Customize your Firefox 3

Firefox 3’s initial launch was one of the most heavily downloaded programs ever. At one point 5,000 downloads were being performed every minute. If you are one of the adopters of Firefox 3, the browser’s flexibility has to be at the top of your preference list. Firefox 3 is just as easily customizable as earlier versions and can be a real pleasure to set up just the way you like it.

To begin modifying your Firefox the best place to start is the about:config list, first go to the Location Bar, type in about:config and press Enter. You make whatever changes you desire. Now just restart your browser, not your whole computer

, and the changes will have taken effect.

Let’s start our Firefox Extreme Makeover with a few of the more popular mods:

1) Tweak The Cache: Firefox 3 caches up to half a Gigabyte of data from the web sites you surf. Some people don’t want to give up half a Gig of their hard drive space, and some users would like to maintain even more content offline. Find and double-click browser.cache.offline.capacity. The default amount is 512000 kilobytes or 512MB. Change this number to your preferred amount (remember… in KB, not MB) and click OK.

2) Use Finicky Firefox 2 Add-Ons: Most of the more popular add-ons for Firefox 2 will work well with the new version, but there are some that will refuse to do their thing. If you are enamored with your favorite Firefox 2 add-ons, just right-click in the about:config list of settings and choose New, Boolean. Wait for the prompt, then type extensions.checkCompatibility and press Enter. Wait for another prompt, choose false and press Enter. Now redo the whole process above except instead of typing extensions.checkCompatibility, type extensions.checkUpdateSecurity. Complete the process and your Finicky Firefox add-ons should work just fine. Keep in mind that this process tells Firefox to no longer check the compatibility and security settings
of your add-ons, so you might be leaving yourself open for a hack attack.

3) Move The Disk Cache
: If you have multiple hard drives, you will likely notice a performance boost by placing the Firefox Disk Cache on a drive other than your boot drive where Windows resides. This speed increase is especially noticeable if one of your drives (other than C:) is a fast Raptor-type or other high performance model. Just create a new preference in about:config. Type browser.cache.disk.parent_directory into the next dialog box then press Enter. In the Value dialog box, enter c:\folder, (or the appropriate disk letter) with the folder name where you want to place the file.

4) Control Your Zoom: Firefox 3 can magnified or reduce the entire page, text and images together. The problem with this zooming is that when all elements on the page are increased you can end up with some elements to disappear right off the edge of your window. You don’t need to plunge into about:config for this change. Just choose View, Zoom, Zoom Text Only and now your images will stay the same while your text will vary.

5) Just For Fun: Type about:robots in the Location Bar and start having fun with androids!

Make your Firefox Fast Again Without Re-Installation

With time, Firefox becomes very slow, bloated with too many extensions, themes, toolbars, temporary files and in some cases it occupies the CPU memory too much. Do you want to make it fast without reinstalling? There is a simple solution.

After most people install Firefox, they keep adding so many extensions and , themes which, for some reason, slows down the speed of Firefox. It is still faster than Internet Explorer, but nevertheless slow.

You might have tried various methods such as uninstalling the extensions, some themes, some cases the toolbars, removed temporary files stored in the computer etc., still you will find the same, slow speed of Firefox. It is a problem nobody could find out the reason why.

Luckily for us, Labnol has a solution. Just follow these simple steps and your Firefox will look faster than ever before.

Step 1: First export all your bookmarks to a folder because we will need them later.

Go to Bookmarks –> Organize Bookmarks –> File –> Export.

By this step you will save the bookmarks, which you can retrieve later for your new Firefox Profile.

Step 2: Go to Start –> Run –> Type “Firefox –P” or as shown below in the picture.

Step 3: Click the “Create Profile” button, while keeping your old profile intact (usually it is called default), so if you don’t like the new profile you can revert back to your old one easily. Make a new profile with “Create Profile” button and then click “Start Profile”.

That’s it, your Firefox will be turbocharged and the speed of your browsing will be obvious with this solution. Now to get all your bookmarks again do the same as you did in Step 1, except for the last one.

Go to Bookmarks –> Organize Bookmarks –> File –> Import.

You may have also made changes in the Firefox Dictionary, if you have added a number of words, then you copy “persdict.dat” word list file from your old profile (check the Program Files – Mozilla Folder) and copy it into your new profile name.

One disadvantage is there will be no Fox add ons, so you have to reinstall the favorite ones again, but at least you can install only the ones you need most.

This new profile will make the Firefox faster and it won’t occupy your CPU too much so the computer won’t crash.

Again if you don’t like the one or still want to access your old one just do the following and click the old profile (default) and will revert back to older version.

Go to Start –> Run –> Type “Firefox –P”

Everything will be intact.

I did the same it works like a charm, only problem I had to reinstall a few extensions and toolbars, but the new one is much faster. Let me know if you have any questions.