Firefox is a great browser and a great example of how well open-source development can work. Straight out of the box, it’s very usable, and is probably fine for most casual users. Lucky for power users, or users that just like tinkering, the design of Firefox facilitates a wide range of customization options. Add on programs (extensions), custom settings files, themes and even custom binaries for specific CPUs all exist or can be created to modify Firefox specific tastes and needs. Here’s some notes on how I’ve used these items to customize my Firefox install.

CPU-Specific Builds of Firefox
I’ve just started using (as of 2005_01_26) MOOX’s custom build of Firefox. These builds are designed to exploit features of particular processors and/or instruction sets. So far the build I’ve been using seems very stable. It’s a bit faster than the normal Firefox build, but definitely not a huge increase (e.g., a 2x speed increase). Make sure to read this page which guides you through which build is appropriate for your particular CPU (most newer processors use the M3 build). Downloads can be found here.

Oh, here’s a couple of quick tips to make your Firefox use more productive.
1) cntrl+Tab scrolls between Firefox’s Tabs (cntrl+shift+tab goes the other way)
2) Click on any bookmark, and enter a keyword. Now, Firefox will open this bookmark when you enter this keyword into the address field.
3) You setup Firefox to find an item on the simply by typing your query while focused on the page. To set this up, go to ‘Tools/Options,’ ‘Advanced’ and ‘Accessibility’, tick ‘Begin finding when you begin typing’.
4) Cntrl+e locks focus on the search box in the upper right corner.
5) Once focus is on the search box, cntrl+arrowup/down scrolls through your search engines.

Essential Extensions

1. IEView - Adds "View page in Internet Explorer" links to the content and link context menu. This rocks. Since I don’t have Flash installed in Firefox (which is nice for blocking evil UI elements and ads), IEView lets me quickly load the page in IE in all of its Flash glory (or gory). Also good for pages that don’t load well in Firefox.
2. Context Search - Changes the "Web Search for" context item into a menu containing your search plugins.
3. Compact Menu - Allows you to free up some vertical space my cramming all of the menu controls (i.e., File, View, etc.) under a fish icon.. why the fish, I don’t know. Here’s a picture of it in action.
4. Linkification - Makes textual URLs links.
5. Diggler - Adds a button to the toolbar and a link in the context menu that with tools to easily dig through the directories of the URL you are currently browsing.
6. Tabbrowser Extensions - Greatly increases control over your tabs. An essential extension.
7. SpellBound - A feature-rich spell checker for Firefox. Use it in TypePad (just be sure to click on the field you want to check before initiating it). Add-on dictionaires for international language support can be found here.
   
8. Scrapbook - Facilitates capture of full or partial web pages and creation of plain-text or HTML notes. You can change the directory that Scrapbook stores its entries in under Tools/Settings/Advance.
9. ColorZilla - Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily. And there’s more…
10. A9 Toolbar - Has an A9 search box, saves your history and bookmarks online. Really used to receive the A9 discount at Amazon (which is a little over 1%).
11. Sage - A lightweight RSS and ATOM feed aggregator
12. Mapit — Select addresses from a web page and open a map of it using the context menu.
13. Feedview — Allows the browser to render RSS feeds. Similar to the functionality found in Apple’s Safari browser.
14. All-in-One Gestures — This extension allows you to execute common commands using mouse gestures, rocker navigation, scroll wheel navigation and page scrolling.

Optional Extensions
Quick Note -  QuickNote is a note taking-like extension.
ConQuery - translate page — http://www.cusser.net/extensions/translatepage/
Dictionary Search
Context Highlight
FoxyTunes
Image Zoom
OpenBook
Sage
Bloglines Toolkit
Mozilla Archive Format
Scrollbar Anywhere

SessionSaver - If Firefox crashes, SessionSaver will reload your open tabs at the time of the crash. In addition, you can save your open tabs in SessionSaver kind of like a group bookmark. Also lists recently closed tabs.

Firefox Search Plug-ins

1. Yahoo!
2. Yahoo! Shopping
3. Amazon
4. Wikipedia

Themes
Rein I’m currently using the
default Firefox theme. If you are interested in changing the look of
your Firefox install, look here for a new theme.

Speed Enhancement Settings
Look at: http://windowssecrets.com/041202/
User.js
// This one makes a huge difference. Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

// Stop reusing active windows:
user_pref("advanced.system.supportDDEExec", false);

// disable target="_blank" (open in same window):
user_pref("browser.block.target_new_window", true);

// Change to normal Google search:
user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=");

// Put an end to <blink> tags!
user_pref("browser.blink_allowed", false);

// Enable pipelining:
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 100);

// Turn off Automatic Image Resizing:
user_pref("browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing", false);

// turn on timer-based reflow management
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);

// sets the allowed time between reflows in microseconds
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 100);

// set the number of reflows to do before waiting for the rest of the page to arrive
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 200);

UserChrome.css
UserChrome.css
//
UserChrome.css
(found in C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Phoenix\Profiles\default\wfkd6mnh.slt\chrome)
/*
* Edit this file and copy it as userChrome.css into your
* profile-directory/chrome/
*/

/*
* This file can be used to customize the look of Mozilla’s user interface
* You should consider using !important on rules which you want to
* override default settings.
*/

/*
* Do not remove the @namespace line — it’s required for correct functioning
*/
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* set default namespace to XUL */

/* Kill icons on normal bookmarks */


/*================================================
*   Main Window Edits
================================================/
window {
  font-size: 9pt !important;
  font-family: Verdana !important;
}

#sidebar {
  font-size: 9pt !important;
  font-family: Verdana !important;
}

/*============================================
*   Tab Edits
============================================/
/* change the font style on the tabs */
.tab-text {
    font-size: 9pt !important;
    font-family: Verdana !important;
}

/* make inactive tabs hardly visible :) */
tab:not([selected="true"]) {
    -moz-opacity: 0.5 !important;
}

/*
.tabbrowser-strip tab:not([selected="true"]) .tab-text {
    font-size: 14pt !important;
    font-weight: bold !important;
}
*/

/* hide the text of the inactive tabs */
/*
.tabbrowser-strip tab:not([selected="true"]) .tab-text {
display: none !important;
}
*/

/* never show "Open in New Window" when right clicking */
#context-openlink {

    display: none !important;
}

/* Don’t Display Icons in Bookmarks menu and add Blue to folders */
menu.bookmark-item > .menu-iconic-left {
  display: none;
}

menuitem.bookmark-item > .menu-iconic-left {
  display: none;
}
menu.bookmark-item {
  color: navy !important;
  font-weight: 900 !important;
}

/* Change Active Tab Color */
tab {background-color: white !important; color:black !important}
tab[selected="false"] {color: black; background-color: white !important;}
tab[selected="true"] {color: blue; background-color: yellow !important;}