I’d given up in frustration with Firefox 2.0 due to a couple of changes that made it too clumsy for me to use. Fortunately, I’ve found a few workarounds and configuration changes to where I have Firefox almost working the way I want it to.

Tip #1

First of all, the behavior of the ALT-key keyboard shortcuts was annoying. I found out that the new method for using the shortcut was to use ALT-SHIFT-key instead. That is a clumsy keyboard combination in my opinion. Here’s how you can change the behavior of your Firefox 2.0 to use the old ALT-key combinations:

Open about:config and change the following values:

ui.key.chromeAccess (change to 5)
ui.key.contentAccess (change value to 4)

Explanation of the numeric values:

Shift key modifier is assigned a value of 1 (binary 001)
Ctrl is 2
Alt is 4

To arrive at combinations, you add the values together. Examples:

Alt-Shift = 4 + 1 = 5 (which is the value you’d use for the fix above)
Ctrl-Shift = 2 + 1 = 3
Ctrl-Alt = 4 + 2 = 6
Ctrl-Alt-Shift = 4 + 2 + 1 = 7

Tip #2

Firefox 2.0 adds a “close tab” button to each tab. That’s fine for some users, but I like the older placement on the right side of the tab bar. The following restores it.

Open up your about:config window. Right-click to bring up a context window, and choose New -> Integer. Type in the new preference name browser.tabs.closeButtons. For the integer value, type in 3. If the change doesn’t happen, close and reopen the browser and you’ll have your close button off to the right again. (Thanks to Andrew T. for this suggestion!)

Tip #3

Another action that changed in Firefox 2.0’s tab bar is a scrolling feature has been added to the tabs. In other words, if you open more than, say, 10 or 12 links, the additional tabs scroll toward the right and don’t change in width as they did in 1.5. Unfortunately, I like all tabs to be one click away in the tab bar. While my fix isn’t completely a recreation of the 1.5 tab bar, on my current screen resolution it lets me open as many as 32 tabs before it starts using the scroll feature.

In your about:config screen, look for:

browser.tabs.tabMinWidth (set to 20)

browser.tabs.tabClipWidth (set to 5, or reportedly, any number lower than the number above)

These are pixel sizes, so technically you could set them even lower if needed. (The “favorites” icons are, I believe, 16 pixels square in the tab bar, so you could go that low on your tabMinWidth setting.)

Tip #4

Have you always wanted new searches, started in your search bar, to open in a new tab rather than overwrite an existing tab’s contents? Give this a shot!

Open your about:config window. Search for the entry browser.search.openintab. Double-click to change this value to true, and you’re all set!

Tip #5

The “Resize Search Bar” plugin died when I updated to 2.0. I found an unofficial but 100% functional replacement for it. It is uploaded below. Download the file, then drag it into any Firefox browser window to install it. Simple!

Resize Search Box for FF 2.0 (Right-click to save.)

Tip #6

This is an oldie I’ve used, but very necessary. Rather than try to get everyone on my computer to install the same search plugins, I found that if they are installed in the c:/program files/mozilla firefox/searchplugins directory, they will appear for all users. Firefox’s default search engine plugins are located here, but any customized entries are put into your own application directory. You can move those over to the Program Files location if you want everyone to use them. And don’t worry: while Firefox 2.0 shows .xml files, the .src files are compatible and work just as well.

One pet peeve is that Firefox only installs search plugins and extensions on a per-user basis. Firefox really should consider giving us a global install option for these, so that all users can share the same features. It’s tedious to go into each user’s profile to add these one by one.

Tip #7

Your Bookmarks Toolbar should probably have quite a few links in it. Are you good with identifying icons? Well, why not make use of them! What I’ve done for the majority of my links is delete the descriptions, so that only the icons show. That way, I can fit a couple dozen links or more in that toolbar. Since Firefox’s handling of website icons (called “Favorites Icons”) is very reliable, the first time you load a site from a link on the toolbar without an icon will automatically load one from the site. To change the description, right-click on the toolbar button, choose Properties, then delete the entire description. If you need some description, use very short words, or an abbreviation. My goal is to keep as many of my most-used items one mouse click away. And this helps.

Tip #8

If you want to remove the List All Tabs button in your tab bar, you will have to edit your userChrome.css file, located in c:/documents and settings/yourname/application data/mozilla/firefox…etc. Dig down and you’ll find the “chrome” directory. Once you locate userChrome.css, add the following code to it:

userChrome.css

/* Remove List Tabs button */
.tabs-alltabs-stack, .tabs-alltabs-box,
.tabs-alltabs-box-animate, .tabs-alltabs-button {
display: none !important; }

Save your file, restart Firefox, and the button should be gone.

Tip #9

Gone from Firefox’s cookie configuration menu is the option to let Firefox load cookies from the originating website only. You now have to modify this via the about:config dialog. Look for network.cookie.cookieBehavior, and change the integer value to 1. The value 0 allows all cookies, and the value 2 blocks all cookies. The value 3 is unused in Firefox.

Parting Shot

Want to know why I still am not going to bother with IE7? Firefox is just so configurable, it lets me set up the browser with many more options that IE can’t offer. Even minor stuff like user interface changes–a lot of it is accessible through about:config and editing of the “chrome” files. If that’s too difficult, there are dozens of good plugins you can install. I use very few plugins (called “extensions”), but the ones I do use are very reliable. Adblock Plus is by far the best–it blocks a lot of the ads and other “garbage” that sites try to send our way. It’s easily configurable as well, and update files are published regularly by a handful of different parties.

Firefox 2.0 supposedly fixes some of the more well known memory leaks, and so far 2.0 seems to be working well. There are still a few tweaks I need to make, but beyond that, it’s working well.