I do control the server, and I have increased the available connections to 500 (for a 25 user server). I have also set the `cache' to 1. I have poured over performance tuning for Courier Imap to see what I could do to stop this but have been unable to completely eliminate it. It seems to happen mostly when a user is composing a message that may take a while. When the user hits send, a message alerting that the "server is disconnected" and that "the message was unable to be copied to the sent folder" - do yo
      • I dunno what it is about thunderbird, but I find that it gets out of sync with the server much more easily than mozilla mail.

        and when it gets out of sync, there is no way to get it reset state apart from a restart.

        I loved the idea of it, but in my experience thunderbird blows chunks. Gave up after about two week's of trying to get it to work reliably.

        Since others like it, it must be the particular combination of thunderbird, the imap implementation, and the network inbetween that Just Doesn't Work.

  • what I want to know is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by teridon ( 139550 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @08:45PM (#9702833) Homepage
    How do you keep Firefox from going to search.netscape.com when you type a word into the location bar? (e.g. type "tired" in the location bar doesn't go to "www.tired.com")

    BTW, did you know if you type "a " in the location bar it will do a "I'm feeling lucky" google search?

    • Re:what I want to know is... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Gogo Dodo ( 129808 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:04PM (#9702932)
      I'm a bit confused with your post. First you say that the location bar uses search.netscape.com and then you say it uses Google. It's all one configuration, I think.

      The default on my 0.9.2 copy is to do a Google I'm Feeling Lucky search. I changed it by going to about:config, changing keyword.URL and removing the I'm Feeling Lucky button parameter. So the URL looks like:

      http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&s ou rceid=firefox&q=
    • These are two seperate features. The first is not a search, but a "guessed" URL. Firefox tries to guess 'tired.com' (or .net, .org, etc.) from 'tired' so you get to 'www.tired.com'.

      The second one is the normal search feature which you can tweak around with like another poster mentioned.

  • Explanations would be nice (Score:4, Informative)

    by Gogo Dodo ( 129808 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @08:58PM (#9702896)
    How about explanations of what and why you would want to tweak these things? It's all nice to say "Do this," but I want to know what and why these changes are good for.

    I get some of them like the pipelining and max connections (though the settings are not nice), but what do some of the less obvious ones do?

    user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
    user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);

    I think that's a problem with all of these "tweak your browser" things I've read. Nobody ever says why you should tweak something, just that you should.

  • To learn more (Score:1, Redundant)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) *
    type about:config into your address bar.
  • In IE, I'm able to download up to 15 simultaneous files (either directly via Registry tweaks or through utilities such as IEtweak 2). How can I accomplis the same thing in Firefox 0.92? Thanks in advance for any assistance

  • Keyboard Shortcuts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lachlan76 ( 770870 ) on Thursday July 15, 2004 @02:13PM (#9709531)
    Power users (lazy people) love keyboard shortcuts and we have a semi exhaustive list of the common ones here

    I don't know if it ever occurs to people that the keyboard is a much better way of doing some things than using the mouse. Really, when you use the mouse, you're just pushing buttons on a virtual keyboard, instead of doing it with your hands on the real keyboard.

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