The world and his wife have just installed/updated to Firefox 3. I love this browser and have been using it for a long time. However, I’ve made a few hacks I thought I’d share.

Open a tab and type into the url bar about:config and then click on the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button and you’re ready to roll. Each of the following hacks requires you to start typing in the preference name into the filter bar until you’ve narrowed it down enough to see it. Then you simply double click on it to alter its value.

These are hacks and some have potentially grave consequences, so use at your own risk.

Allowing Firefox to resize any popup windows

It’s sometimes annoying when you get a popup window that you want to resize but the web developer has set the javascript property resizable=no. Do the following to take back control.

dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable
default set to false, double click and set to true

Disabling right click disabled

Sometimes web developers use javascript to disable your right click. Not anymore!

dom.event.contextmenu.enabled
default true, double click and set to false

URL bar declutter rich suggestions

With Firefox 3 comes a rather (in my opinion) cluttered suggestion drop down while typing in a URL into the URL bar. I’ve turned my down so I only see the top 3 results excluding any from my bookmarks.

browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
default 12, I’ve set mine to 3

browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped
default false, set to true to exclude bookmarks

Enable ANY and ALL Add-ons

WARNING: This hack is probably the one you shouldn’t follow if you aren’t sure about which Add-ons you’ve installed.

By default Firefox checks for compatibility and update security of any extensions (Add-ons) you have installed. This can mean when you update Firefox that some Add-ons become disabled because they are deemed not compatible. However, in reality they may still work fine.

extensions.checkCompatibility
default true, toggle to false

extensions.checkUpdateSecurity
default true, toggle to false

Gulp, I can’t believe I’ve just published that hack! Don’t shoot the messenger :)

Restoring about:config to default values

If you make a mistake you might want to restore about:config to default values. Just below the ‘Show All’ button to the right hand top corner of the about:config screen there is a little icon, click on this and choose ‘Restore Defaults’.

EDIT: Just after posting I found this great article running over 6 pages with loads of about:config hacks.