More Firefox secrets

Last week's article looked at some of hidden features of the new Firefox browser. This week, we'll dig even deeper, with a look at extensions, customization and performance.

Extensions

One of the most interesting aspects of Firefox is its modularity. It supports Extensions, which are small programs that add new features to the browser. Extensions may end up being popular feature, because they will accelerate the rate of browser innovation.

There is already an active Extension community, and already hundreds of Firefox extensions. If you're interested in seeing what's available, check out the Firefox Extension Room. (See resources below). As of this writing there are 226 extensions available.

There are many useful extensions available. The Autofill extension highlights form fields that can automatically be filled in, and can auto complete the fields.

The Adblock extension is designed to filter out Web advertisements. Web surfers can use this to speed page loads, and web developers need to be aware the visitors may be using this. Adblock filters images by matching strings of text in image URLs. For example, it can be configured to block:

* All .gif images

* Anything served from doubleclick.net

* Items served from the directory "ad"

* Flash files

Web Developer adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. Options include converting form POSTs to GETs, hiding images, outlining block level elements, and disabling styles.

ForecastFox should appeal to weather fanatics. It's an extension that pulls in weather forecasts from the Weather Channel, and displays them in a browser toolbar.

Sage is an RSS news feed reader that integrates with Firefox. It reads the major news feed formats, including RSS .9x, 1.0 and 2.0, and Atom feeds, and displays them within the Web browser.

SpellBound is a spell checker extension. This can be helpful for users that enter in lots of copy via form fields, such as bloggers.

Other interesting extensions include: Bandwidth Tester, Blog This, FireFTP, FoxyTunes, StockTicker and the StumbleUpon Toolbar.

Customization Secrets

Firefox provides many ways to customize your browser. Firefox's appearance can be customized using Themes. There are over fifty Themes available.

Firefox can be further customized by editing a few text files: user.js, userChrome.css, and userContent.css. user.js is where various preference settings are stored. An easy way to edit this is by entering "about:config" in the URL field. This brings up a list of preference options. Double-click on settings to edit them.

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