Mozilla Firefox | Tech-Recipes

Mozilla Firefox tutorials

Firefox 3.1: How to Enable the TraceMonkey JavaScript Engine

Contributed by shamanstears on October 14, 2008 under Mozilla Firefox

TraceMonkey is the magic pill that makes the new Firefox much quicker. Unfortunately, the beta version has this feature disabled. By changing the value of a couple of configuration settings, you can easily enable TraceMonkey and enjoy its speedy goodness.

Firefox 3: Disable Installation Delay of Extensions

Contributed by shamanstears on October 5, 2008 under Mozilla Firefox

If you install Firefox extensions (who doesn’t?), then you are very familiar with the ghosted Install button with the countdown that requires your to wait for it to say Install Now. You can disable this and have immediate access to the Install Now button by altering the default configuration of your Firefox browser.

Firefox 3: Access Your Gmail Inbox from the Bookmarks Toolbar via Live Bookmarks

Contributed by shamanstears on June 30, 2008 under Mozilla Firefox

Use Firefox’ 3’s Live Bookmarks and the RSS feed for your Gmail Inbox to get easy access to your incoming email from the Bookmarks Toolbar.

Firefox 3: Allow Windows to Swap Memory When Application is Minimized

Contributed by shamanstears on under Mozilla Firefox

If you keep having problems with Firefox eating up too much memory, you can add a preference that will allow Windows to swap out memory when the application is minimized.

Firefox 3: Change the Automatic Update Rate of Live Bookmarks

Contributed by shamanstears on under Mozilla Firefox

By default, Firefox reloads Live Bookmarks every 60 minutes. If this is not frequent enough for your needs, you can change the update rate by adding an unlisted preference to about:config.

Firefox 3: Honor System Settings for Anti-Aliasing Smaller Text (OS X only)

Contributed by shamanstears on June 24, 2008 under Mozilla Firefox

By default, Firefox 3 uses anti-aliasing on all rendered text, regardless of the text size. However, you may want Firefox to follow the OS X system preference of turning off the anti-aliasing of smaller sized text to improve how it is displayed on your screen.

Firefox 3: Shrink the Over-sized Back Button

Contributed by shamanstears on under Mozilla Firefox

One thing I dislike about Firefox 3 is that the specialized themes for Windows XP and Vista both leave you with a Back button that is out of proportion with the other buttons on the toolbar. You can tame the oversized button by following this Tech-Recipe.

Firefox 3: Enable Spell Check in Text Boxes (not just textarea fields)

Contributed by shamanstears on under Mozilla Firefox

By default, Firefox 3 will spell check textarea fields (the memo or multiline text fields), but it doesn’t check regular text boxes (the single lined variety). Here’s how to enable spell check on both the single and multilined text boxes.