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Make Firefox A Perfect Fit


Mozilla browsers offer a much higher degree of user customization than meets the eye. Here are ways to tweak Firefox to fit your needs.

By Scot Finnie
Desktop Pipeline
January 10, 2005 01:31 PM

Recently, I offered an in-depth review of Mozilla's new Firefox browser in my newsletter. One thing you should know is that the review you may have read a month ago has changed pretty significantly. As I discovered new things about Firefox, or when in a few cases I was shown the error of my ways, I've made changes and corrections to the story.

But even though there are many new details and insights about Firefox in the review, one thing that didn't change was my strongly positive conclusion about the new browser. In fact, I'm an even more confirmed Firefox user today.

In this article, I'm offering insights and links to a long list of installable extensions and user-configuration tweaks to Firefox that provide literally dozens of improvements to the program. With this story in hand, you can vastly improve your Firefox installation quickly and easily, and you'll be doing so with changes I've personally vetted and tested in advance.

Firefox Extension Recommendations
With so many beneficial Firefox extensions available, I've been working my way through a long list that I found interesting. I've grouped together some of the best ones under descriptive headings.

Where To Get Firefox Extensions
xMirror by Kristof Polleunis should be the first Firefox extension you install. There are at least three other extension sites — in addition to the official Mozilla.org Extension site — that host extensions for Firefox and Mozilla. xMirror provides convenient access to the three other extension sites from within the Firefox Extension manager.

Why are the other extension sites so important? Mozilla.org doesn't list all the available extensions, including some of the best ones out there. In order to get the most out of Firefox, you need to peruse these other sites occasionally. Take a look for yourself:

  • Mozdev.org's Extension Room
  • Texturizer.net's Firefox Help: Extensions
  • The Extensions Mirror

    Must-Have Tab-Browsing Firefox Extensions
    I have a strong preference for running Firefox in a way that minimizes the number of full program windows that open on my desktop. I would like to be able to track the trail of sites I visit as separate pages. But I want those separate pages to appear as tabs. If you try working this way, I believe that you will find that it is very efficient. Of course, what matters is what works for you. But in my use of Firefox, these tab-browsing-oriented extensions have given the browser a huge boost in productivity.

    SessionSaver by Pike, Rue
    SessionSaver is a highly useful older extension that saves all open browser tabs in the event of a crash. It also lets you save and name sets of tabs, and recall them at will. I recommend the 0.2d2 nightly23 build of SessionSaver. Note: Mozilla.org doesn't list this extension, probably because it has not been updated in quite some time. Nevertheless, I have tested it with Firefox 1.0, and it works fine.

    Tab Clicking Options by Twanno
    Double-clicking any blank area of Firefox's tab bar opens a new tab browser. But by default, double-clicking any existing tab has no effect. Tab Clicking Options lets you configure functionality for keyboard and mouse-click combinations related to Firefox's tabs. For example, you can configure it to close any open tab by double-clicking the tab label. And Ctrl-double-click on any tab might duplicate the tab and its contents. The program is easy to install and configure, and well worth a couple of minutes to get it going.

    miniT(drag+indicator) by Caio Chassot
    Provides for drag-and-drop movement of Firefox browser tabs.

    Undo Close Tab by Dorando
    After you install Undo Close Tab, you'll be able to backtrack from problems like this one: You're in the middle of long forum post. You double-click the tab bar to open a new tab to check a Web page for some fact. But by accident, you click the Close Tab icon on the right side of the tab bar, which closes the tab window containing your unsaved forum post. With Undo Close Tab installed, just right-click the tab bar and choose "Undo Close Tab." Poof, your tab is back! (Also, consider removing the close button from the tab bar.)

    Note: To truly fix all aspects of Firefox's tab-browsing functionality, I also recommend the four customizations under the Tab-Browsing Tweaks heading in the Firefox Customization Recommendations section that follows.


    • Page 2:  Must-Have UI-Fixing Firefox Extensions
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