This post might be old and outdated, you might also want to visit these posts to get better tips and tricks for Firefox.
- Speedup Firefox with SpeedyFox
- Convert Firefox into a Social Networking Hub
- Ultimate list of Firefox 3 Tips
- Convert Firefox into a Music Powerhouse
- Convert Firefox into a Productivity Powerhouse
I have been a Firefox user for quite some time now and have learnt quite a few things about how to tweak it a bit to get it to deliver much more better usability experience.
Here are few of the things you can use to tweak Firefox for better performance;
Force new window links to open in new tab
The most annoying factor in my browsing experience while using Firefox was that of links that used to open in new windows, well that is no more and all links to be opened in new windows now open in new tabs, here is how you do it.
Go to Tools -> Options -> Tabs and click on the checkbox that says force links that open in new window to open in. Select one of these from the available options;
- The same tab/window as the link
- A new tab (recommended if you don’t want to leave the current page and still read the other article)
Select text with the keyboard
Well if you ever have wanted to select text, then you have to use your mouse everytime to do that in a browser, well i am kind of a 90% keyboard user and like this feature that’s there in Firefox.
To use your keyboard to select text while browsing. In the Firefox browser go to
Tools -> Options -> Advanced, in that select the checkbox allow text to be selected with the keyboard.
Image resizing when opening images
Well I sometimes do not like the images getting resized automatically in the browser and then me having to go and make it full size again, if your not happy with this behavior, here is how you can stop images from being resized.
Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced and unselect the checkbox resize large images to fit in the browser window.
Use Firefox’s inbuilt password manager
I usually go and sign up for lots of new services everyday and it becomes tedious to go on entering the user name and password for every site that I need to login to, I use Firefox’s inbuilt password manager to store and enter my usernames and password’s for various sites.
Whenever you type in the username and password Firefox will prompt you whether you want to store the information to be entered the next time, if you are comfortable you can click on remember so that it will automatically populate the values for you the next time you want to login to that site.
If you are not getting the prompt here is what to do, go to Tools -> Options -> Security -> Passwords, just check the box remember passwords if it is not already checked, if you want to disable this facility just uncheck the box. If you want to delete all information check the next tip.
Note: Do not do this on a public computer and also do not store banking or other important information, I do not do that myself, if at any time you think you feel the information is compromised just clear out the information stored.
Keyboard shortcut to clear all your private data from Firefox
I like this one as it allows me to clear all the private data like surfing history, passwords, cache, form information, authenticated sessions, download history etc in just one click.
Here is how to configure one click clearing, in you Firefox browser window just use this combination of keys Ctrl + Shift + Del (more Ctrl, Shift and Alt shortcut keys)
A window will open up and ask you what data has to be deleted, in here you can select one or all options to be deleted.
There is a checkbox at the end of the new window that says ask me before clearing private data, un-checking this will never show you this popup again but i do not recommend you doing this unless you are on a public computer.
But un-checking that is the quickest way to clear private data. If you still want Firefox to ask you before clearing the data, here is what you can do.
Go to Tools -> Options -> Security, click on the settings button in the lower bottom right corner, in that you have two options at the bottom,
Clear private data when closing Firefox and ask me before clearing private data, you can activate or deactivate the facility from here.
Well that’s all from me for now, if anyone wants to add to these suggestions, you can do so through the comments section.
