OK, first off, I love Firefox. It’s great; however, there are several things that just annoy the hell out of me. For example:
- No “X” on each tab
- Google Search not maintained per tab
- Default loading of links in background
- Crashes loose my tabs
However my friends, I have found the tweakers delight 
. Now, I know it’s been documented other places; however, I’m just going to put it here in the event that I blow something up and loose my stuff … it’s also for your benefit if you want to use it. Three of the above can be fixed in the magical “about:config” tab. The remaining has an extension to fix it. Ready to tweak? Great. Here comes the meat:
1. No “X” on each tab
This is an easy fix. Open about:config in a new tab or window and put extensions.tabprefs.showTabButton in the filter area. Right click the value and choose toggle. Restart Firefox to complete the changes.
2. Google Search not maintained per tab
Again, another easy fix, just not documented well. Fire up about:config again and this time find the value extensions.tabprefs.searchbar. Right click and toggle and you’re in business. Restart if the changes don’t take occur when you fire up a new tab.
3. Default loading of links in background
Don’t recognize this one? Well, here’s the skinny. Apparently the default behavior of Firefox is to start caching links on a page in the background … a trick from back in the dial up days to make browsing better. Since I live in the world of high speed … this is damned annoying to me. Again, fire up about:config and search for browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers. Change this value to 0 and restart Firefox to make the change.
4. Crashes loose my tabs
This one requires an extension to fix. Head on over to the SessionSaver and do the download and install thing. Restart and tweak the changes to your delight and now crashes and accidental tab closures are no longer a bother.
While you’re in about:config, you may want to poke around and see if there is anything else cool you can convince the beast to do 
. Let me know if you find anything spiffy.
Wyatt says:
Oh, I missed on thing. The 1 & 2 about:config preferences come from the Tabbrowser Preferences Extension. It had not occured to me that people might not have it installed.
3 April 2006, 9:11 amMike says:
My current extensions:
Flashblock – SWF doesn’t play until you click on it.
Adblock – wildcard-based ad filtering
ForecastFox – weather
AboutPlug – adds about:plugins to the help menu
JSView – lets you see the source of external JS
JavaScript Options – helps block popups and other annoyances
Nuke Anything Enhanced – remove any object from the page you’re viewing
QuickJava – quickly turn Java and JS on and off
Yeah, I really hate ads.
3 April 2006, 4:34 pmDavid says:
Continuing the trend:
Remove it Perminantly- Ever had a section of a website that you didn’t care to see again? Ad, whatever…RIP makes it go away
10 April 2006, 1:31 pmAdd Bookmark Here- The firefox add bookmark interface is lacking if you’ve got a well organized bookmark folder, use add bookmark here to dive down in your folder and add a bookmark to a folder inside your bookmarks
Bookmark Syncronizer- keep all your computers bookmarks syncronized
ForcastFox Enhanced- put’s the weather forcast in your status bar
Session Saver- saves your tabs in case of a crash
IETab- When was the last time you found a site that just didn’t render in firefox right (They do exists) when you find one right click and open in IETab. It’ll open ie in a tab in firefox. SWEET huh?
How’d I get here?- keeps a detailed persistant history. EVEN of your bookmarked pages.
Undo Close Tab- Ever closed a tab and wanted it back…undo close tab will take care of that for you.
Tab Preview- shows a preview of a tab in a popup window so you don’t have to guess about what tab you want when you have a million open.
Download Manager Tweek- makes the download manager useful
Bug Me Not- firefox interface for bugmenot.com(org? whatever)
Live HTTP Headers- Shows the actual http requests being made by a site. Useful for developers or hackers or if you just want to know all the info going to a site.
FlashBlock- blocks flash
PDF Download- I HATE clicking on a link and having to wait 10 minutes for adobe to start up. This pops a litle dialog up asking if you want to open it in your browser, save it, open it as html, or cancel the request. Brilliant really