Firefox 43: Disable check for "unverified" add-ons

This is a bit of a temporary fix because it won't work for Firefox 44, but for the time being you can simply change a setting in your config editor.

• Open up a new tab and go to "about:config"
• Paste in xpinstall.signatures.required and set it to false

Restart the browser so the disabled addons are re-enabled.

I'll update this post with methods to self-sign the addons once Open Live Writer is patched to work with Blogger's OAuth2 sign-in API.

Source 

• Using "unverified" add-ons | Firefox Support Forum | Mozilla Support

Firefox 43: Disable the useless "Visit" in awesomebar autocomplete dropdown

This has got to be one of the most useless features in Firefox as of yet. Apart from disabling unsigned addons that is.



Fortunately, easy enough to disable.

• Open a new tab
• Type in "about:config"
• Paste "browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete" into the filter
• Double click to toggle it to false
• Done!

Source

• Any way to disable "Visit" in FF43b1 - Google Groups

Firefox 42: How to install unsigned addons on dev/nightly builds

While it's a major improvement on the more sluggy Firefox builds, it does however add a slight inconvenience for developers by restricting addon installations to signed ones. In my case, it was Firebug 3 alpha.

If you find yourself needing to install an unsigned addon, you can quickly do so by:

• Type "about:config" into your address bar
• Confirm OK "I'll be safe"
• Filter to find "xpinstall.signatures.required"
• Double click it to set the value to "false"

You shouldn't need to restart for this to take effect. Try installing the addon again, it should work this time.

Source

Fix for installing unsigned add-ons in Firefox Dev and Nightly

Firefox: Restore your FindBar F3 "find next" functionality after Firefox 25

Firefox has been making some great strides towards faster UI responses and usability, but one thing they changed has pissed me off to no end; making F3 "find next" exist on a per-tab basis.

What used to happen before Firefox 25

While looking for a Mini-ITX motherboard with USB3, the site I found didn't support filtering. That's ok, I'll just open up 20+ tabs in the background.

Type in "USB" to search the first tab. Found USB2, close tab. Next tab, press F3 to find again. Found USB2 again, close tab and so on keeping the tabs with USB3 open.

What happens now with FireFUX 25+

When you're searching for text on one tab, switching to the next tab will clear that search. There is no configuration option to make it persist. If you want to search for the same text on multiple tabs, you're gonna have to type it in multiple times.

Fuck that shit.

Now consider that scenario again. Open up 20+ tabs in the background. On the first tab, search for "USB". Saw USB2, close tab.

Now for the next tab, press F3 to find again BUT NOTHING HAPPENS. We're now forced to type in "USB" again. Found USB2 again, close tab and so on. It gets annoying very quickly after doing this more than 5 times.

Whatever idiot suggesting that should have been told NO. Or at least been told "make it an option" rather than outright nerfing the useful function.

Not only is this incredibly infuriating, the clearing of searches between tabs doesn't even work properly (as of Firefox 27). Sometimes your search persists, other times it blanks out, and on the odd occasion for some unknown reason it uses an even older search query.

There's hope

Every once in a while I scour the internet for a new fix to this problem. Today, thankfully, I found an extension that reverts the stupid decision made by Team Firefox. It's called GlobalFindBar by Noitidart and you can grab it without restarting Firefox.

With it you get a few extra configuration options you never got with the original FindBar; window scope (persist across different browser windows) and FindBar autofocus.

Thank you Paul O'Shannessy for ruining the internet for thousands of Firefox users, but a bigger thank you goes to Noitidart for fixing it. I can't advocate this enough. Although it's a small thing, but to me it's worth donating for.

It does the same thing the old search bar does, but better.

Firefox: Fix Firefox 20's stupid "show all downloads" dropdown

Dear Mozilla,
Thanks for taking the initiative to try something new.

 
Regarding your new behaviour for the downloads button

I appreciate that you guys are thinking outside the square, but please consider eating your own dog food before sending it out to the public.
But it's really annoying when I have to go through a few extra clicks to do things that used to be straight forward.
And a big thank you for making an option so I can toggle the old one back.
Yours sincerely, Twig.

Much like this guy overtaking, it works.
But at the same time it shouldn't be this hard.

So, how did I do it? It's actually not that hard!

• Go to a new tab and type in "about:config".
• Paste in "browser.download.useToolkitUI"(as of Firefox 26 this no longer works)
• Toggle the boolean value to "true"
• Click on the "Download" button and it should work immediately!

Firefox 26

This release broke support for the old download manager. As a result, you now have to download an addon in order to revive this feature.

Sources

• The Downloads window is a DOWNGRADE | Firefox Support
• Can the new downloads interface in v20.0 be reconfigured? The new interface is horrible!
• open “about:downloads” when clicking on “Show all downloads”?

Firefox: Remove "Microsoft DRM" from your plugins

Following up on the Adobe Acrobat post about removing unwanted plugins from Firefox I spotted another that I've left disabled for some time, "Microsoft DRM".

DRM is a plague causing more grief than good to consumers. It also serves as a method to restrict content to countries, even though it's the world-wide web and I have no interest in keeping this shit on my computer.

Normally I wouldn't post this up because at least this DRM plugin stayed disabled in Firefox, however I'm posting it because it's a bit trickier to get rid of.

If you delete "npdrmv2.dll" and "npwmsdrm.dll" from "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player", it'll automatically restore it from "C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache".

This is because it's been embedded deep into the Windows operating system and protected by "Windows File Protection".

• Copy the contents below into "removeDRM.bat" and save it onto your desktop.

del C:\Windows\System32\dllcache\npdrmv2.dll
del C:\Windows\System32\dllcache\npwmsdrm.dll
del "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\npdrmv2.dll"
del "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\npwmsdrm.dll"

• Restart your computer into safe mode.
• Double click "removeDRM.bat"
• Restart your computer back into normal mode

That should be it! You can quickly check to see if the files are back, but they shouldn't be.

Yeah that's right, get out and STAY out!

Source:

• WHY MICROSOFT DRM PLUGIN? REMOVE IT? mozillaZine Forums

Acrobat: Remove Acrobat plugin from Firefox

Alright Adobe, I'm sick of your shit. I don't want to put up with the laggy scrolling and occasional crashes which come with viewing PDFs in a browser window.

I don't mind reading PDFs outside of a browser, but can you quit fucking around with my browser preferences? When I disable your plugin, I expect it to stay disabled. I don't want it to be re-enabled the next fucking time I load up Acrobat/Firefox!

Why is it enabled? I've already clicked disable +20 fucking times!

So, clicking on "More" provided me with information on which DLL file it was using to provide me this "service"; nppdf32.dll

Searching my computer gave me:

• C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins
• C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Browser

Delete "nppdf32.dll" (and it's DEU/FRA bits) from both places. Hell, you can even just delete off the "Browser" folder in "Acrobat". There's no playing nice with you. I tried being nice and but you won't listen.

 
An alternative Twig's Tech Tip on how to deal with Adobe.

Firefox did the world a great favour by displaying PDF's natively, and even though it's not perfect I'm still grateful.

Firefox: New private browsing window without restarting browser

Wow, they've finally done it folks! In Firefox 20, making a private tab/window now works WITHOUT having to close your existing session like how Chrome's incognito window and Internet Explorer's InPrivate browsing.

Firefox 20's private browsing window

Chrome's porn mode

Seriously, it should have been like this from the start. Opera's still one notch above the two quarrelling rivals though as it supports private tabs which you can mix with your existing non-private tabs in the same window.

Opera, still the superior porn-mode browser.

Ready for some better private browsing? Enjoy!

 
Ready for some tasty meat!

Firefox: Automatically disable addon compatibility checks for good!

As you can see below, I got sick of adding new config extensions.checkCompatibility.* values each release. I've done it enough times since Firefox 3.6 and I'll be damned keep doing it.

Here comes a nifty little Firefox addon from Kris Maglione called "Disable Add-on Compatibility Checks".

Download it. Since addon developers can't keep up with the insane release cycle rates that Mozilla has adopted, I can't recommend it enough!

Like a passive user gone postal, I'm giving Firefox checks a smackdown!

Firefox: Firebug crashes when visiting sites Gawker sites

Man this one is annoying! Causes the browser to crash once you accidentally load the page. Makes you think twice about clicking on links from Google search results from Gizmodo or LifeHacker.

• First the browser will freeze up.
• If you wait long enough, it'll display a dialog

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

 

Script: resource://firebug/firebug-service.js:3881

 

[ Continue ] [ Stop script ]

To prevent the crashes, you'll have to be mindful, BEFORE you click on that link.

If you've got Firebug toolbar button enabled, click on "Clear activation list". As long as the scripts panel is disabled for those sites, it should work fine.

If you can't find the button:

• Right click on the toolbar
• Click Customize
• Find the Firebug icon
• Drag it somewhere you can click on it
• Remember to click Done!

I've created an issue in the bug tracker. Hopefully it'll get fixed soon!

Stay tuned!

Opera: Using Firefox style keyboard shortcuts in Opera

Getting sick of Firefox and their stupid rolling releases. Even more so with the speed and memory usage. Switching between browsers hasn't really been a problem for me when it comes to vanilla installs, except for Opera.
What the heck is that Ctrl+K shortcut? Most browsers seem to focus to the search or address controls when it's pressed. Opera on the other hand goes to some weird profiles thing.
To make it more like Firefox:

• Just open up your Opera browser and click/paste this link.
• When a dialog shows up asking if you want to use the keyboard layout, click "Yes".

• That's it! New settings already applied.

If you want to go all out and make it look and feel like Firefox, see the source link below.

*update 23/08/2012* Updated the download link for the settings file.

Source

• OperaFox 0.9, the new Munin

Disable auto playing video on SMH.com.au (and other Fairfax sites) without logging in

Fuck having to log in to disable autoplay of videos. That shit shouldn't be on unless you turn it on.

It's like being raped in the skull... but given a choice if you want to sign up or not.

This snippet removes the video altogether, but to be honest you don't miss it at all.

These instructions are for Firefox, but are probably similar for other browsers.

• Install the AdBlockPlus Firefox addon.
• Tools menu
• AdBlockPlus
• Filter Preferences

• Custom Filters
• Add filter
• Paste in "smh.com.au,theage.com.au,brisbanetimes.com.au,nationaltimes.com.au,watoday.com.au,domain.com.au##div.cT-imageMultimedia" without quotes
• Save and close. That's it!

 

Source

Where Greasemonkey scripts have failed, a big thanks goes to Tim Bennett for posting this tip!

• Disabling autoplaying videos and flyovers on smh.com.au and theage.com.au

Firefox 4: Disable switch-to-tab

The "switch to tab" feature is one of those improvements I believe didn't need to happen.

It has our best interests at heart but does a sloppy job of helping out.

What I sometimes do is load a dev page in one tab and keep it open. Then I make some changes and open a new tab to compare the changes.

The "switch to tab" feature makes it impossible for me to do this! A "feature" that prevents me from doing my job efficiently just has to go.

There is a bloody long discussion about this feature in the mozillazine forums but to be honest, it's too long and I didn't bother reading the whole thing.

Add-on solution

If you want to disable this feature permanently, there are 2 add-ons that will do it for you. I'm unaware of how they work or how compatible they are with Firefox 5. See addons below in the sources section.

Non-addon solution

Personally, I didn't know but you can simply hold "Shift" while hovering your mouse over the "switch to tab" item.

It'll hide the switch-to-tab items and display the URLs as normal.

 

Sources

• Firefox 4. How to disable 'Switch to tab'?
• Disable Tab Switching in Firefox 4
• Switch to Tab no more (add-on)
• switch-to-tab Blacklist (add-on)

Firefox 4: Disable auto update of addons

This was completely unknown to me until a certain much-used Firebug feature was removed.

HTML preview feature available again in Firebug 1.8

They had pushed out a security update but removed the HTML preview feature which I use quite often due to my work with AJAX/JSON.

Fuck, what was I to do?

First, prevention is always better than a cure. Stop the automatic updates!

• Open up your addons manager (Firefox > Add-ons)
• In the top right, click on the cog icon
• Untick "Update Add-ons Automatically"
• For safe measures, also click on "Reset All Add-ons to Update Manually"

Don't worry. Firefox still looks for updates and tells you when they're available. This way, you can read the change log before it's applied.

The second thing to do is Firebug specific. Go to the site and download 1.8beta4. It works fine so install it.

Firebug: Image corrupt or truncated: <unknown>

I saw this strange error flooding my Firebug console today when I left my dev page open for a while.

Strangely enough, it's because the favicon image was incorrectly linked.

Once the favicon is fixed, it shouldn't happen anymore.

[ Source ]

Ubuntu/LinuxMint: Update to Firefox 4

The software repository is a pretty nifty thing, but sucks when there's something new you really want and it isn't there.

To install it, go to the terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox

This should replace your current Firefox with the latest stable version.

[ Modified from Source so it doesn't upgrade EVERYTHING ]

Firefox: Just got a little bit more respect in my books :)

I couldn't help but smile when I saw this.

Download certain files from ZIP/RAR/etc archive files

If you're after a particular file from a big archive but don't want to download the whole thing, you can still download it as long as you get some special software.

I've found 2 ways of doing it but I don't see myself using it very often.

LoudScout

First is to use LoadScout. It is a standalone program that lets you paste in the URL of the archive and it'll display its contents.

Select the files you want to download and let it work its magic.

LoadScout 3.0 interface

The interface is a bit old but it still works well.
I didn't particularly like the sorting it used for the file list nor the way it displayed the download progress.

ArchView

My preferred choice was the Archview addon for Firefox.

It had a slightly nicer user interface, but I didn't like the way it automatically assumed I wanted to explore every archive I clicked on.

ArchView addon for Firefox

I tried ArchView in a separate installation of Firefox, so it didn't affect the way I normally download archive files.

If you've got a better method, I'm happy to try it out!

Firefox 4: Stop tabs from appearing as separate Win7 Aero peek previews

I like the Aero peek previews, but when programs abuse them it becomes really difficult to see what you're doing.

I really like Firefox 4 so far. It's fast, looks nice and it's all about the little things that make it better. Except when I hovered over the task item and saw ...

  
Oh the horror!

Now you're probably thinking... what's the big deal, right? Well each browser window will add more previews, and with my insane super-nerd 5x browser with 20x tabs in each browsing habits, that'll equate to a lot of previews.

Luckily, there's a nice little option to disable it (unlike Chromium).

Click on the Firefox button in the top left corner and select "Options".

Select "Show tab previews in the Windows taskbar".

That's it, you're done!

Now you're normal again.

Firefox: Bring back old session windows with TabMixPlus

After upgrading to a very gay Firefox v3.6, I was annoyed that it disabled many of my working extensions.

To add to my annoyance, it didn't restore my window sessions correctly. I had heaps of windows opened over a period of many weeks and many of the pages were ridiculously difficult to find.

Luckily, I had the TabMixPlus extension installed. It automatically saves your sessions. I know, I know, Firefox does this automatically already. But Firefox only saves one or two sessions.

TMP saves up to a week by default. So it doesn't really matter how many times you open and close your windows, you can be sure its protected in case of a stupid update.

If you need to restore the sessions:

• Close your Firefox session (and make sure nothing important is opened). You may want to copy these instructions somewhere first.
• Find your profile folder
• Go into "sessionbackups"
• Find the latest "tabmix_sessions-***.rdf" file and copy it
• Go up a folder, delete/move/rename "session.rdf"
• Paste the file into "sessionbackups"
• Rename it to "session.rdf"
• Your sessions should be restored the next time you open Firefox

[ Source ]