A widescreen LCD is excellent for watching widescreen format media such as TV series, movies, application development IDEs, but the same doesn’t apply to browsing the web.

Due to the plethora of cross-browser issues, many web designers/developers have resorted to restricting the width of web pages to 800 pixels which is somewhat the minimum resolution which most users displays has been set to. As such, opening these web pages end up with a lot of blank wasted space on the left and right of the content on widescreen LCDs.

One way of getting around this is to have 2 browsers open side by side like this:

To get to that state, you would have to resize each window to fit half of the screen besides positioning it. Fortunately, there is an add-on (extension) called Split Browser which enables a single Firefox window to be split up to house multiple tabs. Screenshot of it in action:

Instead of 2 separate Firefox windows, they’re both tabs within one.

Opera users would probably be pointing out that this capability is already built into the standard Opera browser, but I guess this entry is targeted towards Firefox users who would like to have this ‘feature’ without having to switch to another browser. ;)

A proxy server is a computer that offers a computer network service to allow clients to make indirect network connections to other network services. A client connects to the proxy server, then requests a connection, file, or other resource available on a different server.

If you’re wondering about how to configure proxy for your Firefox web browser (the client), don’t worry – The configuration is pretty easy:

• Open your Firefox browser

• Go to Tools->Options->Advanced->Network->Settings

• Pick “Manual Proxy Configuration“, key in the proxy information (the host name as well as the port). You can either use the proxy in particular protocol only or use it for all protocols (HTTP/FTP/SSL etc…) Other than that, you can skip the proxy several IP/web addresses (for example, your router gateway – 192.168.1.1) – for list of proxies that can be used – refer here

• Click on “OK” to confirm the settings.

Yo guys, that’s about it :-)

The new setting introduced in version 0.3.5.2 and is automatically enabled (checked) is “Open link with target attribute in current tab”. To revert to how it was before, uncheck that setting in the Tab Mix Plus options and your Firefox would be back to its normal behaviour again.

Screenshot of the Tab Mix Plus options dialog with the setting which needs to be unchecked highlighted:

Fortunately, it’s a rather easy to get around this, which is just to select and install the appropriate dictionary from here. Once that’s done, just right-click on any text box/field/form and you should be able to select the dictionary you want to use (screenshot below):

Once that’s done, you’re all set! :)

IMO, Firefox is on the right track. I’d anytime prefer a web browser that is originally simple but can be shaped/tweaked/configured to the way I like. In contrast, I don’t need a bloated browser that has tons of functions but end up utilizing maybe only 30% of them.

However, not all extensions are perfectly developed. Some of them come with spyware/malware, some of them aren’t actually practical to use, while some of them are just too bloated for minimalists. Thus, I’m here to share all my favorite extensions that are proven to be trustworthy and I personally find them useful:

• Adblock Plus
• Are you one of the web surfers who’s annoyed with web banners and irritating flash animation? Adblock Plus is very efficient extension that allows you to block unwanted content to make your web surfing experience better. Comes with Filterset.G, it has actually blocked 95% of the ads without having you to do anything. For the rest of the 5%, just block it manually! (for example, Right Click and click “Adblock Image” in the menu)
• All-in-one gestures
• It allows you to send specific commands to the browser by combining mouse movements (for example, holding the right mouse button, pushing it up, and release the button will open a new tab for you). It’s one of my favorite extension in Firefox, and its convenience cannot be just described in words! I can even add new gesture whenever it’s needed!
• BBCodeXtra
• As a LYN regular, I use BBCode very often to add formatting to my posts. With this extension, it can be done easily without having to type all the tedious [b][/b], [img=XXX][/img] or [url=xxx][/url] tags.
• DownloadThemAll
• You can call it an extension, but I’d call it a fully functional download manager that’s integrated into my Firefox. With DownloadThemAll, I don’t have to install external download manager and install Flashgot to get them integrated together. Other than that, I’m also very impressed with its download speed.
• Fasterfox
• A zero-configuration extension that significantly increases the speed of your net surfing, also comes with a pop-up blocker. However, choosing “Turbo Charged” preset is not recommended as it exceeds the RFC spec and increases the server load.
  
• ImageShack Toolbar
• Imageshack is one of the most popular yet reliable free image hosting sites. If you upload images to the web frequently, this is a useful extension as you can just do it with two clicks instead of going to the homepage. However, because it’s a toolbar by itself – it does actually occupy some space of the browser.
• Tab Mix Plus
• An excellent extension that greatly enhances Firefox Tab-browsing capabilities. For example, you can force all the links to be opened in existing tab instead of a new tab, you can choose whether or not to have ‘X’ button in every tab, just to name a few. On top of that, it also comes with a built-in session manager.
• Video Downloader
• I’m a frequent visitor of YouTube and Google Video. With the pathetic speed of my “broadband”, it’s almost impossible to view the videos smoothly, moreover, some of the good videos are meant to be collected :) Video Downloader is a simple add-on that adds a small icon on the status bar, allowing you to click on it and get the direct download link of the video.

Of course, the above are just the extensions I’m using. I’m sure they are more FF extensions that you might like. Just visit the add-on homepage to discover it by yourself!

[ Original thread in LYN ]

Close button tweak

One of the more obvious user interface changes in this version of Firefox is the position of the close button for tabs. Practically all other web browsers with tabs have tab closing buttons on each tab as opposed to Firefox’s choice of having it at the extreme right of the tab row up until now. With version 2.0, the default close tab button position is now on each individual tab.

This is probably a good decision in a way, but after such a long time of using Firefox, I’ve been too accustomed to the close button being there and would rather not have that change (I use the scroll button to close tabs nowadays, but selectively closing multiple tabs with the ‘x’ at the end is pretty useful). Fortunately there’s a setting which can be easily changed to accommodate the behaviour you want.

Here are the steps to have the close button back at same position as pre-1.5 days:

1. Type ‘about:config’ in the address bar.
2. In the filter textbox that appears below, enter ‘browser.tabs.closeButtons’.
3. Double click on the browser.tabs.closeButtons preference, and a message box should appear.
4. Change the value to ’3′ and click OK.

And you’re back with the close button at the same position as before the latest upgrade! You can easily revert to the default Firefox 2.0 behaviour by changing the value back to 1.

Default:

After change of value:

Here are some other values you could use for that preference:

• 0 – Display a close button on the active tab only
• 1 – Display close buttons on all tabs (Default)
• 2 – Don’t display any close buttons
• 3 – Display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior)

browser.tabs.closeButtons values and explanations taken from MozillaZine Knowledge Base.

Minimum tab width

In Firefox 2, the width of each tab has a minimum and when that’s reached, left and right scroll buttons would appear on each end of the tab row so you can scroll through the list of tabs. This was introduced to ensure the tabs do not get so small that the titles are totally obscured. A quick fix as follows:

1. Type ‘about:config’ in the address bar.
2. In the filter textbox that appears below, enter ‘browser.tabs.tabMinWidth’.
3. Double click on the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth preference, and a message box should appear.
4. Reduce the value till you’re fine with the amount of tabs the row can accommodate (range is from 0 to 100) and click OK. I’ve set mine to 75 currently.

Explanation on browser.tabs.tabMinWidth preference can be found at MozillaZine Knowledge Base.

Form/forum shortcut keys

I usually use the shortcut keys ALT+I, ALT+B rather frequently at a forum I visit to get highlighted text in the post box to be italicised or bolded, but in Firefox 2, this shortcut keys no longer work by default. You now have to add the SHIFT key into the mix, so it goes ALT+SHIFT+I instead. If you don’t want to use the SHIFT key, you can edit two values in about:config (like for the close tab button previously):

Change:
ui.key.chromeAccess to 5
ui.key.contentAccess to 4

Taken from MozillaZine forum.

Those are the 3 tweaks which I personally found to have affected my usual browsing. Hope you found them useful. :) For more about:config tweaks, head over to this page and for other Firefox tweaks, check this guide out.

Notable updates include the integration of functionality similar to the SessionSaver extension into Firefox’s history function, close buttons being added to each tab, anti-phishing filter, a redesign of the preferences dialog and minor user interface tweaks.

At time of writing, Firefox 2.0 is currently at RC1 (Release Candidate 1) which denotes a final product which is ready for release unless some serious bugs surface. Do note that installing Firefox 2.0 RC1 will overwrite your current Firefox installation and may disable some of your extensions which are incompatible (I’m using Nightly Tester Tools extension to get around this). However, if you would just like to try 2.0 out without having it replace your current Firefox installation, you can get Firefox Portable 2.0 RC1 which will run in standalone mode.

Firefox 2.0 is scheduled to be released some time in October, so you shouldn’t have to wait too long before your Firefox browser gets upgraded!

Screenshot: