Firefox is truly a very customizable browser. It has lots of hidden features and options which are not accessible via the browser's preferences UI. Add-ons enable many of these features to be customized in a user friendly way. Others can be tweaked with the built-in configuration editor (about:config). One such secret feature of Firefox is the ability to change the icon of the main window and bookmarks as well as library windows. You can even set your own icon for the downloads library, the bookmarks window, and the view source tool without using any third party tools. Let's see how it can be done.
Category: Firefox
How to disable recent thumbnails on the new tab page in Firefox
When you open a new tab in Mozilla Firefox, then by default it shows you thumbnails of websites based on how frequently you have visited them and how recently as well. For most users this feature is really useful since it provides quick access to frequently visited sites and allows pinning and rearranging favorite web pages on the new tab page. But there is a category of users who care about privacy or have to share their browser with other people. In such a case, they may want to disable the new tab page thumbnails. Here is how you can do that.
How to move tabs in Firefox to the bottom of its window
As a former user of Opera 12.x, I am used to having a fully customizable UI in my browser. One change I used to do was to move the tabs to the bottom of the browser's window. After switching to Firefox, I have not found any corresponding option to move the tabs bar to the bottom of the screen. So I would like to share the solution I am using.
Add a Run button in Firefox for downloaded EXE files to open them directly
In Mozilla Firefox, when you click on the hyperlink of a downloadable file, it gives a choice of whether you have to open the file, save the file or cancel the download. However if you try to download EXEs or any other kind of files which Firefox considers as executable files (.MSI) for example, it will only show you a Save button and a Cancel button. There is no option to directly run the executable file. Well, an addon can easily change that. Let us explore it.
How to disable geolocation sharing feature of Mozilla Firefox
By default, Mozilla Firefox comes with a geolocation feature (location-aware browsing). It is enabled by default. This means that websites and web apps will be able to get all the necessary information to track the user's physical location. In some cases it can be useful, i.e. for online maps services, because they can display the appropriate starting point on the map wherever you are located at that moment. But it is also a cause for privacy concerns. There is a certain category of users who always prefer disabling such options completely. Unfortunately, there is no setting in the Firefox GUI options to turn off geolocation. Luckily, there is a way to disable it.
Download the Firefox full offline installer and bypass the web installer
As Google has always been doing with their Chrome web browser, Mozilla has recently switched to a web-based installer for its browser, Firefox. Now, when you click the download link, you will get a small installer stub instead of the full big-sized installer. The web installer downloads the full version of Firefox. This is not an issue for users who want to install Firefox on just one PC, or who have a good Internet connection which is always online. However, there are several cases where you might need the complete, full offline installer for Firefox. For example, if you want to download it once and then install it on multiple PCs, it makes no sense to download it individually on every PC. Also, if you have an expensive and limited mobile internet data plan, then again you wouldn't want to download Firefox multiple times. To get the full offline installer for Firefox, you have at least two options.
5 must-have addons for your Firefox fresh install
For many years I used Opera as my browser. As Opera Software decided to kill their very own desktop browser and replaced it with a featureless Chrome-based clone, I switched to Mozilla Firefox. Out of the box, Firefox is not perfect for me, but installing a few add-ons changes the situation. I have hand-picked 5 must-have add-ons which improve the Firefox experience. Add-ons are the real power of Firefox and have been for a long time. Today, I would like to share with you this list of my favorite add-ons, and who knows, maybe you will find them useful too!
Make your desktop Firefox touch-friendly with the Finger Friendly theme for Firefox
If you are the lucky owner of some Windows based Tablet PC and also prefer to use Firefox over Internet Explorer, then you might want to be able to control your Firefox browser easily with a touch screen. Although Mozilla provides a Metro (Modern UI) version of Firefox, it has limitations comparing to the regular Desktop version. Modern apps in Windows 8 run in a sandbox, so they are feature limited and restricted by design. Recently, I discovered a theme for the desktop version of Firefox which helps you to control the browser with a touch screen by making controls larger than the default.
How to get the bookmark star button back into the address bar of Firefox
With a future update to Firefox, Mozilla plans to roll out a new user interface for the browser, called Australis. Here at Winaero, I have often covered ways to make Firefox get the classic look. Today, I would like to walk you through the steps to restore the good old 1-click bookmark star button in the address bar, because I do not like the big combined star+bookmarks menu on the Australis toolbar.
How to enable a separate process per tab in Firefox
I always keep a watch on Firefox's latest nightly builds as all the cool new features land there first. Here is an amazing news I read about Firefox. The current nightly version of Firefox comes with a secret hidden feature which allows you to enable a separate process for each tab in Firefox! What does this mean for us average users? Well, the process-per-tab model is a very clever architectural solution to prevent crashes. It allows preventing the entire browser from crashing if something goes wrong. With multi-process tabs, only the problematic tab will crash, and try to recover, while the rest of the tabs continue to work properly. If you are familiar with Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, you might be knowing that both use a similar process-per-tab architecture. Let's look now at how to enable this separate process per tab functionality in Firefox.
