A Better Firefox

I sat down at my computer today and realized, lo and behold, my web browser seemed light years beyond the default Mozilla Firefox configuration without being noticeably slower. As such, I made a cleaned (no personal stuff) version and you can get the bzip2-compressed tarball.

If you’re on Linux, just rename your old ~/.mozilla folder and extract mine into your home folder. If you like it, copy your personal files from the old .mozilla and keep it.

If you’re on Windows, you should probably be able to get it working by finding the firefox folder inside your profile (usually $HOME/Application Data/firefox if my memory is correct) and replacing it with the firefox folder inside the .mozilla folder in the archive. (Remember to make a backup of your old one. It contains your bookmarks and other saved info)

Anyway, here’s a list of enhancements that you should see. I think I got ’em all but I might have missed some. For the sake of brevity, I’m only listing the non-default stuff.

Changes defined in userChrome.css and userContent.css
* The Go and Help menus are gone to save space.
* The annoying scrolling text and CSS-based blinking text won’t do so anymore.
* Links that would open a new window will cause the cursor to become a crosshair when you hover it over them.
* Links that trigger JavaScript when clicked will show the “move” cursor when you hover your mouse over them.

Changes defined in user.js
* “Single-window mode” options for tabbed browsing are available in the preferences panel.
* Non-CSS blinking text won’t blink.
* Any un-blocked pop-up windows will be resizable, minimizable, and have menus and navbars
* Sites can’t disable scrollbars and frames are forced to be resizable
* Non-URL entry in the address bar will be normal google search instead of “I’m Feeling Lucky” search.
* Mozilla won’t wait 250ms before rendering each page. (Good for fast computers, bad for slow ones.)
* Pipelining is enabled. (Experimental feature which speeds things up but may cause problems with older web servers. I’ve never seen any though.)

Installed Extensions: (Inactive features not listed for the sake of brevity)
* Add Bookmark Here (Puts an “Add Bookmark Here” entry at the bottom of each bookmark submenu like Opera and Konqueror do)
* DOM Inspector (Useful for firefox hackers and web designers. Non-removable and comes with firefox.)
* Download Statusbar (Downloads appear as progress bars in an auto-hide toolbar just above the statusbar.)
* downTHEMall! (A tool to simplify mass downloads of image galleries and other file collections.)
* Flashblock (replaces flash applets with stylish click-to-load buttons, making web pages load faster.)
* miniT (drag+indicator) (Lets you drag tabs around and shows an arrow where they’ll appear if you let go)
* OpenBook (Puts a treeview of bookmark folders in the Add Bookmark dialog and remembers where you last put a bookmark.)
* Resize Search Box (Puts a little click-and-drag grabber on the search box so you can easily resize it)
* SessionSaver (Remembers which tabs were open if you close or crash your browser and restores them when you re-open it. It also has a feature called “SnapBack Tab” which lets you “undo” the action of closing tabs.)
* Slim Extension List (Sorts the extension list and makes it easier to read)
* Stop-or-Reload Button (Combines the stop and reload buttons since you can’t stop if the page is loaded and reloading before loading is finished implies stopping first. More space for the address bar)
* User Agent Switcher (For those annoying sites that aren’t really limited to Internet Explorer but want to be a pain)

Notable Included bookmarks:
* Toolbar
* Latest Headlines (The RSS bookmark that comes with Firefox)
* TinyURL! (A bookmarklet to feed the current page through TinyURL.com)
* Quicksearches (Type them into the address bar. I made them more Konqueror-like)
* dict: [whatever] for Dictionary.com
* gg: [whatever] for Google
* ggi: [whatever] for Google Images
* gp: [whatever] for Gentoo Portage Archive Searching
* imdb: [whatever] for the Internet Movie Database
* slang: [whatever] for Urban Dictionary (try “slang: Internet Explorer”)
* wp: [whatever] for Wikipedia

Changes set in Preferences:
* Privacy
* Downloads will be removed from the download manager upon completion
* Third-party cookies are blocked and first-party cookies are set to be session-only.
* The home sites for the extensions I added are in the allowed list for installing extensions.
* JavaScript scripts cannot move or resize existing windows, raise or lower windows, disable or replace context menus, hide the status bar, or change the status bar text.
* The download manager will not auto-appear (I use Download Statusbar (see the extensions list) instead)
* Smooth scrolling is enabled.
* All links that would normally open new windows will open as new tabs instead.

Installed, but Disabled, Extensions: (Can be enabled with right-click in Extension Manager)
* Chromedit (A quick-access editor for userChrome.css, userContent.css, and user.js)
* ColorZilla (A combo color-picker and eyedropper. Useful for bloggers, web developers, and the like.)
* Fangs Screen Reader Emulator (Lets you see what a blind web surfer would hear. Good for web designers.)
* Javascript Debugger (Good for web programmers.)
* MeasureIt (Lets you measure areas of the screen. Good for web developers.)
* Web Developer Toolbar (Almost everything a web designer could ever want.)

Other notable changes:
* Fonts should be more readable than the defaults under Gentoo Linux (If the “Bitstream Vera” Serif and Sans-Serif fonts are installed.)
* The toolbars are as vertically-compact as possible without being uncomfortable at 1024×768 and below.
* The start page is about:blank (a blank page)
* The “popups have been blocked” toolbar is disabled. (The statusbar icon still appears, though.)

If you want to kill over 90% of ads, combine it with the parasite-blocking hosts file.

A Better Firefox by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.