Tweaks, shortcuts, and favorite apps
I'm a web programmer, and I spend most of my workdays either looking at stuff through a browser or writing stuff other people look at through one. Here are some things that have helped me to be more efficient and less annoyed with my computer.
If you don't use Firefox, use it! It's free, fast, and superior to Internet Explorer. Many things I'll mention here will work with Firefox 1.5 or even older versions, but you should upgrade.
Update: I now use the beta version of Firefox 3. It's faster, uses less memory, and has other improvements. I don't love everything about it, but it's my favorite browser so far.
Keyboard shortcuts
Knowing a few of these can really boost productivity, or just make a browser more fun to use. All keyboard shortcuts can be found here:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/keyboard
My favorites:
- Ctrl+T: Open a new tab
- Ctrl+W: Close the current tab
- Ctrl+D: Bookmark current page.
- Ctrl+J: Open the Downloads window.
- F7: Switches to/from Caret Browsing mode (allows you to select text and navigate a page using the cursor keys)
- Ctrl+F: Quick search on page
- /: "Find as you type" search for text
- -: "Find as you type" search for links
- F11: Full screen
- Ctrl+H: History
- Ctrl+B: Bookmarks
- Ctrl+K: Move cursor to the search bar
- Ctrl+L: Move cursor to the address bar
- F6: Toggles between each frame and the address bar. A good way to get the focus from the address bar to the page again.
- Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn: Move through tabs.
Bookmark Keyboard Shortcuts
Get the properties of any bookmark and enter some text in the "keyword" box. Now, entering that keyword in the Location Bar will jump to that bookmark. I use "gm" for gmail, "rt" for rottentomatoes, "g" for google, "./" for slashdot, etc. And you can use Ctrl+L to get to the location bar, so now I don't have to use my mouse to get to my top 10 most-visited sites
Fake tweak
If you read that you can put a "/Prefetch:1" in your Firefox shortcut to make FF load faster, don't you believe it--it simply doesn't work. You can use Firefox Preloader to speed up load times, but I find the initial delay pretty acceptable, and I usually just leave FF running.
about:config tweaks
In Firefox, typing "about:config" in the address bar will bring up an interface for tweaking many application options. These guides have a lot of about:config information:
Here are the ones I use:
- browser.chrome.toolbar_tips: Set to false to avoid those annoying and unnecessary tooltips on the browser's toolbars.
- Session Restore: Firefox now has as standard a feature you used to need an extension for--it can remember all the tabs you had open last time you quit Firefox. Open the Tools menu, choose Options, go to the Main area, and select "Show my windows and tabs from last time" from the "When Firefox starts" dropdown.
This is also controlled by browser.startup.page: set it to 3 to enable the Session Restore option.
- accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly: If set to true, this setting makes the 'Find as you type' feature search only for links on a page.
- browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete: When false, the "Download Completed" alert will not be shown.
- browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing: When false, you won't get that annoying resizing of images. In FF 2.0, you'll still get a little "zoom out" mouse cursor, making it easy to see large pictures.
- browser.urlbar.hideGoButton: If set to true, the useless green Go button next to the address bar will be removed.
- keyword.URL: This setting determines the address to use to run searches when you type a word in the Firefox Address Bar. By default it points to Google, but entering a word in the address bar just goes to the first site Google finds (i.e. the default is the I'm Feeling Lucky search method). Instead you might want to try setting it to "http://www.google.com/search?&q=" which is the general Google search string. Now any time you enter a word in the address bar and press Enter it will take you to a Google page showing you the results of the search for that term. Alternatively you can use a completely different search engine of your choice. To be honest, with the search engine bar only a Ctrl+K away, I don't see much point.
- keyword.enabled: By default entering a word (and not a URL) in the Firefox Address Bar is considered a Keyword, and Firefox will either look for a bookmark with the same defined keyword and launch it, or commence a search in Google to find the most likely site from that word. If you don't like this functionality you can disable it by setting this value to False. Bookmark Keywords will still function however. Disabling this setting is generally not recommended as Keywords are a unique and highly useful feature of Firefox.
- Layout.spellcheckDefault: This setting controls whether the built-in spell checker is disabled (0), enabled and checking multi-line text boxes (1 - the default), or enabled and checking all text boxes (2).
- network.http.max-connections: This setting determines how many simultaneous HTTP connections can be made by Firefox. The default is already 24, however for most people on moderate to fast Internet connections you can try raising this to a value like 48 or even 96 to allow for more open connections, thereby speeding up browsing multiple pages. The maximum is 65535, but remember that by raising this setting you are only raising the maximum possible number of connections. You aren't forcing Firefox to increase the actual number of connections it makes every time; if your system actually attempted to force 300 connections to open at once for example it would likely slow down to a crawl.
- network.http.max-connections-per-server: This setting determines how many simultaneous connections can be made to a single server. The default is 8, however you can increase the value for broadband connections to something like 16 or 32 to attempt to increase browsing speed. The maximum is 255, however note that raising this setting to a high value (in conjunction with a high value for the network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-.* settings below) may be construed as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack by some servers and your connection may be refused or even permanently banned. I strongly suggest that you keep this value sane. Simply increasing the number of connections to a server doesn't necessarily make things any faster, and indeed if every Firefox user does this then overall most sites will become slower.
- network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy: If you are connected to a proxy, this setting determines how many connections to keep alive at any time. The default is 4, however you can attempt a higher value such as 8 to improve browser speed. As mentioned in the settings above, raising this to a very high value will put additional stress on the proxy server and may ultimately result in slower browsing for everyone on the proxy and/or a refused connection.
- network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: If you are not connected to a proxy, this setting determines how many connections to a single server to keep alive at any time. The default is 2, however you can attempt a higher value such as 8 to improve browsing efficiency. The maximum possible is 255, and as mentioned in the settings above, raising this to a very high value will put stress on the particular websites you are connected to and will either result in a refused connection, or slower response times from the web page for every person trying to connect to it. Do not raise this value to one which is very high as it is inconsiderate and counter-productive if everyone does so.
- network.http.pipelining: Pipelining can increase browsing speeds, but not all servers support it, and it's possible that it might cause problems. I set it to true.
- network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: Set this to 8 to increase the max. number of requests used when pipelining is enabled. Default is 4.
- network.prefetch-next: This new feature allows a web site to predict where you're likely to go next, and Firefox loads that page up in the background. Interesting, but creepy idea. I set it to false.
Firefox Extensions
You can find these and many others at:
http://en-US.add-ons.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/extensions
- FireFTP: browser-based FTP client
- ImageZoom: what is sounds like
- ScrapBook: saves a copy of a web page to your local hard drive, so you can read offline. Fast and very easy to use.
- Web Developer Toolbar: Many handy functions of interest to those who program or design for the web.
- Console2: An improvement to the built-in Javascript & CSS console.
- Video Downloader: download streaming videos from YouTube, Google Video, and many other popular sites. You can use FLV Player to watch YouTube videos offline.
- Adblock: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/10/
- NoScript: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/
Other Programs
This is a great replacement for the Windows standard Alt-Tab task switching, and also has many other neat features, like right-clicking on a window's minimize button to minimize to the system tray. I also use the Hotkey combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H to minimize the current window to the tray. I can't stand having a cluttered taskbar, so I use this feature tons.
I used to use Yahoo's desktop search, but find the Copernic interface to be nicer, if slightly slower. Google's Desktop Search just makes me angry.
Google's Desktop Search is now my default search tool. I don't like the interface, and wish it had more fine-grained search options, but it gets the job done and is fast.
I use the pro version of this excellent, extensible, customizable chat client, but the free version is very nice, too. It's not open source, unfortunately.
By default, a barebones mp3 player. Highly extensible and customizable, with an active community. I use it in its default mode because I'm not interested anything other than speed and ease of use, but other people load it up with neat eye candy.
A free and excellent email client. I use it as a POP client for Gmail. I now use Gmail's web interface exclusively. Very slick.
A nifty program that allows you to mount .iso images as a CD or DVD drive.
I have free use of Microsoft Office at work, so I tend to use that, but OpenOffice is a very nice free replacement.
Seems pretty nice, but I don't remember often to use it. Faster than Word or OpenOffice, but maybe a little buggier.
(pronounced yoo-torrent or myoo-torrent, since that Greek letter is "mu")
Very nice BitTorrent client, and it's incredibly small.
A file search tool that works as a good replacement for Windows' built-in search, which since XP has been "broken"--it skips searching certain file types, such as .asp files. Agent Ransack can search based on regular expressions, too.
A GREAT free text editor. Not only a replacement for Notepad--I use it as my main programming development tool.
-Jeff Guevin
Last updated Jan. 29, 2008