Make your Firefox browser shine!

You may have installed countless add-on in Firefox to enhance your using experience, but if you want to get the most out of your browser, you really have to go deep into about:config.

This page has almost every configuration Firefox has - hard to play with, take care.

So, jump into the "about:config" page by typing it in the URL field.

Here we go:

1. Increasing ‘Save Link As‘ timeout period
When you right click and select the ‘Save Link As…‘, the browser will request the content disposition header from the URL so as to determine the filename. If the URL did not deliver the header within 1 sec, Firefox will issue a timeout value. This could happen very frequently in a slow network connection environment. To prevent this issue from happening frequently, you can increase the timeout value so as to reduce the possibility of a timeout.

Config name: Browser.download.saveLinkAsFilename
Timeout Default: 1000
Change to: > 1000


2. Disable Extension Compatibility Check
This is useful if you want to use an extension that is not supported by your version of Firefox badly. It is not recommended, but you can still do it at your own risk.

Create new boolean: extensions.checkCompatibility
Value: False
Create new boolean: extensions.checkUpdateSecurity
Value: False


3. Increase Offline Cache
If you do not have access to Internet most of the time, you might want to increase the offline cache so that you can continue to work offline. By default, Firefox caches 500MB of data from supported offline Web apps. You can change that value to whatever amount of your choice.

Config name: browser.cache.offline.capacity
Change to: > 512000


4. Autofill Address in URL Bar
Other than the smart location feature, you can also get your URL bar to autofill the address as you type the URL.

Config name: browser.urlbar.autofill
Change to: True


5. Boost it !
Config name: network.http.pipelining
Change to: True

Config name: network.http.proxy.pipelining
Change to: True

Config name: network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Change to: any value higher than 4, but not more than 8

Config name: network.http.max-connections
Change to: 96

Config name: network.http.max-connections-per-server
Change to: 32


6. Lower The Physical Memory Used When Minimized
This tweak is mainly for Windows users. When you minimize Firefox, it will send Firefox to your virtual memory and free up your physical memory for other programs to use. Firefox will reduce its physical memory usage, when minimized, to approximately 10MB (give or take some) and when you maximize Firefox it will take back the memory that it needs. The preference name does not exist and needs to be created.

Create new boolean: config.trim_on_minimize
Value: True


7. Handling JavaScript Popups
When you come across a site that executes a javascript open new window function, and if the popup window is without all the usual window features, i.e. back/forward/reload buttons, status bar etc, Firefox will automatically treat it as a popup and will not open it as a new tab. However, if you find this to be a nuisance and wanted to open all new windows in a new tabs, you can specify it via the browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction setting.

Config name: browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction
Change to:
0 – open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows
1 – do not open any new windows
2- open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows unless the Javascript specify how to display the window


8. Disable the session restore function
Firefox 3 automatically saves your session every 10 secs so that whenever it crashes, it can restore all your tabs. While this is a useful feature, some of you might find it irritating. To disable this function, toggle the value of browser.sessionstore.enabled to False

Config name: browser.sessionstore.enabled
Change to: False


9. Disable Antivirus Scanning
This is mainly for Windows users. By default, Firefox 3 automatically scan the downloaded file with the default anti-virus application to make sure it is free of virus. If you download a big file, it could take a long time for the whole scanning process to complete. To increase the performance of the browser, you might want to consider disabling the anti-virus scanning via the browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone key.

Config name: browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
Change to: False

Personally, i'm using chrome, have fun.