June 13, 2013

A Firefox Guide: Everything you need to know about your fox


1. Which Firefox should I get?

There are a number of Firefox forks other than the ones shown here, but these are probably the most popular.

The most stable, tried, tested, used by millions


Very stable with the latest features


"The newest innovations in an experimental environment"


Nightly (pre-alpha)
"These builds are for testing purposes only"


Custom-built and optimized for Windows operating systems


High performance browser specifically for Windows 64-bit systems to enhance speed


2. Fixing Firefox

    Disable and/or delete useless plugins:
    Disable: Firefox > Add-ons > Plugins > Disable
    Delete: Right-click plugin > Show More > "File" (find and delete)


    How to restart Firefox in Safe Mode (addons disabled, default theme, default toolbar settings):
    Firefox > Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled

    How to reset Firefox to its default state:
    Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information > Reset Firefox

    Create a new profile:
    Runfirefox.exe -p
    Terminalfirefox -p

3. about:pages

about: Displays your useragent string
about:about Displays all of the about pages
about:buildconfig Displays configure args
about:cache Lists cache entries
about:compartments Shows JS mem
about:config Displays a settings interface
about:crashes Displays all Firefox crashes
about:healthreport Start up times
about:home Displays the home page
about:memory Shows memory
about:permissions Edit site permissions
about:privatebrowsing Private browsing mode
about:support  Prints all add-ons
about:telemetry Performance and usage
about:mozilla Easter egg
about:robots Easter gg

4. Firefox command line (shift+F2)

    Save a PNG image of the entire web page:
    screenshot --fullpage

    Save a PNG image of the visible window only:
    screenshot

    Restart the browser:
    restart

    Show all of the available commands: 
    help

5. userChrome.css

    /* No Firefox Button */
    #appmenu-button{display:none !important;}

    /* No load progress indicator */
    .tab-throbber{display:none !important;}

    /* No horizontal scrollbar */
    #content browser{margin-right:-14px !important;
    overflow-y:scroll; overflow-x:hidden;}

    /* No site favicon */
    .tab-icon-image{display:none !important;}

    /* No "X" button to close tab */
    .tab-close-button{display:none !important;}

    /* No auto-complete arrow on location bar */
    .autocomplete-history-dropmarker{display: none !important;}

    /* To make your own userChrome.css tweaks, find elements using the DOM Inspector on "chrome://browser/content/browser.xul" */

    6. about:config tweaks

      Turn off the new tab page, and makes it about:blank:
      browser.newtab.url => about:blank

      Turn off Geolocation: 
      geo.enabled => false

      Turn off file virus-scan after download:
      browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone => false

      Override the useragent to most common useragent (not needed with Blender/UA Switcher):
      New > string: general.useragent.override =>
      Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0


      Force installation of non-updated add-ons:
      New > boolean: extensions.checkCompatibility.[version #] => false

      Disable prefetching (preloading of pages), which lowers RAM usage:
      network.prefetch-next => false 

      Override location bar search (pick only one):
      keyword.url => "https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q="
      keyword.url => "https://startpage.com/do/search?q="


      Load plugins when you click them (instead of automatically):
      plugins.click_to_play => true

      Enable HTTP pipelineing regularly, on SSL pages, and on proxies, respectively:
      network.http.pipelining => true
      network.http.pipelining.ssl => true
      network.http.proxy.pipelining => true


      Increase the amount of connections/requests Firefox will make:
      network.http.pipelining.maxrequests => 64
      network.http.max-connections => 512
      network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server => 32

      Speed up the security delay when installing add-ons:
      security.dialog_enable_delay => 500

      Disable tab animations:
      browser.tabs.animate => false

      Put cache on RAM:
      browser.cache.memory.enable => true
      browser.cache.memory.max_entry_size => -1
      browser.cache.disk.enable => false
      browser.cache.disk.parent_directory => /tmp/firefox 


      Reduce page loading delay:
      New > integer: nglayout.initialpaint.delay => 0
      New > boolean: content.interrupt.parsing => true
      New > boolean: content.notify.ontimer => true
      New > integer: content.max.tokenizing.time => 100000
      New > integer: content.notify.backoffcount => -1
      New > integer: content.notify.interval => 100000
      New > integer: content.switch.threshold => 2000000

      Remove submenu slide delay:
      New > integer: ui.submenuDelay => 0

      Set a "do-not-track" header to tell sites not to track browsing habits:
      privacy.donottrackheader.enabled => true

      Disable all Firefox storage settings:
      privacy.donottrackheader.enabled => true

      Disable Google Blacklists:
      browser.safebrowsing.enabled => false
      browser.safebrowsing.maleware.enabled => false

      Disable prefetching:
      network.prefetch-next => true

      Disable pings:
      browser.send_pings => false
      browser.send_pings.require_same_host => true


      Disable suggestions on searchbar:
      browser.search.suggest.enabled => false

      Disable keywords:
      keyword.enabled => false

      Disable certificates:
      browser.ssl_override_behavior => 2

      Disable DNS proxy bypass:
      network.proxy.socks_remote_dns => true

      Disable crash reporting:
      In application.ini in the Firefox folder,
      [Crash Reporter]Enabled=1 => [Crash Reporter]Enabled=0

May 28, 2013

Double click to close a tab in Chrome

Did you know you could close tabs in Chrome with the middle mouse button? It seems however some people don't like using the middle mouse button on a regular basis, not to mention it's not very precise.

Thankfully, there's an app for that! Chrome Toolbox will allow you to double click any tab to close it.


Download it here and press the "+ add to chrome" button.

After it is installed, you can go into Chrome Toolbox's options and tick "Double click on a tab to close it". Settings are saved automatically.

Chrome Toolbox also comes with a ton of other nifty features:

- Magnify any image on a web page, set it as your wallpaper, and view it in its original size
- Drag any video on a web page (Flash and HTML5 video) out of the page in its own stand--alone window, closing the window puts it back to the original page, both with play state reservation
- Customize tab behavior to close the tab on double click, to create a new tab on closing the last tab, and to always open a link in its own tab
- Save and restore unsubmitted form data, to avoid data loss caused by session expiration or a no-cache page setting
- One shortcut to launch all predefined URLs (from your Bookmark Manager folder)
- Learn, compare and contrast shortcuts in Chrome and other popular browsers.
- Put your favorite Chrome functionalities in the drop down menu, reorder them in the way you like
- Define Boss Key
- Mute all tabs

May 17, 2013

The best tip you will ever get



Your computer has problems? Here's the best tip I can give you:


REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER


If you don't know what that means, it means you should turn off your computer completely and then turn it on back again. This fixes most things.

Don't forget to save your work before you do this of course!

May 16, 2013

INTRO: Basic steps to secure your Windows computer


When a person gets infected, they will usually come up on support forums and related websites to ask "what is the best antivirus?", thinking the problem lies with their antivirus for not detecting the threat and successfully  protecting them. That is simply the wrong question to ask. Instead, you should ask yourself: how and why did I get infected in the first place?

In fact, it's important to realize that most computer infections coming from the internet are the result of the user's bad behaviors and limited knowledge on how to protect himself. Surfing on insecure websites, downloading unknown programs from illicit or obscure places, making use of cracks or keygens for programs and games, opening suspicious email attachments or simply not keeping one's operating system, web browser or antivirus up-to-date. These are some of the more common ways that could lead you to become infect with a virus/rootkit/dropper or any other kind of malicious software. Even if you do have a firewall and a basic antivirus you could still be at risk if you don't know what you are doing poses a threat to your machine.

First things first, some good advice:
  • Use only one (1) antivirus per computer. Installing more than one antivirus doesn't give you additional protection, on the contrary: it will significantly slow down your computer and conflicts between the two programs might occur. Keep it simple!
  • Don't install any web browser toolbars if you mustn't. They are often a way to spy on your web browsing habits or make money for their creators by inserting ads a bit everywhere. Not to mention they might slow down your old computer quite a bit.
In the next posts we will go a bit more in-depth how you should secure your Windows machine.

January 15, 2013

FIX: Steam slow loading times


Is Steam loading any page for you extremely slowly? The kind of slow where you could grow a beard while waiting? Then I've got the fix for you.



Steam's web browser is based on WebKit and it uses your computer Internet Settings to know if it should use a web proxy to connect to the outside. This can make loading pages take longer as it tries to resolve your proxy settings. Here's how to fix it though:

1) Go to Control Panel > Internet Options
2) In the Connections tab press the LAN settings button at the bottom.
3) In the window that opens up, untick (disable) Automatically detect settings.
4) Done!

Incidentally, this also makes Chrome be a bit more snappy. Google Support as a nice page for it as well here.