Linux Desktop Hacks

Configure Firefox Under the Covers #60

Chapter 8, Desktop Programs

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HACK

dialog box. Everything else it hides away. This has the benefit of making

Firefox simple to use for most users, whereas power users can jump under

the covers to tweak many different settings.

Entering Configuration Mode

Firefox has a number of different modes that give information about how

the browser is running. To see one such mode, type the following into the

address bar and press Enter:

about:plugins

This page gives you information about the plug-ins that are configured for

the browser. There are a number of modes, including

about:mozilla, about:

credits

, about:, and most interestingly, about:config, the main Mozilla con-

figuration interface.

When you enter

about:config, you see a number of lines listed down the

page. Each line refers to a different setting that can be configured. As an

example, one of my lines is:

browser.startup.homepage user set string http://www.jonobacon.org/

This setting simply sets the default home page that is loaded when the

browser is started. The status column refers to this as

user set, because this

option was configured in the dialog box in Firefox. The type column refers

to this setting as a

string because the setting browser.startup.homepage

requires text strings as a value. The final value column actually states the

desired page for the setting. You can see that most of these settings follow ...