Customise web fonts, create search shortcuts and access hidden settings
Hack Firefox using free extensions
Firefox supports far more – and far more inventive – extensions than Chrome or Internet Explorer (IE). This is largely due to its open-source design, which allows developers to access its source code.
We like Classic Theme Restorer (www.snipca.com/16194), which lets you restore favourite lost Firefox features, including the old Firefox button. ‘Theme Font & Size Changer’ (www.snipca.com/16195), lets you change web-page fonts to a more readable style – or less readable, if you prefer! You’ll find plenty more tweaking tools in Mozilla’s directory (https://addons.mozilla.org) – or go straight to www.snipca.com/16193 to see users’ favourites.
Incidentally, you don’t have to go through the menu icon (the three lines) to visit your secure ‘Add-ons’ page (where you manage your extensions); simply type about:addons into the address bar.
Add hidden toolbar buttons
If you’re a Firefox newcomer, you may not realise how much you can do from the main toolbar (Menu Bar). To see all the extra buttons you can add, click the menu icon, then Customise. This opens an ‘Additional Tools and Features’ page, where you’ll see more options such as Full Screen, New Private Window (for browsing anonymously, much like Chrome’s Incognito Mode) and Share This Page. Click and drag any item on to the Menu Bar to pin it there, and drag items from the toolbar to remove them.
To spruce up Firefox with an attractive theme, click the Themes dropdown menu at the bottom of the page. Hover over one to see a preview (such as Space Fantasy in our screenshot above) then click to add it.
Click the green Exit Customise button to save, or click Restore Defaults to undo all your changes.
Block Mozilla’s interruptions
Firefox just can’t stop improving – there’s been a new version almost every month for the past six months. To make sure you tell everyone about this, its latest version (37, www.snipca.com/16185) includes occasional pop-ups urging you to rate the browser and ‘like’ it on Facebook.
But you can opt out with a simple settings hack. Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. You’ll then be warned off going any further (‘Here be dragons!’) because the about:config page contains deep, important settings that Firefox doesn’t want you to touch. Untick ‘Show this warning next time’ and then click ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’. Scroll down to ‘browser.selfsupport.url’, right-click it and click Modify. Delete the contents of the ‘string value’ text field and type “” (open quote, close quote) instead, then click OK.
Search within sites using keywords
Firefox lets you use a website’s own search tool without having to open the site each time.
First visit the site in question (Amazon, for example), then right-click its search box and click ‘Add a Keyword for this Search’ (see screenshot below). Type a keyword (say, amazon) in the Keyword field, then click Save. Now type the keyword in your Firefox address bar, followed by your search term. For example, we typed amazon computeractive into the Firefox address bar, and it instantly opened a page of Amazon results – just as if we’d searched on Amazon itself.
Keywords can be anything you like, but they can’t contain any spaces or special characters. So Wikipedia could have the keyword ‘wiki’ and PC Pro (www.pcpro.co.uk) could have the keyword ‘pcpro’.
Hunt for Easter eggs
The geeky kind, we mean – those in-jokes hidden in websites and programs by their developers. Here are some Firefox favourites.
ROBOT
‘Add-ons’ isn’t the only page you can access by typing about: into the address bar. Type about:robots then press Enter and see who greets you.
TRY AGAIN
Click Try Again after going to ‘about:robots’. That’ll teach you. Oh, and look at the tab.
BOOK OF MOZILLA
Type about:mozilla in the address bar, press Enter and prepare to be baffled.
BOUNCING UNICORN
Open ‘Additional Tools and Features’ (see ‘Add hidden toolbar buttons’ tip above) and drag all optional items from the righthand pane to the left-hand pane, then click Exit Customise. Now we challenge you to find the bouncing unicorn.