Besides the new Australis UI coming soon to Firefox, Mozilla now plans to show ads on the new tab page of Firefox as a revenue source required to support the browser. These changes are very frustrating for those users who are used to having a customizable and ad-free web browser. Although Mozilla will most likely make those ads unobtrusive, many Firefox users may want to stop using the vanilla Mozilla Firefox build. Let's see where you can migrate and try to analyze what the alternatives are to Firefox.
Category: Firefox
Access Firefox extension/addon options from a menu
We always say that the best feature of Firefox is the unrivaled customization the browser offers. Even if you don't like the UI and default look of Firefox, addons, themes and personas can change it. Accessing extension options in Firefox is cumbersome today. Firefox opens a separate addons page in a new tab to manage them. It takes several clicks to access extension options and then you have to close the Add-ons page every time. This is where an extension called 'Extension Options Menu' helps.
Fix Firefox 27 crashes using these simple instructions
Firefox 27 was recently released and many users faced multiple crashes in the browser. It's annoying to not know what is crashing Firefox, so I decided to write this short post to help you to troubleshot the issue and fix it easily.
How to enable titlebar in Firefox 28 or above with Australis UI
As you might be knowing, starting from version 29, Mozilla plans to ship Firefox with a new Australis UI, which is already available in the Nightly Builds of Firefox. Recently we covered how to disable Australis and restore the classic theme in Firefox. In the latest builds, Mozilla has added a native option to enable the titlebar for the Firefox window. When the titlebar is enabled, it shows the current page title and browser icon. To enable it, follow these simple steps.
How to change the main window icon of Firefox 26 and above
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.
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.
