Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation, and a large community of external contributors. Firefox, officially abbreviated as Fx or fx and popularly abbreviated FF, started as a fork of the Navigator browser component of the Mozilla Application Suite. Firefox has replaced the Mozilla Suite as the flagship product of the Mozilla project, under the direction of the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla's conditions for use of their trademarked names require that distro's using their products clear any patches with them first, but in Debians view this compromised their own strict security measures so rather than this they opted to change the branding of the products. Debian's fork of Firefox is Iceweasel.

Firefox is our choice of web-browser here at Organic Design, and this article lists the extensions and configurations we like to include with it.

Addons

• 1-click youtube downloader
• Download Helper - download videos from youtube and other online video content sites
• Firebug
• Image Block - useful for slow connections now that the prefs option has been removed
• Flash Control - changes flash objects (like youtube vids) into an play button instead of auto-load (there are others, but this is the only thing that works with Beth's OceanOfWisdom.org subtitles app)
• Privacy Badger - EFF's blocker extension
• Flash player (apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree)
• WebGL - go to about:config and set webgl.force-enabled, clear webgl.disabled is it's set

Disable page prefetching

Firefox downloads webpages from links it thinks you may click. This may make the experience seem faster but really it just bogs down Firefox and your netbook, and for SSD users is an important "feature" to disable to improve the drive's lifespan. Type about:config in the address bar, then set network.prefetch-next to false. The DNS cache times may be too short if your on a really slow connection too.

Language

Install the en_GB languages and if en_US keeps re-establishing itself as the default, you can forcefully remove the en_US* files from /usr/lib/xulrunner-*/dictionaries/.

Firebug tutorials

Note: Firefox Developer Edition is now used instead of the Firebug extension.

Firebug is a must-have extension for web-developers, here's a list of useful documentation and tutorials on the Firebug extension.

• Documentation
• Firebug tutorial
• introduction to Firebug
• An In-depth Look At The Future of Javascript Debugging With Firebug
• Firebug Internals
• 14 min Tutorial
• Joe Hewitt highlights
• Excellent overview
• Litfuel tutorials
• Debugging AJAX Application with Firebug
• CSS editing using Firebug

Developing custom addons

Addons in Firefox are written in JavaScript. Getting initially up and running writing your own addons is surprisingly easy, just start with the docs here and go through their guide to install the SDK and use the cfx utility to test your addon in a separate Firefox instance and then to package it up as an xpi for installation. The SDK is divided into high-level and low-level APIs where the former have stable interfaces and the latter are for more low-level control but their interfaces may undergo change.

See also

• What the future could hold for Firefox OS - competing with iOS and Android on their own turf isn't going to work
• Details on cert pinning flaw
• Entering the Quantum Era - How Firefox got fast again and where it’s going to get faster