This section covers all the main Firefox settings which can be accessed under the Firefox options menus. Before you do any customization or tweaking of Firefox, you need to understand what all of these settings do, and make sure that they are configured correctly for your machine.
The main Firefox settings can be found by going to the Tools menu and selecting Options. Each section of the Options window is covered in detail below, with my recommendations where relevant:
MainWhen Firefox starts: Whenever you launch Firefox, you can configure it to do one of the following: 'Show my home page' will load up the home page you set in the Home Page option (see below); 'Show a blank page' will simply start Firefox with a blank page; and the 'Show my windows and tabs from last time' option' will use Firefox 2.0's new Session Restore feature to restore all your open browser windows/tabs to exactly the way they were when you last closed Firefox. Select the option you prefer, but obviously the more pages Firefox has to load when starting up, the slower startup may be.
Home Page: If you've chosen the 'Show my home page' option under the When Firefox Starts setting (see above), you can set the home page which appears whenever you open up Firefox. You can either manually enter a web address in the Locations box; if you want to set the page you are currently viewing as the home page click the 'Use Current Page' button; or you can choose a page from your Bookmarks. You can set multiple homepages as well, each opening up in a separate tab when you launch Firefox or click the Home button - see the Customizing Firefox section.
Downloads: When Firefox begins downloading a file using its built-in download manager, and the 'Show the Downloads window when downloading a file' box is ticked, you will see the Download Manager window appear. This is useful as it shows you the progress of the file download, and gives you the option of cancelling the download at any time - hence I recommend you tick this option. I suggest you also tick the 'Close it when all downloads are finished' box so that when all downloads are completed the download manager box automatically disappears as well.
Save Files To: Every time you choose to download a file from the Internet with Firefox, the download manager will save it to a particular location. You can either select to have Firefox 'Ask me where to save files' for each file, or as I recommend, select a fixed download folder under the 'Save all files to this folder' box. Note: I don't recommend saving files to Desktop, as this can increase Memory usage in Windows.
System Defaults: Whenever you click on a hyperlink in an email, document or PDF file Windows uses your 'default browser' to view the web page. On Windows this is always Internet Explorer unless otherwise specified. The 'Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup' option if ticked allows Firefox to check whether it is the default browser each time it starts, and set itself as such if it is not. You should untick this option by default for fastest startup, and instead if you want Firefox to be the default browser, in Vista go to Control Panel>Default Programs>Set Default Programs and select 'Set this program as the default' for Firefox. In Windows XP go to your Windows Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs. On the left hand side of the 'Add or Remove Programs' box, click the 'Set Program Access and Defaults' icon. Select the Custom option, and under the 'Choose a default web browser' section select 'Mozilla Firefox'. However make sure you also tick the 'Enable access to this program' box next to Internet Explorer - you need to use Internet Explorer to run the Windows Update feature for example, not to mention that some other pages may not open and/or view correctly with Firefox. Click OK to close, and now Firefox is your default browser. To confirm this, click the 'Check Now' button.
Next, go into Internet Explorer, and under the Tools menu select 'Internet Options'. Under the Programs tab, at the very bottom of the box untick the 'Internet Explorer should check...' or 'Tell me if Internet Explorer is not...' box so that Internet Explorer doesn't nag about this or switch itself back to being the default browser each time you run it.
Tabs
New pages should be opened in: This setting essentially controls whether you use tabbed browsing or not. It comes into effect any time you launch a new web page, whether from within Firefox, or when clicking on a web link in an application, email or game. There are two simple options: selecting 'a new window' means that all new pages launched will open as a new window in a separate instance of Firefox; the 'a new tab' option means that if Firefox is already running, any new pages launched will open as a new tab within an existing instance of Firefox. I strongly recommend the 'a new tab' option to take advantage of tabbed browsing in Firefox, and prevent lots of instances of Firefox running.
Warn me when closing multiple tabs: If ticked, this option raises a warning when you try to close a Firefox window containing multiple open tabs. If you're the forgetful type, or if you're used to using Internet Explorer and perhaps expect each page to be open in a separate window, you might want to tick this. Otherwise for most people I suggest unticking it for quicker closing of Firefox windows.
Warn me when opening multiple tabs may slow down Firefox: If ticked, Firefox will warn you if you are likely to cause slowdowns or problems in Firefox by launching too many tabs at once. For the most part this depends on how much memory your system has available. I suggest ticking it to begin with, as you shouldn't be warned unless you're truly getting to the point where there are too many tabs open and Firefox is using too much memory to remain responsive. At this point obviously the best option would be to close Firefox altogether and re-open it with fewer tabs.
Always show the tab bar: If ticked, this option forces the tab bar at the top of the Firefox viewable browser area to remain shown, even if only one page is currently open. If more than one tab is open, this option has no impact - the tab bar will be displayed anyway. I suggest you untick this option, as there is not much use for a tab bar if only one page is being displayed.
When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately: This option determines whether pages launched in a new tab are shown in the foreground or the background. When you open a new tab from a link on the current page, if this option is unticked any new tabs opened will be in the background, not affecting the tab you're currently viewing. If ticked, your view will automatically switch to the most recently opened tab, effectively forcing all other tabs to the background.
Content
Block pop-up windows: This option should remain ticked, as it blocks 'popup' windows. Popups are separate browser windows which typically open up by themselves after you open a web page. They are most commonly used for advertising, and can vary in size and location on the screen, as well as frequency. However there are some sites which have legitimate popup windows (such as Internet Banking sites or Internet forums), and hence won't work correctly with this setting ticked. If you experience problems with such a site, click the 'Exceptions' button and enter the name of the site you want to allow popups for in the form www.sitename.com, then click the Allow button. Note that some spyware can also launch popups, regardless of the site you visit, so make sure you scan your system for such malicious software (See the PC Security chapter of my TweakGuides Tweaking Companion for full details). Note further that some popups are actually launched when you click on a particular field or area of a web page, and are specially designed to circumvent popping blocker. You can only block such popups if you disable Javascript for example, or install the NoScript extension.
Load images automatically: I recommend you tick this option, as it allows images to be loaded with web pages. Since most web pages contain images, unticking this option would see all the sites you visit devoid of any imagery. If however you want to choose to disable or allow images specifically on a website-by-website basis, you can click the Exceptions button and manually select websites which you can then permanently Block or Allow images from separately. Just remember that most graphical advertisements are actually Flash files or scripts, and not simple images, and hence this setting doesn't affect them. See the Extensions & Themes and Advanced Tweaking sections for details of how to block different types of ads.
Enable Javascript: Many sites use Javascript to produce certain effects, display certain information or allow a range of functionality. If this option is ticked, such sites will function correctly when viewed with Firefox. For that reason I recommend you leave this option ticked, as many websites will not display or function correctly without it. Click the Advanced button to see the types of Javascript tricks which you can disable. Here you can disable the more annoying effects. For example, I personally have all the functions listed unticked - this means all websites display correctly however they can't try any fancy tricks like resizing windows on me or hiding my toolbars. If you want to be more selective about which sites you allow to run Javascript on, see the Extensions & Themes section.
Enable Java: Java is a programming language which allows a range of functionality on websites. If this option is ticked, sites which require Java will usually prompt you to install the Java software if you don't already have it installed for Firefox. By default Firefox does not come with Java installed - this is because some people do not prefer their browsers to be Java-enabled. If you do want to install Java, then go here to download the latest version. Aside from downloading Java you have two other options: you can view the site with Internet Explorer which may already have MS Java Virtual Machine support built into it (see this site for why it may not and what you can do); or you can simply ignore the requirement for Java and view the site "as is". You don't have to enable or install Java if you don't want to, as it is not vital, but it will reduce or impair important functionality on certain sites.
Fonts & Colors: As part of customizing Firefox, you can select the fonts, colors and styles used for various elements of web pages displayed in Firefox. For example, if you want all Sans-serif text on web pages to be Arial, click the Advanced button then select that font under the 'Sans-serif' box. You can even set a minimum font size. You can also change the colors used for various text and links on web pages by clicking the Colors button.
The important thing to understand is that most web pages already specify their default fonts and the styles of various elements like hyperlinks, background and text colors, etc. Therefore changing the settings here will typically have no visible impact. If you want your selections here to override the default web page options you have to untick the relevant 'Allow pages to choose their own...' boxes in the Advanced and/or Colors sections. For example, in the Advanced section, alter the fonts and sizes as required, then untick the 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above' box, then click OK to close this screen, and OK again to close the options. Refresh the current web page you are viewing and it will have changed to reflect the font and color choices you have made. Clearly most web pages are designed around their own font and color settings and you shouldn't override them if you want to view them correctly. However with a bit of testing you may happen upon a better combination of fonts and colors which work with all websites to better suit your tastes and/or needs.
File Types: The first time you click on certain types of files you will be asked whether you want to save them to disk, or open them, and whether you want your choice to become the default behavior for each time you click on that particular file type. Your choices are stored in this section of the Options. Click the Manage button and for each file type you have clicked on so far, as well as for a range of default file types, you will see an associated default action. If you want to change any of these, highlight the file type, and you can click on the 'Change Action' button to change the action, and where applicable, you can also click the 'Remove Action' to remove non-default file type actions. To change file actions in the Change Actions dialog box, you can select the application which opens that file type by default, and whether Firefox should open the file or save it to your computer by default whenever you click on a link of that type in Firefox.
In particular I recommend that you change the behavior for .zip, .rar, .pdf and .doc file types to 'Save them to my computer' here, as these file types usually try to automatically open up within Firefox, and most commonly you would want to save these files to disk rather than having them open up within the browser. Adobe PDF file links for example can take quite a while to load up if Firefox attempts to open them within the browser instead of saving them to disk. Again, make sure to save them somewhere other than the Desktop for memory usage reasons.
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