Restore The Default Firefox Search Engine

I recently installed a software that changed the default search engine in Firefox. Firefox would query that search engine whenever I entered a keyword or phrase in the location bar. Thankfully though it is pretty easy to revert the change and restore the default Firefox search engine.

You need to open up about:config in the location bar and filter for the term keyword:url. A right-click on that entry and the selection of Reset changes the search engine to the default search engine.

It is of course possible to use another search engine by modifying the entry and entering the url of the new search engine that should be used.

Disable Adblock Plus for Bookmarks

Adblock Plus is one of Firefox add-ons that you will find on every recommendation list. The add-on blocks many forms of advertisement including popup and banner ads. It sometimes however blocks regular websites from being displayed correctly and I found it very useful to add my bookmarked websites to a filter that would allow ads to be displayed on them.

This has another effect. Websites that I visit regularly deserve the money that they make from advertisement. This does not mean that I click on a lot of ads but think of those banner ads that pay when someone visits a website. So, it’s good for those sites and helps them stay alive.

It’s pretty cumbersome to add all websites manually to Adblock Plus this is why the author created a script that processes a list of websites and makes them filter ready so to speak. A whitelist will be generated which can be imported into the Firefox add-on.

To do that you need to export the bookmarks in Firefox 3. Firefox 2 users can simply copy and paste the contents of their bookmarks.html file that is located in the Firefox profile folder into the form which will process the contents.

Firefox 3 users have to export the bookmarks as HTML before they can do the same. (Because Firefox 3 is storing bookmarks in a different way). Use the keyboard combination CTRL SHIFT B to open the bookmarks manager. Click the Import and Backup menu at the top and select Export HTML from the menu. After that open the file, copy all contents and paste it into the script.

All that needs to be done is to save the whitelist as a text file and import it into Adblock Plus to whitelist all bookmarked websites.

This download has been blocked by your Security Zone Policy

You might be in for a nice surprise if you are trying to download certain file types with the latest version of Firefox 3. Certain file types, like exe or msi are blocked from being downloaded displaying a red cross and the error message “This download has been blocked by your Security Zone Policy”.

The first thought that comes to mind is that the error message is related to the Security Zone Policy of Windows. Guess what, indeed it is. Firefox 3 is now taking the Security Zone Policy of a Windows operating system into consideration when downloading files which might confuse part of the user base who always thought that Firefox 3 would be independent from the operating system.

Firefox 3 users can change the Security Zone Policies in the Internet Options which are available in the Windows Control Panel. The option that has to be checked is “Launching applications and unsafe files” by clicking on the Custom level button of the Internet Zone.

The solution for users with Internet Explorer 6 is to update their browser to Internet Explorer 7 to have the option and make use of it according to a Mozillazine (via Firefox Facts) article about blocked downloads in Firefox.

Firefox 3 Experience

Firefox has been my main browser for a long time. I really loved Firefox 2 and the waves of add-ons that were created by the community. This added tremendous value to the browser and put it on pair with Opera. You’d always find an add-on for something that you needed or did not like and it was easy to create a browser that was more or less designed and providing the functionality that you wanted.

Controversy started with the release of Firefox 3 which mainly concentrated on a new feature called the Awesome Bar which was simply a change in the way the location bar worked. I do not want to get into that deeply here but if you are interested you can follow the Firefox 3 location bar discussion at Ghacks.

I did not mind it that much because I mainly use a bookmarks toolbar to access the sites that I visit regularly and since I have disabled the history it never was a problem for me.

My initial experience with Firefox 3 was not that positive. I experienced a huge cpu load and memory usage every 45-60 minutes in which Firefox 3 would become totally unresponsive. I first thought that it was caused by the Brief add-on which was the RSS Feed reader add-on that I had been using for a while but it turned out to be something else.

The culprit were Firefox Live Bookmarks which update themselves automatically. Whenever they did that my browser would freeze. Not a nice feeling if you are in the middle of writing an article or doing other time sensitive things. After exporting the live bookmarks, importing them into Google Reader and deleting them in Firefox 3 the high loads stopped.

That was a relief but it cost me half a day to discover why it was caused in first place. I also had some difficulties with add-ons that were not compatible to Firefox 3 and that would not even work if I would force compatibility.

I really like Firefox 3 now. It’s faster, more responsive and uses less system resources which is always great.

Now, what about you ? Care to tell me if you made the switch to Firefox 3 yet and how your experience was ?

Backup Firefox Passwords Manually

The guys over at Firefox Facts are explaining in an article how to backup the Firefox passwords manually. This is interesting for everyone who needs to quickly move passwords from one computer to another and those who want to backup their passwords regularly without using a Firefox password exporter extension.

All three files that need to be copied are located in the Firefox profile folder. This profile folder is normally located in your Application Data or AppData folder of the Windows user profile or ~/.mozilla/ in Unix or ~/Library/Mozilla/ and ~/Library/Application Support/ on a Macintosh.

The following three files contain all the information about the passwords: signons.txt, signons2.txt, key3.db. Moving them into another Firefox profile would remove the old passwords of that profile and replace them with the new ones.

Open multiple bookmarks at once in Firefox

Let me describe what I would like to do. When I open the bookmarks menu in Firefox I can load one bookmark at a time that is in a folder. I know that I can load all bookmarks in a folder by middle-clicking on the folder directly which loads all the bookmarks and removes every other open tab in the process.

This is not what I’m looking for. I would like to be able to pick multiple bookmarks at once and load them all in new tabs once I’m finished. Much like the left-click CTRL option in Windows Explorer when selecting files.

I tried to find a solution but no Firefox add-on or option seems to offer it. I know that I have got some Firefox geeks among my readers which is why I’m asking this question here.

Changing the Fonts in Firefox

Changing the fonts in Firefox, why would someone want to do that ? Maybe because of the same reason someone changes Windows system fonts, maybe because the fonts that are displayed are not optimal for his display setting, say Clear Type. I recently ran into a problem that Firefox was displaying text in forms so stuffed that it was impossible to read, even when changing the size of the font .

It’s obviously better to use Clear Type fonts if you use a LCD monitor and have Clear Type enabled. Firefox by default uses Verdana and Arial I think as Serif and Sans-Serif fonts and another one for Monospace. The Monospace font was the one that was causing the troubles for me, here is a screenshot of the font setting in Firefox.

And here are some examples of how fonts change the display of text on websites. JPG is a lossless format and results might look different on your computer. The best option would be to test different fonts to see which works the best in your environment.

You can access the font settings in Tools > Options > Content Tab > Advanced Button.

Firefox Corbel Font:

Firefox Arial Font:

Firefox Cambria Font:

Firefox Candara Font:

How to remove unnecessary Firefox plugins

Plugins are added by third-party applications to Firefox which add some kind of functionality to the browser. While some plugins make good sense, say the Quicktime plugin for instance, some others are not that easily understandable. Why would I need a Microsoft Office plugin for instance ?

You can check the installed plugins by entering about:plugins in the address bar. The list contains all available plugins that are currently loaded in Firefox. Information like the name, location on the hard drive and a short description are available. The description helps to determine if that plugin is actually needed on your system.

My preferred solution for plugins that I (think I) do not need is to create a temporary directory and move all unnecessary plugins into them. This ensures that I can move them back if I should discover that I do need the plugin.

How to update add-on compatibility manually

Some Firefox add-ons that are hosted at Mozilla are not compatible with the latest version of Firefox. Not because they would not be working or display errors but simply because the author did not update the add-on to be compatibly with the latest version of Firefox. Each Firefox add-on has two variables called min version and max version.

Min version specifies the Firefox version that has to be at least installed to run the add-on while max version specifies the Firefox version that can not be exceeded if you want to run the add-on. As I said it sometimes happens that a project is dead and that the author is not updating his add-on anymore.

Firefox then won’t install the add-on because of compatibility issues. It simply checks min and max versions and if those do not match it will reject the installation. One could use the Nightly Tester tools to force compatibility but also edit the installation file on its own to make it work.

Speed up Firefox by optimizing prefs.js

I have lost count of the number of Firefox add-ons that I have installed since the beginning. Many of them add entries to the file prefs.js which is located in the Firefox profile folder. Unfortunately though these entries are not removed once you make the decision to uninstall the add-on in Firefox.

This means that you will accumulate lots of entries from add-ons in prefs.js that do nothing but waste space and could slow down Firefox this way. You probably have noticed that Firefox loads and behaves much faster if you create a new profile and use this to surf the web. This is due to two reasons.

First, no extension is loaded because none is installed yet. Second, all the entries that point to old extensions in prefs.js are also gone and not available in the new profile. Cleaning the prefs.js file is unfortunately not that easy as it sounds. You can load the file into a text editor but deleting a needed entry could corrupt Firefox.