Power User's Guide to Firefox 3

You already know about Firefox 3's marquee new features, but now it's time to dig deep and unearth the shortcuts, tweaks, and even Easter eggs that Mozilla marketing doesn't mention. In honor of today's official release of Firefox 3—at 10AM Pacific Time—let's dive in past Firefox 3's most talked-about feature-set into its lesser-known power uses, tricks, and customizations.

Shrink the Super-sized Back Button

The very first thing you notice in Firefox 3 is its extra large Back button. While it's actually quite handy—less chance of missing your target!—if the Back button's just too big for your tastes, it's as easy as pie to reduce. Just right-click on Firefox's toolbar, and choose Customize. In the dialog box, select "Use small icons."

Adjust the Smart Location Bar's Number of Suggestions

The Firefox 3 feature that you'll get to know and love the most is the new smart location bar's as-you-type suggestions that learn where you probably want to go as you browse. But if you're feeling like the number of suggestions is too high or too low? Adjust it to your liking in Firefox's configuration area. Here's how.

1. Enter about:config into the address bar and hit Enter.
2. Press the "I''ll be carefull. I promise!" button. (Because you will be.)
3. Enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults in the Filter field to reach this preference.
4. Set it to your desired number of suggestions. Three shown here.

Ditch Obselete Extensions

Firefox's philosophy seems to be "stay lean and mean and leave the extras to add-ons." Nevertheless, Firefox 3 does bake in some functionality that makes some extensions you might love unnecessary. Here are five extensions you won't need with Firefox 3.

Revert the "AwesomeBar" with Oldbar

Firefox's smart location bar (a.k.a. "AwesomeBar")—which drops down a suggestion list of destinations as you type into it—is extra verbose and extra-tall, since it includes both web site titles and URLs. If you're missing Firefox 2's classic one-line drop-down look, the Oldbar extension can revert the "AwesomeBar" to something less awesome—or at least something that looks less awesome.

Trick Out Your Smart Bookmarks

Like iTunes Smart Playlists and saved search folders in OS X and Vista, Firefox 3's Smart Bookmarks are dynamic lists of URLs generated by certain search criteria. Here's how to create your own collections of Smart Bookmarks using search parameters. Hint: Add the most frequent pages you visit on Lifehacker.com by bookmarking place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=5&domain=lifehacker.com.

Set Gmail as Your Default Email client—Without an Add-on

Firefox 3's filetype handling mechanism can now associate web applications as well as desktop applications with certain files. This opens the door to possibilities like automatically launching links to ical files in your web-based calendar app, or opening your webmail when you click on email links. While most webapps have to catch up to Firefox 3 to enable this functionality, one we already know and love is already there. Here's how to launch Gmail when you click mailto: links on web pages.

Say Hello to the Firefox Robots

You already know about the age-old Firefox about:mozilla Easter egg. Well, Firefox 3 has a new Easter egg that pays homage to its robot mascot. Type about:robots into the Firefox 3 address bar to get a fun page with a list of robot pop culture references, from I, Robot to Blade Runner to Battlestar Galactica to Futurama.

Enable Spellchecking in One-line Input Fields

This tweak goes back to Firefox 2, but is still just as useful and functional in Firefox 3, especially if you're a web writer. In about:config, set layout.spellcheckDefault value equal to 2 to enable spell-checking in single line input fields as well as textareas. (Less typos in your email subject lines and blog post titles!) Here are a few more Firefox about:config tweaks.

Mac Users: Add Favicons to Your Bookmark Toolbar

Mac users who are rockin' Firefox 3's new slick Mac-like theme—but who miss their bookmarks' favicons—can easily add web site icons to their toolbar with a little tweak.

For a birds-eye view of Firefox's evolution over the last four years, see the history of Firefox 1.0 to 3.0 in screenshots.

How are you tweaking Firefox 3 today when you install it? Give it up in the comments.

source : http://lifehacker.com/396312/power-users-guide-to-firefox-3

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Mozilla Firefox 3

Posted Jun 17th 2008 1:00PM by Grant Robertson

After a long wait, version 3 of the popular Firefox browser is officially available today -- get yours here. It's likely the most anticipated Firefox release ever, poised to break a world record for the most downloads in a single day but, does it live up to its lofty expectations?

Frankly, without the browser in widespread circulation it's hard judge it an unmitigated success. Mozilla's new baby contains a claimed 15,000 improvements. With a list that long, there are bound to be a few new features you'll love, a few you'll hate -- and -- maybe a few you'll wonder how you ever lived without.

After putting the betas through their paces and having a nice long chat with Mike Beltzner -- one of the user experience gurus from Mozilla -- here are five of our favorite things about the newest member of the Firefox family.

One-Click Site Information

If you're an old hat at spotting web phishing scams, this might not be so impressive but, we'll guarantee it's the first thing you'll explain about Firefox 3 to the not-so-expert web users in your life. Firefox 3 does its best to protect you from the baddies of the Interwebs by reassuring you that the site you're looking at really is the one you intended to trust with your personal info.

Browsers have always been able to show you information somewhat like this but, it's never been so easily accessible. Teaching your not-so web savvy Mom, Dad, Uncle or Grandparent to click on the favicon -- look for the little guy with the green passport -- to make sure everything is on the up and up before entering a credit card number should be a piece of cake.

Also of note, integration with Google's anti-malware blacklists means you'll have to work pretty hard at being boneheaded to be the victim of a web drive-by download.


The "Awesome Bar"

Remember how you used to type in the first few characters of your favorite URL, instead of using those pesky antiquated bookmarks? The awesome bar takes that one step further by making the titles of all the pages you've viewed instantly searchable.

Where was that article on koala bears I was reading yesterday? Even if you've forgotten the domain name of the site you were browsing, the Awesome Bar -- yes, they're calling it the Awesome Bar -- can help you find what you were looking at without taking a tedious dumpster dive through your history.

Hate the awesomeness of the Awesome Bar? Here's how to disable it.


Search Your Downloads

If you use your browser to download countless numbers of files, this is a useful new trick. A tiny searchbar allows you to quickly pick through the clutter and find just the file for which you're looking.


Tighter Visual Integration

Ok, so call us nit-picky but, we like our things "just so". Firefox did a great job of integrating into the Windows environment but, for users on Mac, it still looked mostly like a Windows application. No more. Firefox 3 goes a little out of its way to provide the look and feel of the OS on which you're using it, making for a more comfortable user experience.

Before - Firefox 2.0.0.14

After - Firefox 3

Better Memory Management

This is far and away our favorite. We use our browser, a lot. It's open all day and all night filled with tons of tabs containing the things we use constantly. The web is our killer application. Gmail, CNN, Downoad Squad, online banking, etc, etc -- they all eat precious memory. Firefox 3 makes sure to release that used memory back to the wild when it can, rather than consuming ever more system resources. The trade off for hardcore memory management usually lies in slower response times but, FF3 manages to feel snappy and still give back all that hard earned memory when its done.

source: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/17/firefox-3-launches-today-five-reasons-you-cant-live-without-it/

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Firefox 3

Firefox logo Mozilla has announced new details of its schedule for Mozilla Firefox 3, the next major upgrade to the well-known open-source browser.

In a posting to the mozilla.dev.planning forum, Mike Schroepfer, the company’s vice president of engineering maintained that the Alpha editions of Firefox 3 browser will be released every month. He stated, “We will do date-driven alpha releases on a one-month cadence.”

The latest schedule shows three more Mozilla Firefox 3 previews - Alphas 4, 5 and 6, which will be out around the end of April, May, and June, respectively, with a feature-complete Beta 1 dropping into testers’ hands July 31. The most recent Mozilla Firefox 3 test edition, Alpha 3, was posted on March 27.

Mozilla said that Firefox 3 should appear in final form in Q4 of 2008 and will feature a completely-revamped bookmarking system, new identity management tools and support for offline Web applications. The redesigned bookmarks, called Places, will debut in Alpha 5, which is due to launch May 31.

New features in Mozilla Firefox 3 Alpha 4 browser are:
# Boomarks are now called Places, new menu structure
# Save web pages as PDF
# FUEL JavaScript library for extension developers
# Enhancements to offline app support
# Improvements to user controls over tabs
# Interface improvements
# The new Breakpad crash reporting tool (Mac OS X only)

Mozilla had planned on including support for Growl notifications with this Firefox 3 build, but didnt’ go forward with the idea and withdrew it at the last minute since it was causing crashes.

Adapted from : Techshout

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Restart Firefox to Reclaim Memory

Speed your browsing by clearing the cache.

(Scott Spanbauer)

Firefox is my favorite browser, but it's far from perfect. Even if you've minimized the number of add-ins (which can be buggy memory hogs) you use, closed the tabs that you've finished viewing, and limited the amount of memory the browser can use for cached content, Firefox can still bog down your computer by eating up an unreasonable amount of RAM.

To find out how much memory Firefox is using, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to launch Windows' Task Manager, click the Processes tab, and scroll to the entry for firefox.exe. Depending on the size and number of pages you've viewed recently, the amount listed in the Memory (Vista) or MemUsage (XP) column can run into the hundreds of megabytes. To curb Firefox's appetite, exit the program and then relaunch Firefox and Task Manager to see how much memory a fresh instance of the browser uses.

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How to Boost your Internet Browser Using Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox has been used in many millions user around the world, because they are more powerful browser ever, more-secure, user-friendly, more-costumed, and the best things it's free. So Why do you choose Internet Explorer, if you can get more when you use Mozilla Firefox.

When you're using Internet Sharing Connection or low Internet Connection or Dial-up Internet, you often get more delayed to show website pages that you want to see, but don't worry Mozilla and it's partner has been developed this amazing add-ons, that you're free to use in your mozilla. it called Fasterfox.

How To Get FireFox :

First of all you need to have Mozilla Firefox :

Visit the Mozilla Firefox Homepage or click this Search "fasterfox" in the search text.


Click The Fasterfox addons like this picture :
Then Click Install (this add-ons will work under mozilla firefox 1.0 -2.x) :

After you've successfully installed You Must Restart The Mozilla firefox simple just closed and open it again, then try to look this icon at the bottom of your mozilla status bar. and now your mozilla will boost your internet browser act

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