Everybody’s favorite open-source browser, Firefox, is great right out of the box. And by adding some of the awesome extensions available out there, the browser just gets better and better.
But look under the hood, and there are a bunch of hidden (and some not-so-secret) tips and tricks available that will crank Firefox up and pimp your browser. Make it faster, cooler, more efficient. Get to be a Jedi master with the following cool Firefox tricks.
1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.
2) Smart keywords. If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.
3) Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):
Spacebar (page down)
Shift-Spacebar (page up)
Ctrl+F (find)
Alt-N (find next)
Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
Ctrl+T (new tab)
Ctrl+K (go to search box)
Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
Ctrl+= (increase text size)
Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
Ctrl-W (close tab)
F5 (reload)
Alt-Home (go to home page)
4) Auto-complete. This is another keyboard shortcut, but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there - like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.
5) Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:
Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)
6) Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:
Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
Shift-scroll down (previous page)
Shift-scroll up (next page)
Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
Middle click on a tab (closes tab)
7) Delete items from address bar history. Firefox’s ability to automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just don’t want those URLs to show up (I won’t ask why). Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited with those letters in them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.
User chrome. If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit complicated to get into here, but check out this tutorial.
9) Create a user.js file. Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder (see this to find out where the profile folder is) and see this example user.js file that you can modify. Created by techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of the things you can do in its comments.
10) about:config. The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s address bar. See Mozillazine’s about:config tips and screenshots.11) Add a keyword for a bookmark. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.
12) Speed up Firefox. If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:
Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
13) Limit RAM usage. If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.
14) Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized. This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it’s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.
15) Move or remove the close tab button. Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:
0: Display a close button on the active tab only
1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
2:Don’t display any close buttons
3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)
Got any favorite Firefox tips or tricks of your own? Let us know in the comments.
But look under the hood, and there are a bunch of hidden (and some not-so-secret) tips and tricks available that will crank Firefox up and pimp your browser. Make it faster, cooler, more efficient. Get to be a Jedi master with the following cool Firefox tricks.
1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.
2) Smart keywords. If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.
3) Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):
Spacebar (page down)
Shift-Spacebar (page up)
Ctrl+F (find)
Alt-N (find next)
Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
Ctrl+T (new tab)
Ctrl+K (go to search box)
Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
Ctrl+= (increase text size)
Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
Ctrl-W (close tab)
F5 (reload)
Alt-Home (go to home page)
4) Auto-complete. This is another keyboard shortcut, but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there - like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.
5) Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:
Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)
6) Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:
Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
Shift-scroll down (previous page)
Shift-scroll up (next page)
Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
Middle click on a tab (closes tab)
7) Delete items from address bar history. Firefox’s ability to automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just don’t want those URLs to show up (I won’t ask why). Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited with those letters in them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.
User chrome. If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit complicated to get into here, but check out this tutorial.
9) Create a user.js file. Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder (see this to find out where the profile folder is) and see this example user.js file that you can modify. Created by techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of the things you can do in its comments.
10) about:config. The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s address bar. See Mozillazine’s about:config tips and screenshots.11) Add a keyword for a bookmark. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.
12) Speed up Firefox. If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:
Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
13) Limit RAM usage. If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.
14) Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized. This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it’s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.
15) Move or remove the close tab button. Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:
0: Display a close button on the active tab only
1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
2:Don’t display any close buttons
3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)
Got any favorite Firefox tips or tricks of your own? Let us know in the comments.
Another attempt to make a dent in Suharto’s stash
THE tenth anniversary this month of t
he onset of Asia’s financial crisis is a good moment to pay tribute to one of its central figures: Suharto, Indonesia’s president for three decades until 1998. Indonesia’s government has this week filed a civil lawsuit, seeking to recover $441m allegedly misappropriated from government institutions by Mr Suharto and a foundation he set up, and claiming an additional $1.1 billion in damages.
he onset of Asia’s financial crisis is a good moment to pay tribute to one of its central figures: Suharto, Indonesia’s president for three decades until 1998. Indonesia’s government has this week filed a civil lawsuit, seeking to recover $441m allegedly misappropriated from government institutions by Mr Suharto and a foundation he set up, and claiming an additional $1.1 billion in damages.If Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, is to be believed, this is just a drop in an oceanic illicit fortune. In 2004 the group estimated that he and his family had salted away up to $35 billion, nearly 4% of the country’s GDP. This seems literally incredible. Even if it were true, Mr Suharto, who by all accounts lives comfortably enough in Jakarta these days, is certainly not enjoying more than a tiny portion of his wealth.
But even if the family holds a fraction of the alleged wealth, it would be one of the biggest dynastic swindles any country has ever suffered. The family’s business interests covered the entire economy. It sometimes seemed there was no project too grandiose, nor any rent too small to be shunned by a member of the family. Mr Suharto’s late wife, Tien, was, inevitably, known as “Madame Tien per cent”.
Some businessmen say this probably sold her and her children short. As in many developing countries, the quickest and most bountiful way to riches for those close to power was through commissions from foreign firms winning huge contracts, whose prices were then inflated to ensure the firms did not lose money. Since the projects would usually be financed by commercial loans and government-backed export credits, the burden of repaying the bribes would fall on the national debt.
A family manIn this, Indonesia was no different from many other corrupt yet creditworthy countries of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Nigeria, which was also enjoying an oil bonanza. The Suhartos’ great innovation was to create a family monopoly that preserved competition. Three or four powerful international companies would fight tooth-and-nail for a huge contract. Each one would employ a local partner who, in turn, was tied to one of the Suharto children. The family business never lost.
What seems incredible now is the respect this outrageous system was accorded at the time. In 1995 a senior World Bank official conceded that if one of Mr Suharto’s daughters won, say, a toll-road contract, it probably cost 20% more than it should, “but at least the road got built”. Unlike, say, Nigeria, Indonesia had devised what looked like an efficient form of corruption.
Its 25 years of healthy economic growth, relative fiscal discipline, impressive population control and poverty-reduction results made it a poster-boy for the development banks. Even The Economist declared it in mid-1997 well-placed to withstand the regional financial shock.
At least, however, we did not commend Mr Suharto’s dictatorial ways. Yet even they had fans. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia were more vocal spokesmen for “Asian values”—the notion, broadly speaking, that a bit of discipline never did an emerging economy any harm. But Mr Suharto was the great exemplar, turning a teeming, fractious nation into an economic powerhouse.
It turned out, however, to be a house of cards. No country suffered more from the financial crisis. The Indonesian rupiah crashed and the economy contracted. It took until 2004 for GDP to regain its 1997 levels. Mr Suharto was swept from power in the maelstrom. He has never been convicted of any crime, though one of his sons served almost five years in prison for ordering the murder of a judge. Criminal charges against Mr Suharto himself were dropped when he was declared too ill to stand trial in 2000. (Prosecutors have tried again, but have been repeatedly rebuffed by doctors.) Hence the civil case. Only the sunniest of optimists could believe it might end in even token restoration of part of the booty the Suhartos are accused of amassing.
Has Iran won?
The ayatollahs have wriggled off the nuclear hook, but there is a way to put them on again
WHO would have thought that a friendless theocracy with a Holocaust-denying president, which hangs teenagers in public and stones women to death, could run diplomatic circles around America and its European allies? But Iran is doing just that. And it is doing so largely because of an extraordinary own goal by America's spies, the team behind the duff intelligence that brought you the Iraq war.
It doesn't take a fevered brain to assume that if Iran's ayatollahs get their hands on the bomb, the world could be in for some nasty surprises. Iran's claim that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful is widely disbelieved. That is why Russia and China joined America, Britain, France and Germany at the UN Security Council to try to stop Iran enriching uranium. Until two months ago they seemed ready to support a third and tougher sanctions resolution against Iran. But then America's spies spoke out, and since then five painstaking years of diplomacy have abruptly unravelled (see article).
The intelligence debacle over Iraq has made spies anxious about how their findings are used. That may be why they and the White House felt it right to admit, in a National Intelligence Estimate in December, that they now think Iran halted clandestine work on nuclear warheads five years ago. As it happens, this belief is not yet shared by Israel or some of America's European allies, who see the same data. But no matter: the headline was enough to pull the rug from under the diplomacy. In Berlin last month, the Russians and Chinese made it clear that if there is a third resolution, it will be a mild slap on the wrist, not another turn of the economic screw.
At the same time, Iran is finding an ally in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Its director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, is a Nobel peace-prize winner who is crusading to confound those he calls “the crazies” in Washington by helping Iran to set its nuclear house in order, receive a clean bill of health and so avert the possibility of another disastrous war.
Honest spies, a peace-loving nuclear watchdog. What can be wrong with that? Nothing: unless the honesty of the spies is deliberately misconstrued and the watchdog fails to do its actual job of sniffing out the details of Iran's nuclear activities.
Thanks for letting us off
Beaming like cats at the cream, a posse of Iranians went to January's World Economic Forum in Davos claiming a double vindication. Had not America itself now said that Iran had no weapons programme? Was not Iran about to give the IAEA the answers it needed to “close” its file? In circumstances like these, purred Iran's foreign minister, there was no case for new sanctions, not even the light slap Russia and China prefer.
Yet Iran's argument is a travesty. Although the National Intelligence Estimate does say that Iran probably stopped work on a nuclear warhead in 2003, it also says that Iran was indeed doing such work until then, and nobody knows how far it got. The UN sanctions are anyway aimed not at any warhead Iran may or may not be building in secret, but at what it is doing in full daylight, in defiance of UN resolutions, to enrich uranium and produce plutonium. We need this for electricity, says Iran. But it could fuel a bomb. And once a country can produce such fuel, putting it in a warhead is relatively easy.
Some countries, it is true, are allowed to enrich uranium without any fuss. The reason for depriving Iran of what it calls this “right” is a history of deception that led the IAEA to declare it out of compliance with its nuclear safeguards. So it is essential that Mr ElBaradei's desire to end this confrontation does not now tempt him to gloss over the many unanswered questions. With a lame duck in the White House and sanctions unravelling, Iran really would be home free then.
Would it be so tragic if a tricky Iran were to slip the net of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? North Korea quit the treaty and carried out a bomb test in 2006. Israel never joined, saying coyly only that it won't be the first to “introduce” nuclear weapons into the region—but won't be the second either. India and Pakistan, two other outsiders, have already strutted their stuff. Why should one more gate-crasher spoil the party?
One obvious danger is that a nuclear-armed Iran, or one suspected of being able to weaponise at will, could set off a chain reaction that turns Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, even Turkey rapidly nuclear too. America and the Soviet Union, with mostly only their own cold war to worry about, had plenty of brushes with catastrophe. Multiplying Middle Eastern nuclear rivalries would drive up exponentially the risk that someone could miscalculate—with dreadful consequences.
Time for Plan B
For some this threat alone justifies hitting Iran's nuclear sites before it can build the bomb they fear it is after. But if Iran is bent on having a bomb, deterrence is better. Mr Bush has already said that America will keep Israel from harm. By extending its security umbrella to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, America might stifle further rivalry before the region goes critical.
Much better, however, to avoid a nuclear Iran altogether. Mr Bush says diplomacy can still do this. It is hard to see how. But he does have one card up his sleeve: the offer of a grand bargain to address the gamut of differences between America and Iran, from the future of Iraq to the Middle East peace process. So far Iran's leaders have brushed aside America's offer of talks “anytime, anywhere” and about “anything” by pointing to the condition attached: that Iran first suspend its uranium enrichment. Strangely enough, the best way to put pressure on Iran's rulers now is for America to drop that rider.
There would need to be a time limit or Iran could simply enrich on regardless, with what looked like the world's blessing. Similarly Russia and China would need to agree to much tougher sanctions to help concentrate minds. Iran's leaders may still say no. But the ayatollahs would have to explain to ordinary Iranians why they should pay such a high price in prosperity forgone for making a fetish out of not talking, and out of technologies that aren't even needed to keep the lights on. If Iran's leaders cannot be persuaded any other way, perhaps they can be embarrassed out of their bomb plans.
HE WAS a despot, a cold-war monster cosseted by the West because his most plausible opponents were communists. Behind his pudgily smooth, benign-looking face lay ruthless cruelty. The slaughter as he consolidated his power in the mid-1960s cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Tens of thousands were locked up for years without charge. After the invasion of East Timor in 1975, the Indonesian occupation led to the deaths of perhaps one-third of its people. Meanwhile, he was robbing his own country blind. Perhaps no leader's family anywhere has ever amassed so much ill-gotten loot. When he was forced to quit at last, the economy was in a tailspin and the stability he had boasted of creating proved an illusion.
So it seems all wrong that after Suharto's death this week, Indonesia declared seven days of national mourning. Television stations (some controlled by his kin) showed laudatory documentaries. The streets were lined with crowds for miles on the way to the hillside family mausoleum he had built, in emulation of the Javanese kings whose successor he seemed to think himself. Other statesmen from the region trooped to his funeral to pay their respects: Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad and even Timor-Leste's prime minister, Xanana Gusmao.
In Mr Gusmao, from a tiny young nation needing good relations with its neighbour and former coloniser, such magnanimity might be wise. Mr Lee and Dr Mahathir also had reason to honour Mr Suharto, who ended his predecessor's “confrontation” with Malaysia, nurtured regional unity and, like them, shrugged at the West's preaching about human rights. Yet for Indonesians themselves to push the boat out so far for the old kleptocrat suggests a failure to come to terms with the scale of his crimes. Yes, their country made huge economic strides under his 32-year rule, thanks to his delegation of much policymaking to competent technocrats, and superficial political calm prevailed. But at a very high cost.
In Mr Gusmao, from a tiny young nation needing good relations with its neighbour and former coloniser, such magnanimity might be wise. Mr Lee and Dr Mahathir also had reason to honour Mr Suharto, who ended his predecessor's “confrontation” with Malaysia, nurtured regional unity and, like them, shrugged at the West's preaching about human rights. Yet for Indonesians themselves to push the boat out so far for the old kleptocrat suggests a failure to come to terms with the scale of his crimes. Yes, their country made huge economic strides under his 32-year rule, thanks to his delegation of much policymaking to competent technocrats, and superficial political calm prevailed. But at a very high cost.
The government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono—himself a Suharto-era former general—has been a success in many ways. But it has not fostered a culture of accountability. In 2006, when Mr Suharto seemed to be on his deathbed, it dropped criminal proceedings against him. It then instigated a civil prosecution. But neither Mr Suharto nor any of his family has faced trial for corruption (though his son, Tommy, was jailed on a murder charge). Nor has there been a determined attempt to bring to justice those army officers who oversaw atrocities in East Timor and Irian Jaya (now known as Papua) after Mr Suharto fell, let alone those who committed them while he was still in power.
A different country
Yet, if the bad that Suharto did seems to have been buried with him, this week has also shown how far Indonesia has moved on. It is not in thrall to the former dictator's memory. A dozen years ago the death of his greedy wife, Tien (known, inevitably as “Madame Tien per cent”), provoked an outpouring of real or synthetic national grief. This week even Suharto-family television channels were soon back to normal programming. Newspapers vigorously debated his legacy.
Some may hanker for the old certainties of his rule, but not at the expense of their new freedoms. To make sure those freedoms endure, Indonesia needs to face up to the past, and to make a proper accounting for the murky atrocities and untold thievery of Mr Suharto's reign. The rosy nostalgic glow bathing his obsequies is no substitute for true reconciliation. As elsewhere, that needs to be built on historical truth, in which no one in power seemed much interested this week.
