Firefox Must Haves Redux

First, let me say that I’ve always wanted to have a post with “Redux” in the title. Seems to be a mandatory thing on blogs these days. Anyway, after my first post on Must Have Firefox Plugins I received some comments and emails regarding the Tabbrowser Extensions plugin. Unbeknowst to me, the plugin is apparently buggy as hell. The plugin developer even admits this but doesn’t appear to mind it enough to fix them.

In any case, I uninstalled the plugin and set out to find some other plugins in the hopes that I could get back some of those functions that I like in the TBE. What follows is my new, revised list of must have extensions. I am also including configuration tweaks for both tabbed browsing and some general speed enhancements. The only disappointment in this all is that it took 4 plugins and a few config tweaks to come as close as I could to regaining my TBE functions.

1. Web Developer Extension
   Just what it sounds like. If you’re a developer, you’ve got to have this. Lets you control a variety things on the page you are viewing including images and CSS and does handy things like outlining and showing the names of block level elements.
2. SessionSaver
   Automatically remembers tabs and their history on shutdown or crash. Also supports the manual creation of multiple saved sessions.
3. TabX
   Adds a close button to each tab.
4. MiniT
   Adds support for drag and drop reordering or tabs.
5. UndoCloseTab
   Saves recent tabs in memory for those moments when you accidentally close the wrong tab. And it even maintains the history!
6. ChromEdit
   Adds a user file editor to Firefox. Gives easy access for editing your user .js and .css files without having to search for your profile. A must for adding the configuration tweaks below.
7. BugMeNot
   The remedy for all those annoying sites that require you to register such as The New York Times. When you arrive at a login form, just right-click in the username or password field and select BugMeNot from the menu. A username and password will automatically be entered for you and you’re in!
8. Disable Target For Downloads
   Stops those annoying empty tabs from popping up when downloading binary files
9. ForecastFox
   Provides current weather and forecast info in the status bar.
10. GMail Notifier
    Displays the total number of new messages in your GMail account’s inbox and notifies you of new messages in the browsers status bar. Double clicking the icon takes you right to your inbox.
11. IEview
    For those times when you need to test your pages in that other browser or find a site that uses non-standards compliant code.
12. Hide Searchbar
    Removes the search bar from the browser. I’ve done this because I use the address bar to search with this address bar tweak.

Aside from extensions, the user configuration files expose a ton of options for customizing Firefox. I found most of these tweaks on Scot’s Newsletter where you can find some more info on all of the changes I made. The following is my user.js file. All of the entries are commented to explain what they’re doing.

// Change address bar to normal Google search: 
user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://www.google.com/search?Search&q=");

// Changes the default delay for page loading. In milliseconds (default is 250)
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

// Enable pipelining for performance boost
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 10);

// Reveal more tab/window options
// http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips#beh_tabbedbrowsingoptions
// This will add a "Tabbed Browsing" menu to your advanced options pane.
user_pref("browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs", true);

// More DOM/JavaScript options
// http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips#beh_window_open_feature
// Make sure all pop-up windows are resizable
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable", true);
// Make sure all pop-up windows are minimizable
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.minimizable", true);
// Always display the menu in pop-up windows
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar", true);
// Always display the Navigation Toolbar in pop-up windows
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.location", true);
// Prevent sites from disabling scrollbars
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.scrollbars", true);

// Force New Windows Restrictions
// http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips#beh_newwindows
// 0: Default - Divert <strong>all</strong> new windows to current tab/window or new tab
// 1: Don't divert <strong>any</strong> windows spawned by JS
// 2: Don't divert JS windows that include size/placement/toolbar info
user_pref("browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction", 0);

There’s also 1 tweak you can make to your userChrome.css file if you want to remove the close button from your tab bar. Be forewarned however that a side effect of doing that is that you’ll also lose the close button on your sidebar. You can also find plenty of other tips & tricks on the mozilla site.

// Remove the close button on the tab bar
// http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips#app_tabclose
.tabs-closebutton {
   display: none !important;
}

So in the end I went from have a goal of minimizing the number of plugins I use to going plugin crazy. Not to mention all of the config changes I made. But in the end I’ve ended up with a stable and speedy Firefox setup. And I still haven’t even had a chance to check out all of the plugins I want to such as AdBlock. But that I’ll have to save for the redux of the redux,

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