sign in sign up
<<
Home , Pentadactyl, Private browsing, Theme (computing)

IN DEPTH AN INTRODUCTION TO FIREFOX Get more out of the flagship free project’s hidden features.

f statistics are to be believed, the Firefox such as universities, governments and businesses. enjoys around a 20% share of the Each ESR release is supported for one year, however it Ibrowser market, lagging behind Google’s Chrome only receives high-risk/impact security fixes or major browser, with its more polished . But stability fixes. Firefox offers more power-user features through its ability to be tweaked and customised. A quick tour The name Firefox (which is another name for the Central to the Firefox experience is what Mozilla calls red panda) was chosen after earlier names, including the Bar, a combined URL and search box. Phoenix and Firebird were dropped due to trademark You start typing what you want and the Awesome Bar disputes. More on that later… displays possible matches from your browsing history, Mozilla releases Firefox versions at four stages in bookmarked sites and open tabs. When a page is its lifecycle. Known as channels, they are: displayed, its URL is prefixed with its ‘’, the small Firefox Nightly, a developer-focussed release aimed used by some websites to give a brand identity to at “extremely technical” early adopters. It’s updated the URL. If you connect to a secure site, the identity every night and contains the latest changes. information can be revealed by clicking on the favicon. Firefox Aurora is a pre-beta release every morning Bookmarking is quick and easy, thanks to the for technical early adopters. one-click feature accessed via the star icon Firefox Beta is a weekly beta release aimed at at the end of the Awesome Bar. Click once to create a non-technical early adopters. bookmark, click again to edit or remove one. Firefox Final is the official public release version An extension to bookmarking is Quick Search. Say intended for everyday, mainstream users. It is released you frequently look up content on Wikipedia; if you on a six-week schedule. browse to that site, right-click in its search bar and Functional changes and enhancements move select Add A Keyword For This Search, you’ll then be through the four channels, being initially available in able to search it directly by entering wikipedia the nightly build and moving through Aurora and Beta my-search-term in the Awesome Bar. before eventually making it into a new public release. Firefox was one of the first browsers to offer the The release schedule is maintained on the Mozilla now-common tabbed browsing model. It extends the Wiki (http://bit.ly/ffrelcal). concept by enabling the user to pin certain tabs, In addition to the four main channels there’s meaning that they become permanent fixtures on the another version, called Firefox Extended Support where they space-efficiently display Release, which is intended for large organisations only the site’s favicon on the left-hand end of the

Our favourite add-ons

There are thousands of add-ons available through http://addons.mozilla.org and everyone will have their own favourites. Here are some of ours. aims to make more efficient and keyboard accessible by bringing -like keybindings and Ex-like commands to Firefox with a neat, minimalist GUI. This is a must-have add-on for Vim lovers http://bit.ly/ffpentadactyl. Lightbeam uses interactive visualisations to show you the first and third-party sites you interact with on the web. AdBlock Plus enables you to filter out unwanted parts of websites that you visit, such as noisy ad. Abduction lets you easily select an area of a web page with your mouse and save it as an image. Firebug is a web development tool that you can Firefox’s releases are use in addition to, or instead of, the integrated fed through four release developer toolbox. channels

108 www.linuxvoice.com FIREFOX IN DEPTH

stored within a profile that you’ll find under your home Web developer tools directory in a path similar to /home/your_user_name/.mozilla/firefox/k9uvtyeq.default/ Web developers have another good reason to use The exact path contains a random string that Firefox. Its integrated Toolbox for web developers, serves two purposes: it makes the profile directory accessible via the Tools > Web Developer menu, has unique and obfuscates it to reduce of the risk of improved over time, obviating the need for malware locating it on platforms where that kind of extensions such as Firebug. You can inspect thing is an issue. Most users will have one profile but elements and even make changes to HTML and CSS on the page that you are viewing – full details at it is possible to have many and you may find this http://bit.ly/ffwebtoolbox. useful if you are experimenting with extensions or settings. To find the profile directory that Firefox is using, you can browse to URL:about:support and click the Open Directory button, which is next to the Profile Directory label. Settings are stored in your profile in a plain-text file called prefs.js. You can look at this file in any but changes are best made using the application. There are “Firefox was one of the first Firefox’s Toolbox is great for web developers. many more settings than browsers to offer the tabbed you can access via the Preferences dialog – you browsing model.” bar. They don’t have a close button, thus avoiding instead enter about:config accidental closure, and they glow blue when the page into the URL bar, whcih will bring up a huge range of updates. on pinned tabs are opened in a new preferences to tweak (if you accept the risk of tab so that the pinned tab doesn’t change (although potentially breaking things, of course!). beware, if you browse elsewhere while viewing a To set an option, search for it and click the value to pinned tab, it changes the pinned tab!). change it. For an example, search for ‘animatefade’ and change its value from the default false to true, to Manage your tabs get some fun eye candy. Tab addicts will like tab groups, (also known as a panorama). This is a great feature that you’ll want to Privacy and security use if you often end up with more tabs than will fit on The awesomeness of the Awesome Bar, and other the tab bar, or if you want to organise tabs by task. To things, require Firefox to collect data about your PRO TIP create tab groups, enter Ctrl+Shift+E or click the small browsing habits. But you have control over this. One icon at the right-hand end of the tab bar. This will way is to use , which enables you to Start with Firefox from the command line with display your tabs as thumbnails that you can drag browse the internet without saving any information firefox -P to manage around and collect into groups. You select a tab to about which sites and pages you visit. It doesn’t make profiles. display by clicking its thumbnail, which returns to the you anonymous on the internet, however. The main display with that tab open and the tab bar only keystroke Ctrl+Shift+P starts private browsing in a showing tabs from the same group. new (a small mask icon to the left of the tab Firefox is a feature-rich application but we can bar identifies it as being private). Firefox won’t track extend, bend and manipulate it to customise the browser, search, download and web-form histories, browsing experience. This is made possible by its cookies, or temporary internet files (any files you extendable architecture and by tweaking its internal specifically download or bookmarks you make will be settings. Everything you do to customise Firefox is kept). You close the window to stop Private Browsing. Firefox can tell the sites that you visit that you do not want to be tracked, however it doesn’t do this by default so you should go to Preferences > Privacy to select this option. There is, however, no requirement that web sites honour this setting. An extension called Lightbeam can reveal the sites that are tracking you online. Privacy is a balancing act: read the Mozilla page at http://bit.ly/ffprivacy to get the current Firefox privacy policy.

John Lane is a technology consultant with a penchant for . His Firefox has a penguin theme. The panorama: ideal for users who like lots of tabs.

www.linuxvoice.com 109