{My Firefox Customizations}

These are a few customizations that I have had done to my Firefox build. Firefox is very customizable browser. The users can change the default behaviour and look of the browser to their taste as and when they like.

I had not updated this page for a long time. After noticing that there have been more than a couple of hits a day to this page this last month, I have decided to make it more current. Some of the comments on this page e.g. about TBE, are not valid any more. I will try to update the page in a phased manner so that the cuztomizations are valid for atleast Firefox 0.9 and above.

File Descriptions

user.js

This file is the main file to set your preferences for Firefox. This file should exist in your Firefox profile folder. It does not exist by default and hence you need to create it yourself. Preferences can also be set by typing about:config in Firefox location bar and hitting Return. Its advisable to set preferences using about:config as this way its much easier and safer.

userChrome.css

This file is responsible for displaying various Firefox UI elements according to the rules in it. It does not exist and you have to create it yourself. It should be saved in the chrome folder in your Firefox profile directory. An example file called userChrome-example.css is provided for your help. Feel free to copy it and rename it to userChrome.css and put in your customizations

userContent.css

This file is responsible for displaying the webcontent in Firefox according to the rules defined in it. It does not exist by default and you need to create it yourself. It should exist in the chrome folder in your Firefox profile directory. You can rename the userContent-example.css already present in the chrome folder for your customizations.

Browser look and feel customizations:

Change active tab's text decoration

To change the color of active tab's title text, edit the userChrome.css to add the following code.

/* Make the active tab title different*/
      tab[selected="true"] { text-decoration: underline !important;
      color:#CC0000 !important; } 

Personal Toolbar folders title Red and Bold

To change the color of Personal toolbar's folder title to red and make it appear bold, edit the userChrome.css to add the following code.

/* Make bookmark folders Bold and Red:*/
      .bookmark-item[type="menu"] > .toolbarbutton-text { font-weight:
      900 !important; color: #BB0000 !important; } 

Personal Toolbar links color Green

To change the color of Personal toolbar's links' title to green, edit the userChrome.css to add the following code.

/* Make PT links text green colored:*/
	    .bookmark-item > .toolbarbutton-text {
	    font-weight: 120% !important;
	    color: #336600 !important;
	    }
	  

Hide Personal Toolbar

To hide the Personal Toolbar from the view either click on View > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar or add the following code in your userContent.css:

.bookmark-item[label="Bookmarks Toolbar Folder"]
{
display: none !important;
}

sept 28, 2004

Change the size of Search Toolbar

To change the size of your search toolbar, add the following code to your userChrome.css. You should adjust the value for -moz-box-flex to your liking.

#search-container, #searchbar {
   -moz-box-flex: 400 !important;
}

oct 06, 2004

Firefox Behaviour configuration

Cursor for links opening in new window

To change the cursor when hovering over a link that opens in a new window, edit the userContent.css to add the following code. This will show a "Cross hair" cursor when hovering on those links.

/*Change cursor for links that open in new window */ 
	    :link[target="_blank"], :visited[target="_blank"],
	    :link[target="_new"],   :visited[target="_new"] { 
	    cursor:  crosshair; 
	    } 
	  

Stop animations to play more than once

You can choose to play the animations displayed when visiting a website either never, once, or continuously. To change the behaviour, type about:config in the location bar and hit "Return". Then search for image.animation_mode preference. Right click on that entry and select "Modify". Type in either once, or never and click "OK". To reset it to default value you can always right click the entry and click on "Reset".

oct 12, 2004

Miscellaneous

Browser Security Warnings

Out-of-the-box Firefox installation comes with a little bit different behaviour than Mozilla in respect to security warnings. For example, when one submits unencrypted data, a warning window comes up alterting the user that the data is going to be transmitted over an insecure channel. And offers a checkbox to alert the user everytime unencrypted data is submitted. If the user checks the checkbox, one expects it to be already checked when the warning comes up next time. In Mozilla suite it comes up checked, but Firefox somehow "forgets" to put the checkbox. For those who want the behaviour to be similar to Mozilla suite, change your about:config entries to look like those below:

security.warn_entering_secure.show_once > false
	    security.warn_leaving_secure.show_once  > false
	    security.warn_submit_insecure.show_once > false
	    security.warn_viewing_mixed.show_onc e  > false 
	  

may 10, 2004

Restoring profile

Mozilla backup is a good tool for backing-up your profiles for Mozilla1.x, Netscape7.x, Firefox and Thunderbird. For those using .zip archives for installing Firefox (and others) would not get an option in Mozilla Backup wizard to select Firefox to backup or restore a profile. Also, users upgrading to Firefox0.8+ and above from anything before and upto Firefox0.8 release will also experience difficulty. This is because the name of the folder in %Application Data% for the browser has been changed to Firefox from Pheonix. An easy solution is to rename the backed up profile to *.zip and extract the contents to the user's profile folder for the new distribution.

may 10, 2004

Adding a New Profile

Firefox releases(and nightlies too) do not support installing the "Profile Manager" in the Firefox programs folder. The developers have decided that explicit usage of Profile Manager is intended only for people testing Mozilla Firefox and not casual users. Mozilla Firefox profile manager can still be started in current builds but you have to use command line for that.

 firefox.exe -ProfileManager (Windows) or
 firefox -ProfileManager
      (Linux)

june 28, 2004

©Boney 2004.