Cutting Edge: Exclusive Firefox 3 about:config hacks

April 12th, 2008 | Category: Firefox

Since we like on the bleeding edge here at eriwen.com, I wanted to share some of the most useful about:config entries that are new to Firefox 3. You probably know that you just need to type "about:config" into your URL bar to get set up for these gems. If you haven’t already you will also want to check out the Firefox 3 chrome tweaks to really customize your favorite browser.

Bleeding Edge: Force Extension Compatibility

WARNING: I take no responsibility if enabling all your favorite extensions borks up your browsing experience. Hence the “bleeding” as it were…

extensions.checkCompatibility -> Toggle to false
extensions.checkUpdateSecurity -> Toggle to false

Credit may go to Lifehacker’s article for posting this first.

Location Bar

This is a good alternative to the userChrome.css hack to trim down that huge auto-complete list on your URL bar. Note that the browser.urlbar.maxRichResults one does not like to display more that 12 as far as my testing goes. I personally set mine to 3.

browser.urlbar.maxRichResults -> # results for URL auto-complete list

Zoom, Zoom

These are most useful for presenters that need the ability to zoom in very close for their audience when showing them Firefox. You can also make Firefox 3 behave like Firefox 2 by settingbrowser.zoom.full to false. As you might have guessed, putting browser.zoom.siteSpecific at false takes off site specific zoom settings.

zoom.maxPercent -> Set to 400 for the ability to zoom closer
zoom.minPercent -> 10 will let you can zoom out further
browser.zoom.full -> Set to false for Firefox 2-like text zooming only
browser.zoom.siteSpecific -> False removes site-specific zoom settings
toolkit.zoomManager.zoomValues -> You can change zoom levels here

Random

Toggle extensions.getAddons.showPane if you don’t care for the Add-ons search part of the Add-ons dialog. You can also crank up the space you make available for the shiny new offline capabilities of Firefox 3!

extensions.getAddons.showPane -> False removes Add-ons search
browser.cache.offline.capacity -> Increase offline cache (I set to 20480)

As always you may want to stay tuned because a lot of these were added with beta 5 and I’ll be posting more as I get them. I would also recommend subscribing to the comments on this one in particular as the readers here tend to have good additional hacks! Thank you commenters!

Popularity: 28% [?]

19 Responses so far

Tina Russell April 12th, 2008 8:00 am

I finally decided to write a comment on your blog. I just wanted to say good job. I really enjoy reading your posts.

Tina Russell
Eric Wendelin April 12th, 2008 10:11 am

Bonus - It looks like there is a project that transforms RSS to HTML using about:config in FF3b5 at: http://code.google.com/p/rssxslt/
gialloporpora April 12th, 2008 6:18 pm

The preference of compatitbility is not new in FF 3.0, it already exist in FF 1.5 (maybe 1.0):
an older post in my blog about this

Another preference is:
browser.urlbar.MatchOnlyTyped

remove bookmarks and history from url bar suggestion (like 2.0).
Ciao
Eric Wendelin April 12th, 2008 7:31 pm

Grazie gialloporpora, good tip. I guess it’s just a useful reminder this time, but the others are definitely new.
gialloporpora April 13th, 2008 4:35 pm

Thank you Eric, your article is interesting, I like to know new configuration in FF 3.0.
Ciao
Sandro
fontwell April 14th, 2008 4:26 am

Tools > Add-ons

about:config…extensions.hideinstallbutton
Toggle to false, puts an install button on so
they may be installed from local machine.
Eric Wendelin April 14th, 2008 7:26 am

@fontwell:

Thank you! I didn’t even notice that you could not do that in FF3. I hope that they allow that by default in FF3 Final.
Ajay Pathak April 26th, 2008 4:42 am

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El Joche X64 May 6th, 2008 5:46 pm

Awesome hacks for firefox

browser.cache.offline.capacity set it to 256000
browser.cache.disk.capacity set it to 256000
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency set it to 2

and see firefox Fly!
El Joche X64 May 6th, 2008 5:54 pm

if you had any problems then set browser.cache.check_doc_frequency to 3

and back to normal
Chris July 5th, 2008 7:36 am

Dude I have been tweaking firefox since I first started using it 2 years ago..I love the fox. And I must say some of your suggestions here are entirely new to me. But before I can attempt them I need some help with this new ff 3. Everytime i go into about:config and change my basic features like nglayout or pipelineing. When I restart ff 3 the are all reset to the original values. Any ideas?

mr_cbrooks@yahoo.com
chris July 5th, 2008 7:51 am

Found it had a user.js file in my profile )somehow) and it over rides any sttings I was trying to change so I deleted it!
El Joche X64 July 5th, 2008 11:48 am

Hi I´m Jose Diaz

try these ones

please create the preferences if necesary

network.prefetch-next
boolean false
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency integer maximum value 2
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
browser.cache.memory.capacity integer 96000 maximum value 128000
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
browser.sessionhistory.cache_subframes boolean true
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers integer 4
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
print.always_cache_old_pres boolean true
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
browser.cache.disk.capacity integer 512000
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
browser.cache.offline.capacity integer 512000
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
print.always_cache_old_pres boolean true
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
network.dnsCacheEntries integer 256 maximum value 512
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
network.dnsCacheExpiration integer 3600 maximum value 7200
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

try the maximum values if you have a good computer (ie, dualcore, etc. and lots of ram)

and you will have the fastest browser ever

can try also a portable version of firefox

get it here http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

bye
Matt Ellsworth July 10th, 2008 2:00 pm

thanks for the tips - i’ve gone and applied them

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