Posted on 05/02/2005 11:44:05 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Introduction
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox for short, is just a free Internet browser. It's not a cure for cancer. It doesn't wash your car or make you a frothy coffee. So why all the fuss and hype over Firefox? In a nutshell, the reason is simple: Firefox is a true open source competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
"What's wrong with Internet Explorer?" you say - well for starters Microsoft was getting complacent. Internet Explorer's vulnerability to numerous security breaches was growing by the day, yet many simple things MS could do to patch these up were left undone. Along comes Firefox as a legitimate challenger with a range of great built-in features and MS has suddenly been forced as part of Windows XP SP2 to incorporate many of these much-needed security and convenience features into the latest version of the world's most used Internet browser. In fact Microsoft has already announced that the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 will include even more features which resemble those of Firefox. All of this has been spurred on by solely by Firefox's existence and growing popularity. So even if you're a dyed-in-the-wool Internet Explorer user, you have Firefox to thank for the current and upcoming improvements in IE.
Ok, so aside from helping improve Internet Explorer, what else makes Firefox great? That's also easy to answer: It has all the useful and familiar features of Internet Explorer, yet provides additional features, better security, far stricter adherence to web standards, much less of Internet Explorer's quirky behavior, and most important of all: far greater potential for customization.
Whether you're a first-time user or a veteran, this Firefox Tweak Guide brings together all the major tips, tricks and tweaks for Firefox. From the basic to the advanced, the following 11 pages of information are sure to enhance your Firefox experience. Most of all you can rest assured that the guide is not written by a raving Firefox fanboy - it's a true objective TweakGuides tweak guide, and not a gushing ad for a free web browser.
Go ahead and try the guide!
Note: This guide refers to the latest official version of Mozilla Firefox Version 1.0.3. The guide is designed specifically for those running Firefox on Windows XP, however most of the tweaks in this guide apply to Firefox on other platforms. Make sure to check back regularly for updates.
I have not tried any of the tweaks yet.
ping list please.
A GUIDE about ME??? This is too much pressure, man!!!
bump
1) Create a free web browser
2) Take 10% of iExplorers market shre
3) ?
4) Profit
Lazamataz: Do you guys know anything about corporations?
Firefox Gnome: You bet we do!
Firefox Gnome 2: Us Firefox gnomes are geniuses at corporations.
And he plans to setup a forum on the guides.
Disable Google Prefetching
A new feature introduced by Google recently and only used by Mozilla and Firefox browsers at present is called Google Prefetch. This is not the same as the prefetching used by Windows (as covered above), so don't get confused - this feature tries to loadup what Google believes is the most likely page you want to view as a result of certain Google searches you initiate. It does this in the background without informing you, and quite frankly I disagree with the morality of this feature (e.g. what if a porn site is loaded up in the background while I'm searching for the phrase "swedish women"?), not to mention that my browser cache becomes filled with web elements (e.g cookies) from pages I never even knew I visited! More importantly, on slower web connections it may mean even more bandwidth usage and hence slower Google searches.
Nosir, don't like that one little bit.
To disable this feature in Firefox, go to about:config, find the network.prefetch-next setting and set it to false. This is recommended as it will improve both performance and security.
Thanks.....more eyes seeing all of this stuff the better/.
One problem I have had with Firefox is with eBay. Nearly every time I go to eBay, I have to enter my username and password to do anything with my account. I have enabled cookies for ebay.com and any varient thereof, but it still does this. I have tried searching the FAQs for help, but have found nothing. Any ideas?
Firefox approaches 60,000,000 downloads!
Wonder what it is now?
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