A semi comprehensive look at Firefox

[Cypher]

We all know Internet Explorer and many of us use it as our default browser.
Some of us prefer it out of conveinence since it's right there and others like the way it is integrated into Windows shell or perhaps some other reason. With the security flaws that have plagued Internet Explorer many users have begun to seek alternative browsers. This has given Mozilla the oppertunity to show a number of people what they have to offer. There are so many articles on this topic I figured I'd highlight a few points and put together some links to use as a reference.

Mozilla Firefox is an open source browser that is highly customizable and designed to be fast. You can run it as stripped down or bloated as you choose by installing certain features called extensions. Where it differs from Mozilla is it's just a browser and the next phase of Mozillas development. It seems they have broken down the Browser (Firefox) and mail client (Thunderbird) into separate projects. This is a great move to me since both programs will be faster and able to evolve independently.
Firefox FAQ'sby MozillaZine

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewto...648853ad760617

Now when you first get Firefox it doesn't look like much at all. Two guides that are very helpful here are:
http://www.nidelven-it.no/articles/i...ion_to_firefox

http://mozilla.gunnars.net/

The first one walks you through the setup and the second one (though written for Mozilla) shows some valuable tweaks and resources.
Key point's are setting up your options located in the Tools context menu. Here's what I do myself:

• In general set a homepage or blank it out.
• Go to Privacy and change
• History to 1 day
• Set Download manager to remove files upon successful download.
• Enable all cookies and tick "ask for each cookie."
  {This can be a pain at first but you'll be surprised at how many cookies you sites try to nail you with. Make sure you check "remember my answer when the box opens. I allow cookies for sites I frequent from that site and deny all others or allow for session. This is much more secure and results in less spyware.}
  
• Set desired cache size (I use 65000).
  
• Web Features
• tick enable java and java script than hit the Advanced button there and untick the top three options there.
• Tick pop up blocker.
  
• Downloads
• Tick Save all files to this folder and specify a download file. I put this download file on a separate partition to reduce fragmentation and link it to my start menu.
  
• Advanced
  I only set smooth scrolling here.

That takes care of that part of it. Now you can grab a theme you like, start grabbing extensions and tailor the browser to suit your needs and taste. This is where Mozilla really starts to shine IMO. Here's a collection of links broken down to categories:

Themes:

http://update.mozilla.org/themes/

Extensions:

http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/

http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/

http://www.exchangecode.com/spellbound/ (Spell checker)

http://dictionarysearch.mozdev.org/dictionaries.html ( to customize Dictionary search with additional references.)

http://adblock.mozdev.org/forum.html/no_wrap (Good source for adblock scripts)

Extensions are more of a personal thing but here's a list of one's I'm using with * marking great ones you need.

• ChromeEdit*: This puts user files in the tool bar so you can do advanced tweaks without digging for them.
• Adblock*: Blocks adds on sites and allows you to block anything you want on a web page.
• AddBookmark here: Puts add bookmark in context menu to make storing and sorting easier.
• Allow right click: Defeats right click prevention scripts.
• Compact Menu*: Allows you to fully change aspects of the browsers GUI similar to IE's.
• Dictionary search: Invaluable research tool.
• Nuke anything: Remove anything from a web page you don't like (ie. annoying avatar,sig or seizure inducing add.)
• Single view*: Adds functionality to tab browsing without any bloat.
• Sort Bookmarks: For the **** retentive who demand orderly bookmarks.
• Super Scroll*: Fixes Mozilla's crappy scroll feature with a smoother one.
• Ook: Adds bookmarks to your context menu where it's more handy.
• Spellbound*: The best spell checker for Mozilla/ FF for those of us who aren't the best spellers.
• Tab browser Preferences: Gives you more control over the tabbed browsing feature.
• IE view*: For pages rendered for IE only.
• FlashBlocker: Makes annoying flash garbage have to be clicked to play. Some sites use flash for adds while others use it to add allot of features. In that case I just click what I need.

Tweaking and tuning:

http://www.moox.ws/tech/mozilla/ (Optimized builds of Firefox. I don't like these but some people do. I've found they cause issues with certain extensions I use.)

http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=53650

http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/...oxtweak/4.html

http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html

Here's what I have in my User.js file for a 3K/256 cable connection on a 3.5 CPU with a gig of Ram. This gave me a great speed boost and may help you out as well. The above links will give you an idea of what to set for yourself if this doesn't work for you.

user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 8191);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 20);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 10);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 10);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 10);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.dnsCacheExpiration", 360);
user_pref("network.dnsCacheEntries", 100);
user_pref("network.ftp.idleConnectionTimeout", 60);
user_pref("network.http.keep-alive.timeout", 30);
user_pref("network.http.request.max-start-delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.connect.timeout", 30);
// Instead of annoying error dialog messages, display pages:
user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);
// Put an end to blinking text!
user_pref("browser.blink_allowed", false);

If you want to change the location of your cache this is the place to specify it as well.

Backups FAQs and other stuff:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewto...c8e878b9372c06

http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/

http://www.mozillazine.org/

This whole tldr post should hopefully provide you with a good amount of information. There is allot more to learn depending on how complicated you enjoy things. Remember it's an open source browser, so you can modify it till your hearts content and write your own extensions to add features you want. There are other alternitive browsers out there such as Opera (full version has a fee but it is a great browser) , Avant Browser, Slim Browser and MyIE2 (all three of these are built on IE and therefore have the same security flaws. Of them all Mozilla seems to be the only real competition. With Firefox still in a beta state soon to be released this month in it's first final I think it has great potential. I've used it as my default browser for some time now and only use IE to update XP mostly. I first started using FF when it was called Phoenix>Firebird when I started learning *nix and grew quite fond of it.
As always feel free to add any additional information to this thread about Firefox or other browsers for that matter.

Here's a pic of what the browser looks like as I have it set up.



You simply right click on the toolbar (after you got compact menu). This opens a window that you drag and drop elements you want on to the toolbar or off the toolbar to the widow to remove them.

[downhill]

Wow, nice job Cpyher! I'm going to stick this for others.

If anyone would like to add to this or ask questions about Firefox, please feel free to do so!

Again, nice job!

[Cypher]

Thanks DH. Hopefully we can build on this and answer some frequently asked questions about this wonderful browser.

[CableDude]

What theme are you using Cy?

[Cypher]

What theme are you using Cy?

It's Noia 2.0 (lite) for FF. For XP I use bbleanskin with bblean shell replacement.
http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/


In the screeny you can also see multiple tabs opened. This is a great feature for doing research of having multiple sites open at once. Add to that dictionary search linked above and your browser become a research powerhouse. Here's a list of references you can add to it:

Dictionary URL for DictionarySearch
English -> English
The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/$
Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=$
Cambridge dictionaries (American English) http://dictionary.cambridge.org/results.asp?searchword=$&dict=A
Cambridge dictionaries (British English) http://dictionary.cambridge.org/results.asp?searchword=$&dict=E
Merriam Webster http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=$
Unabridged Merriam Webster (Subscription required) http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=$&x=0&y=0
Yahoo Dictionaries http://education.yahoo.com/bin/ref_search?book=/search/ahd&txt_main=$
Hyper Dictionary http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=$
WordNet http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.0?stage=1&word=$
English Thesaurus
Thesaurus.com http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=$
Merriam Webster http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/thesaurus?book=Thesaurus&va=$
English Multiple Dictionaries/Encyclopedias
One Look http://www.onelook.com/?w=$
InfoPlease http://www.infoplease.com/search.php3?query=$&in=all
English Encyclopedia
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=$&go=Go&sourceid=Mozilla-search
English Slang
The Urban Dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=$&f=1
English Acronyms
AcronymFinder.com http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=$&Find=Find
English <-> Spanish
Cambridge dictionaries http://dictionary.cambridge.org/results.asp?searchword=$&dict=S
Yahoo dictionaries http://education.yahoo.com/search/se?lb=e&p=$
English <-> German
LEO English-German Dictionary http://dict.leo.org/?search=$
TU Chemnitz English - German http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/?query=$
English <-> French
Cambridge dictionaries http://dictionary.cambridge.org/results.asp?searchword=$&dict=F
English <-> Slovak
Slovnik http://slovnik.cyberspace.sk/hladaj.php3?jazyk=en&slovo=$
English -> Polish
slowniki.onet.pl http://slowniki.onet.pl/index.html?tekst=$&tr=auto&x=0&y=0
Esperanto -> English
University of Twente http://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/traduk/EO-EN/Translate/?$
Welsh -> English
BBC Wales http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/wales/learnwelsh/welsh_dictionary.pl?i=c&gair=$&Chwilio=Search
Romanian -> English
dictionar.allnet.ro http://dictionar.allnet.ro/dictionar.php?=2&type=romeng&cautare=0&dictionar=standard&query=$
French <-> German
LEO Dictionnaire Franco-Allemand http://dico.leo.org/?search=$
Russian <-> Slovak
Slovnik http://slovnik.cyberspace.sk/hladaj.php3?jazyk=ru&slovo=$
German <-> Slovak
Slovnik http://slovnik.cyberspace.sk/hladaj.php3?jazyk=gr&slovo=$
Spanish -> Spanish
Real Academia Española http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltGUIBusUsual?TIPO_BUS=1&LEMA=$
Dutch -> Dutch
Van Dale http://www.vandale.nl/opzoeken/woordenboek/?zoekwoord=$
Swedish -> Swedish
Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB) http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/cgi-bin/osa/enkel.cgi?string=$
English -> Hebrew and Hebrew -> Hebrew
Milon Morfix http://milon.morfix.co.il/default.asp?q=$
Polish <-> English, Spanish, German, French and Italian
ling.pl http://www.ling.pl/ling/content.php4?name=exact.php&word=$

For the polyglots out there Tomer Cohen sent me the following 17 dictionaries for different languages of Babylon. The cool thing is that the babylon dictionaries automatically recognize the language of the word you selected and translates it to the language you selected. So if you select the "To Japanese" dictionary, you can go and read pages in all the other languages and with Dictionary Search you can translate words on all these pages to Japanese.
Language URL for DictionarySearch
To English http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=0&word=$
To French http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=1&word=$
To Italian http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=2&word=$
To Spanish http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=3&word=$
To Dutch http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=4&word=$
To Portuguese http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=5&word=$
To German http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=6&word=$
To Russian http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=7&word=$
To Japanese http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=8&word=$
To Chinese(T) http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=9&word=$
To Chinese(S) http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=10&word=$
To Greek http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=11&word=$
To Korean http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=12&word=$
To Turkish http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=13&word=$
To Hebrew http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=14&word=$
To Arabic http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=15&word=$
To Swedish http://online.babylon.com/combo/index.html?lang=48&word=$

In principle all dictionaries or other search engines (such as Google), which use an URL (i.e. you can bookmark the search result) to send the word you entered to the server can be used by DictionarySearch. If you have other useful URLs, or if there are errors in the above table drop me a mail (jaap at haitsma org) and I will add or change the URLs.

Another nice multi-language dictionary Interglot. It supports English Spanish French German Dutch and Swedish. I leave it as an excercise to the reader to find the appropriate URLs for Dictionary Search for this dictionary

There are countless other extensions out there for different needs. I'll link teh one I had on writting them when I it.

[opmharley]

hey cypher to that list i would add Allow Right click, allows you to prevent right click scripts on some websites. Very usefull.
Heres what I use

Dom Inspector- a tool for manipulating documents

Bugmenot-allows you to get user names and passwords for most sites

SpellBound-spell checker

Allow Right Click-lets you right click on sites that have the prevention scripts

Adblock-lets you prevent ads on most sites except speedguide.net

Nuke Anything-lets you remove stuff from a site

Show Image-allows you to right click and go to show image for a image with a broken link or an image that didnt show up

Download With-add support so you can use your download manager in Firefox

Translate-translates websites for you into english

Allowrightclick- Allows you to be able to right click on sites with right click prevention scripts

Bandwidth Tester- Tells you your current bandwidth of your current connection

Refspoof-Usefull for spoofing websites if you know what that is

Of course there is a lot more depending on what you do but thats what I use Have fun and enjoy.

Harley

[Cypher]

Add away Harley. THe more who build on this the better it is.
I forgot about bugmenot and translate. Two other great tools.

[downhill]

Add away Harley. THe more who build on this the better it is.
I forgot about bugmenot and translate. Two other great tools.

If you spend much time reading news articles.....bugmenot is outstanding....

[Cypher]

Smooth wheel
By far the best scroll fix Ive used yet:
http://smoothwheel.mozdev.org/index.html

[Cypher]

Mozilla and FF tweaker's
http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/12/3/12-3-112.shtml

http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/configmania

Stop blank download windows
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions...id=241&vid=933

Another great extension site
http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index...=portal&site=2


I'm gonna have to update this a little and clean it up soon.

[leaaaa]

I have a problem with mozilla sometimes an alert may come up saying that document contains no data and will stop the loading it may happen on any page on yahoo, on speed guide etc and it may partly load the page, and stop the loading of it. This has only just happened and i have been using firefox for nearly two months now and i have been very pleased with it. Do you know what i can do?

[Cable Vision]

one question..is true ,nov 9 Mozilla released his newest version(1.0)?

[Cypher]

The final is out and faster than ever.

I had to grab it off a torrent because mozilla.org was getting hammered all day.

[CableDude]

The final is out and faster than ever.

Hmmm.... Tweaked or untweaked?

[Cypher]

Hmmm.... Tweaked or untweaked?

Out the box faster. The tweaks still do help though to squeeze a little more out of it. I try to keep the extensions to a minimum as well to keep it light.

[Cypher]

Links from UOD and Iaus from another thread:

Installing FIrefox on a RAM/USB drive

http://www.patik.com/guides/mozilla/ffram

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/

[Cypher]

Here's the settings I'm using now in my user.js file

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 250000); 
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", -1);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 50000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true); 
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 100);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.dnsCacheEntries", 100); 
user_pref("network.dnsCacheExpiration", 360);
user_pref("network.ftp.idleConnectionTimeout", 60);
user_pref("network.http.keep-alive.timeout", 30); 
user_pref("browser.blink_allowed", false);
user_pref("browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl", true);
user_pref("browser.display.show_image_placeholders", false);
user_pref("browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl", true); 
user_pref("browser.display.show_image_placeholders", false); 
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536); 
user_pref("browser.chrome.site_icons", false);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change" , true); 
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 50);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0); 
// Eliminate Secure Site Nags
user_pref("security.warn_entering_secure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_leaving_secure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_submit_insecure", false);
user_pref("security.warn_viewing_mixed", false);

I'll have to try and revamp this thread so it stays organised. I may have some free time on Friday.

[drdoug99]

I just did a clean install of Win2k SP4 on this computer, and my usual favorite browser, Slimbrowser was acting weird for some reason...decided to give Firefox another try....so far it's working great. I've got a bunch of extentions installed, and am reading up on the different tweaks now.

[drdoug99]

just posting some new extentions that are pretty cool that i just installed.

Forecast Fox...uses info from Weather.com to give you the weather, you can customized it almost anyway you want...integrates very nicely...plus you can have current weather conditions, plus forcast 5 days in advance.

https://addons.update.mozilla.org/ex...Windows&id=398


The other one is Smiley Xtra...to me it's a cool thing...needs some work though...as I couldn't figure out how to use it at first

basically it's a database of smiles that people submit, and you can select them to put in forums and such. worth a try.

https://addons.update.mozilla.org/ex...gration&id=375

[butchiedog]

I'm not even at amateur status yet when it comes to computer related topics, but I am curious.

Mozilla Firefox is an open source browser that is highly customizable.

Doesn't that make it just vulnerable as IE and or easier to corrupt?

Also; I'm connected to the web via broadband, so I am wondering what, if any significant operational differences and advantages there would be in my using Mozilla Firefox instead of IE, besides security issues?

BD