Ten tips for fine-tuning Firefox

If you really want to fine-tune your Firefox browser, you will have to roll up your sleeves and tinker with the about:config page, says Jack Wallen.

Unless you are a Firefox power user, you may not be familiar with the about:config page. This feature is not so much a page as a hidden configuration section. It is hidden because it is fairly powerful and not nearly as simple to use as the standard Preferences window.

In the about:config page, you have to know what you are doing. In fact, when you attempt to go to that page for the first time, you have to accept an agreement, which is really just a warning, before you can continue.

How this page works is simple. You reach it by entering:

about:config

in the address bar. There are entries — one per line — that handle various types of configurations. Each entry has a searchable keyword. The entries can be of Boolean, integer or string value. Entries contain Name, Status, Type and Value.

Typically, you will be modifying only the Value, by double-clicking on it and making the change. With all of that in mind, let's look at 10 of the best ways you can hack the about:config page.

Tip
If Firefox breaks because you have accidentally misconfigured about:config, you can fix it in one of two ways:

1. Make a backup of your prefs.js file before you start editing. Then, if something goes wrong, you can restore it by copying it over the corrupt file.
2. If you cannot restore via a backup prefs.js file, you can exit Firefox and issue the command
   firefox -safe-mode
   to bring up the Firefox Safe Mode screen. Then, just select Reset All User Preferences To Firefox Defaults. Note: This will restore all user preferences to their default values.

1. Speed up Firefox

This hack requires a few steps. Search for pipelining in the filter and you should see:

network.http.pipelining: Change this to true
network.http.proxy.pipelining: Change this to true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: Change this to 8

Now search for max-connections, and you should see:

network.http.max-connections: Change this to 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server: Change this to 32

2. Disable antivirus scanning

This feature is only for the Windows version. If you are downloading large files, this scanning can seriously slow things down. And since you will probably scan the downloaded file anyway, you will probably want to disable this. Of course, if you are very paranoid, which is not a bad trait in computing, you might want to leave this entry alone.

To disable antivirus scanning, search for scanWhenDone and you should see:

browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone: Change this to false

3. Open JavaScript pop-ups as tabs

If a pop-up window lacks the features of a browser window, Firefox will handle it like a pop-up. If you would prefer to open all windows, including pop-ups, as new tabs, you need to tell Firefox in about:config. Search for newwindow and you will see three entries. Of those three entries, you will want to modify:

browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction: Change this to 0

4. Spell-checking in all fields

By default, Firefox checks spelling only in multiple-line text boxes. You can set it to check spelling...