Address Bar Commands

[piccolomondo]

Mozilla FireFox and Opera both have a nifty bookmarks feature which allows you to give a bookmark a shortcut, sort of like speed-dial for websites. Here’s how it works:

1. Browse to a website you visit often, say Algeria Forums.
2. Bookmark the site by either pressing CTRL+D or going to Bookmarks / Bookmark this page.
3. Once you’ve bookmarked the page, go to the Bookmarks menu and locate your new bookmark. Now, right-click on the bookmark and choose Properties. Under the usual title and URL fields, you’ll see a Keyword field. Type "af" as your keyword (assuming you’re bookmarking Algeria Forums).
4. Now, click into the location bar, type "af" and hit return/ENTER on your keyboard. The shortcut is instantly transformed into the URL!

[piccolomondo]

Now that we all know the hidden pages in Firefox, it’s time to go a bit deeper into tweaking your browser for optimal use.

All of the operations will be made in the about:config page, so save your important stuff, open up a new tab, write about:config in the address bar and be prepared.


1. Fetch only pages that you click
Firefox mostly resembles to Google from this point of view. It has a built-in feature (enabled by default) that will pre-download the pages behind the links it thinks you MIGHT click. Google anticipates you might click the first result from the page, but how in the world can Firefox anticipate the link you’re going to click? This is just useless bandwidth usage, CPU power and HDD space. You’re practically downloading and storing pages you are not viewing. Here’s how you stop that in three simple steps.

1.1 In the about:config list, filter up your search after ‘network’

1.2 Find through the remaining list options the key that says network.prefetch-next.
It should be set to TRUE. Double click it, and it will turn to false.

Now Firefox will only fetch what you click


2. Limit the RAM usage
Although it’s not taking up THAT much memory as other browser, shortly, it still does. But you have a way to control that.

2.1 Filter up your search after “browser.cache”

2.2 Select browser.cache.memory.capacity from the remaining options.
The default setting goes all the way up to 50000, but there’s no need for that.
You have to adjust the value depending on the amount of RAM memory you have installed:

• For RAM sizes between 512MB and 1GB, start with 15000.
• For RAM sizes between 128MB and 512M, try 5000, and you will be happy of the result.

3. Reducing the RAM usage even more when Firefox gets minimized
I got an extremely low usage on this one. Somewhere around 10MB, so it’s definitely a must-do. Basically, this will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, and as a result it will take up much less memory and the restoration speed will be the same, with no delays.
All you have to do is:

3.1 Right click your about:config page

3.2 Select New and click Boolean.
A box will appear and you will have to enter config.trim_on_minimize as value. The boolean value should be set to TRUE in the next screen, and that’s it.
Test it after restarting Firefox.


4. Make pages load faster
Most browsers are configured for dial-up users. Tweak the settings for your optimal use.

4.1 Filter out the list after “network”

4.2 Search for the key network.http.pipelining and set it to TRUE.
You may alter the key below (network.http.pipelining.maxrequests) and change it into a higher value - 10 for example.


Voila, your pages will load much faster now!

[Bent_Bladi]

[eyad]

thanks alot, had great times in saving my favourites shortcuts

[piccolomondo]

Originally Posted by eyad

thanks alot, had great times in saving my favourites shortcuts

Good to get your feedbacks!

[piccolomondo]

Firefox fans rejoice! Your favorite open-source browser has just reached a new milestone: 300,000,000 downloads!

Isn't that amazing? If you are curious about looking at the official download counter, it can be found on the bottom right of the spreadfirefox.com homepage.

• Spread Firefox Homepage
• Download Firefox

[via geeksaresexy]

[piccolomondo]

Widely published computer security expert Simson Garfinkel talks about the great browser security debate, and how not to do online banking.

Podcast (7:20)

[source: CIO.com]