Mohamad Al Karbi

As I noticed great interest in Firefox and a lot here are using it, here are some tricks and hacks that I believe it gives better experience and speed the browser up. I also found that Firefox 64bit is much faster than the 32 version but of course more resources are consumed.

Speed up Firefox

First, in Options

• Remove Use smooth scrolling. Personally, I don’t remove this as I like it.
• Remove Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup.
• Select the Network section, click the Settings button, and select ‘No Proxy’ if you aren’t behind a proxy.
• Disable Firefox auto-update (could have some security risk if you don’t check for updates regularly)

Second, type this in URL bar about:config and click enter – be extra careful here. Search for the following codes and change as explained and based on your preferences:

• “animat” Disable some animation by double clicks on the true values to change them to false – choose what you want, you don’t have to disable them all
• “browser.bookmarks.max_backups” Reduce number of bookmark backups to speed up shutdown from 15 to 2.
• “browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo” Reduce number of closed windows you can undo from 3 to 1.
• “browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo” Reduce number of closed tabs you can undo from 10 to 4.
• “loop.enabled” Disable Firefox Hello. This has already been removed from the latest versions
• “extensions.pocket.enabled” Disable Pocket. However, you might need to remove the icon from toolbar first if any.
• “reader.parse-on-load.enabled” Disable reader view. Personally, I like it.
• “Recentlybookmarked” to disable Recently bookmarked sites from showing on menu.
• “browser.urlbar.maxRichResults” change from 10 to 6 (or less). This is the number of suggestions in the Awesome bar Dropdown.

If you’re using old versions of Firefox, make sure of the plugins and don’t activate those you don’t really need.

Additional Hacks

1- Google Calendar as default WebCal

Go to Google Calendar’s site and press Ctrl+Shift+K. Paste this after the >> sign at the bottom:

navigator.registerProtocolHandler("webcal","https://google.com/calendar/render?cid=%s","Google Calendar");

Click Enter and then Add application button that appears below the toolbar.

This similarly can be applied for Outlook.com calendar or mail in “mailto” options. However, we just need to figure out the appropriate link. I haven’t used those additional hacks since long time ago…

2- Hide address bar in pop up window

In about:config, change “dom.disable_window_open_feature.location” to False

3- Duplicate Bookmarks

I haven’t faced this in ages. However, in case it happened:

• Delete all bookmarks manually
• Close Firefox
• Go into profile directory and delete everything beginning with “places.sqlite.”
• Restore bookmarks. You do have a backup of bookmarks, don’t you?
• Restart