Hacking Firefox : Useful Addons

After using firefox for almost 8 years, I think that there are so many firefox Addons without which my life wouldn't be so comfortable. In the progression of Hacking firefox to make browsing easy, here are few most used Firefox addons:

• Firebug : Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

• YSlow : YSlow analyzes web pages and why they're slow based on Predefined & Custom rules for high performance web sites.

• Pagespeed : Very Similar to YSlow provided by Google.

• ColorZilla : a color picker, which is used to find any color code just by hovering mouse.

• Xmarks Sync : is a bookmarking add-on. Keep your bookmarks, passwords and open tabs backed up and synchronized across computers and browsers.

• GreaseMonkey : Customize the way a web page displays or behaves, by using small bits of JavaScript. Read Introduction to GreaseMonkey for a kick Start.

• FoxClocks : FoxClocks lets you keep an eye on the time around the world - or just your local time - by putting small clocks in your statusbar.

• AdBlock Plus : Annoyed by adverts? Troubled by tracking? Bothered by banners? Install Adblock Plus now to regain control of the internet and change the way that you view the web.

• ChatZila : A clean, easy to use and highly extensible Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.

• Cookies Manager+ : Cookie manager that allows view, edit and create new cookies. It also allows show extra information about cookies and allows edit multiple cookies at once, as well as backup/restore them.

• JS Switch : Add a toolbar button or an option in Tool menu to toggle JavaScript.

Firefox Bookmark Keyword Hack

Previously I specified few firefox hacks to ease your daily internet surfing. Here I'm trying to explain how to use Firefox Bookmark Keyword hack.

Firefox provides a nice feature to Bookmark a URL and opening that for different input provided. E.g. If you want to search "Barack Osama", you can simply type "yahoo Barack Osama", and it will directly give your the search results.

Lets do it step wise.

1. Open the desired URL e.g. http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Barack+Osama
2. Bookmark the page
3. Go to Organise bookmarks (FF version < 4.0) or Show All Bookmarks (FF version >= 4.0)
4. Search for the book-marked page here e.g. ysearch
5. Expand the property of bookmark (below "tag")
6. Replace the search string "Barack Osama" with %s
7. Enter keyword using what you want to do the search e.g. "yahoo"
8. DONE!

Type e.g. "yahoo < your name > " and enjoy the search results.

Don't limit yourself to this, create more bookmarks. Like for my personal use, I've setup many bookmarks like:

• Facebook name search "fb < name >" (http://www.facebook.com/search.php?type=users&q=%s), 
• Bugzilla search "bug < bug id >", 
• Yahoo search "yahoo < search string >", 
• Microsoft bing search "bing < search string >", 
• Google search "google < search string >".

Introduction to Greasemonkey

What is the need?
Sometimes it is needed that you want to execute some scripts automatically at your page using some client side language (e.g. Javascript). Some good examples are like Mob Wars, Mafia wars or FarmVille where attacks etc are automatically done with certain defined rules . Another example may be automatically retrieving data from other sites to make two sites more interconnected.

What is Greasemonkey?
"Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit." Using Greasemonkey extension many script can be executed as a hack to the Firefox to make your work smoother.

How to install?
Download from http://www.greasespot.net/, install and restart the browser (Firefox). Scripts can be installed then after. It name must end in .user.js
http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScripts is the script repository containing hundreds of scripts

Example please!
// ==UserScript==
// @name Hello World (helloworld.user.js)
// @namespace http://vishnu-agarwal.blogspot.com
// @description example script to alert "Hello world!" on every page
// @include *
// @exclude http://timir126.blogspot.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

Further help?

• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
• http://userscripts.org/
• http://www.greasespot.net/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greasemonkey
  

Firefox hacks to make browsing easy

Undoubtedly, Firefox is the best browser available in the market. Virtually there is no limit of customization you can do with Firefox. Most of these comes as extensions (add-ons).
However, settings can also be customized easily by accessing convenient location using Firefox's "about:config" hack, which can be opened by typing it into the address bar. Steps to change settings can be followed as:

• Type "about:config" in the address bar, and press enter
• Search for the setting in the "Filter" bar within that
• If desired search result found, double click to change the value, which can be integer, Boolean or string type
• In case a setting doesn’t show up in the search, just right-click and select New to create it.
• Restart Firefox
  

By following the above steps, different customizations can be done. I'll list a few here which may be useful for you as well.

1. Stop sites to blink the Text : Some websites have blinking text which irritates a lot. It can be stopped as

• In Filter search, type: "browser.blink_allowed"
• Set its the value as "false"
  

2. Open search result in new tab : Search has become the integral part of our net surfing, and while using Firefox, I quickly hit "Ctrl + k" or "Command + k" (mac) to type the keywords to get the results. However, either it will over-write the existing page or I need to open new tab first, which means extra key strokes. The setting to open the search results in new tab can be done as

• In the Filter search, type: "browser.search.openintab"
• Set its value as "true"
  

3. RAM (Memory) optimization when Firefox is minimized (Windows only) : RAM is a precious commodity. All the applications carry out their processing in the RAM. Many applications in some operating systems, returns unused RAM when they are minimized. The problem with Firefox arises in the way it handles RAM - Not releasing it when minimized. It can be handled using config.trim_on_minimize setting. Please note that, it (Windows only) does not reduce the amount of memory used, it just swaps memory from RAM to disk.

• Create new Boolean variable "New -> Boolean" by doing right click
• Name it as "config.trim_on_minimize" and set the value as "true"

4. Maximum amount of pages to be stored in memory (more) Variable browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers can be set to some positive number in about:config to limit the amount of pages to be stored in the memory. Default is -1, which means it automatically determines the maximum number of pages. Users not facing any memory problem may set -1. To change it

• In the Filter search, type: "browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers"
• Double click, and change value to some positive number (number of pages allowed to be stored in memory)
  

5. Use Firefox Bookmark Keyword

• http://vishnu-agarwal.blogspot.com/2011/05/firefox-bookmark-keyword-hack.html

Other References:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak

Restore Google Search Integration In Firefox Browser Address Bar After Installing Yahoo IM (toolbar)

By default Firefox browser location bar is associated with Google I'm Feeling Lucky search. When users type a keyword like "Google Maps" in location bar Firefox performs I'm Feeling Lucky search and takes users directly to maps.google.com page.

But this feature disappears after installing Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo IM hijacks this feature by replacing Google I'm Feeling Lucky with Yahoo search engine without our consent.

If you want that feature back then follow these simple steps to restore Google's I'm Feeling Lucky

1. Open Firefox browser
2. Type about:config in location bar and press enter
3. Search for configuration key keyword.URL and select it
4. Right click on the configuration key keyword.URL and choose Reset from the shortcut menu. Firefox automatically reset value to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
5. That's all. From now onwards Firefox uses Google's I'm Feeling Lucky when you type keywords in URL bar.