Firefox Hack Back Button Memory Consumption

Here is something for you to try out. Open Firefox and visit a website. Something like Microsoft, Mozilla or The Register will do. Open the Task Manager or another process viewer and take a look at the current memory consumption which should be between 40-60 Megabytes depending on the add-ons that you have installed.

Now visit several links on the website you are currently on and observe the memory consumption. It does rise, does not it ? It seems to rise continuously although only one tab and website is open all the time.

The reason behind this is that Firefox does store previous visited websites for the Back Button. The benefit is that hitting back will load the website from memory cache which is a lot faster than from normal cache or requesting the website from the server again.

Some users do not use the Back button a lot and decided to disable this functionality in order to save memory. Type about:config in the address bar and filter for the string browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers

Disable automatic Formfills in Firefox

Firefox fills out forms automatically be default which is something that not all users want. There is however an easy way to disable that function which has the result that no forms are automatically filled from that moment on. The easiest way to change the setting is to type about:config in the address bar and filter for the name browser.formfill.enable.

The function is active if it is set to true. A double-click changes the setting to false which has the desired effect. Changes take effect immediately.

Quick Tip to Resize Windows in Firefox

It is essential to test websites at different screen resolutions to make sure that your visitors will be able to see the same contents even if they run a different resolution than the website was designed for. The quickest way to change the resolution of the Firefox window is a Javascript one liner.

Paste the following code into the address bar of Firefox and hit enter afterwards: javascript:window.resizeTo(800,600). This will change the resolution of the Firefox window to 800×600. Just change the values to different ones, for example (1024,800) if you want to use the Firefox browser in that resolution.

It is also possible to save this code as a new bookmark instead of pasting that code into the address bar. Right-click on the bookmarks toolbar and select New Bookmark from the menu. Put the code into the location field and enter a name that describes it

Display all Links of a Website

Many users are insecure whether a website that they are currently visiting is the real deal or a fake copy of it. Phishing is a threat that most users take lightly or do not even know about. The Page Info window of Firefox details all links of a website which can be a great asset in determining if the site is the original or a copy.

Right-click on any website and select Page Info from the menu. Now click on the Links tab in the new window that just opened. You see a list of all links on that website. It is then possible to look at the specific link that you want to click and see if it really leads to the destination you think it will lead.

Advanced users have other methods of finding this out but this is probably the easiest way for inexperienced users. The General tab can also be used to verify that you are indeed on the right website because it does display URL information.

Merge Firefox Toolbars to get more space

I have read about a great tip at Make Use Of describing the possibility to merge Firefox toolbars to save space on the screen. I was not aware that this is possible until know. I surely removed some items on toolbars that I did not needed but I never came up with the idea to merge toolbars instead.

Until now I simply enabled toolbars whenever I needed them and disabled them again afterwards. To merge toolbars simply do the following. Enable all toolbars, right-click one of them and select customize from the menu. Now drag and drop all items that you need into one toolbar. This can be the menu bar or navigation toolbar as well.

I moved the Pagerank checker from the Google toolbar to my menu toolbar. This was actually the only useful aspect of the Google Toolbar. I thought about moving the Stumbleupon icons to the menu toolbar as well but this would reduce the input fields of the address to much.

Can’t remember a Firefox password ? This will help

If you are lazy you let Firefox save passwords for you which are then automatically entered into the corresponding password form if you visit a website again. But what do you do if you forget that password but need to know it ? This is for instance a issue if you use Gmail and want to add it in your POP3 mail client as well.

There are actually two possibilities to reveal the password of a password form even if it is only displaying in asterisks. The first option would be to open the Firefox menu and visit the Security tab in there. (Tools > Options > Security Tab) Click on Show Passwords and in the new window again on the Show Passwords button. All of the passwords that have been saved are revealed now including the site url and the username.

Install Add-ons for all users

Installing Firefox add-ons for all users can be a great way to reduce your workload and provide all users that use a computer with the same basic extensions that can add functionality, privacy and security. Even greater is the fact that those add-ons are also available to all future users with an account on the system.

You need to use the command line in Windows to install a Firefox add-on for all current and future users. The basic command is firefox –install–global–extension “full path to the xpi file”. The only difference between installing an add-on for the current user and for all users is that you have to download the xpi file for the latter.

Extend the Add Bookmarks menu

Adding bookmarks to Firefox is not a real pleasure. The default window does not display all of your bookmark folders by default but only a Create in Bookmarks folder. Only when the user clicks on the down arrow provided the rest of his folders are shown in the menu.

The default folder is pretty useless to me because I keep my bookmarks organized and move them straight into the correct folder. I suppose this is the way most users would want the functionality to be.

Below is a short css tweak. Once applied the Add to Bookmarks menu will always show the complete folder tree right from the beginning. To apply the tweak you need to add the lines of code at the end of your userChrome.css file which can be located in your Firefox profile folder.

Disable Automatic Resizing in Firefox

The latest versions of Firefox are automatically resizing images if they do not fit the screen which is a feature that is not wanted by some users. If you are one of those users who would like to change the default behavior and always view images in their original size in Firefox you have to change a setting in the options.

The easiest way to access this option is to type “about:config” in the address bar and search for the string “browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing” which handles how Firefox processes images that do not fit the browser screen. The setting is set to true by default which means that Firefox will resize images automatically if the image is to large to fit the screen.

Change that option to false to override it. This has the consequence that Firefox will never attempt to automatically resize an image so that it fits on the screen.