Internet Explorer in Firefox

Firefox does not support some languages to render. Right now it is possible to view your own regional language sites, in Internet Explorer, as it supports more number of languages. So to view non supporting sites, you will have to open a separate instance of an IE.

IE Tab plug-in allows to open IE inside Firefox, this is a cool extension of Firefox and very useful if you don’t want to see IE on your taskbar.

Steps to install and configure:

• Install IE Tab from here, after installation you need to restart the Firefox to take the effect of this extension.

• After restarting go to view->Toolbars and select Customize… option

• From Customize Toolbar pop up window drag and drop IE Tab icon over to tool bar.

• Click on IE Tab icon to view a page in IE, you can also do the same by right clicking on tab and selecting Switch rendering engine from the context menu.

Finally you can configure the IE Tab from Tools->Add-ons, under Extension choose options button of IE Tab.

Minimized tabs in Firefox

You would have been very much happy with the tabbed feature of the Firefox. But when you open more no of pages, you need to scroll across the tabs for invisible ones, which is the least one you probably want to do. Here is a tool Feviconize Tab, allow you to minimize the tabs, so that you can get more room to keep more tabs.

How to install and use it?

• Install Feviconize Tab from add-ons of Mozilla’s site.

• After installing the plug-in go to Tools select Add-ons option.

• From Add-Ons popup window, select Extensions option

• Click on Options button of Feviconize Tab to configure it.

• Chose your desire option to minimize tab from Quick Feviconize options ( preferably Double click). This is more like a short cut key to minimize tab.

• Click OK, close all pop up windows. Try minimizing tabs with selected short cut option.

You can also minimize the tabs from context menu, to do this, right clicking on the tab, and select Feviconize Tab option

Firefox Themes

Have you got bored with the default theme of the Firefox? Yes, and then look at the Themes feature, which is one the major attraction of the Firefox.

Go to the Tools and select Add-ons. Choose the Themes option from pop up window. On bottom right corner click on Get Themes link which will takes to Mozilla’s sites there you can download wide range of themes of your choice.

Samples...

Some useful links to download

Smashingmagazine

takebacktheweb

Customize

Short cut keys to work with Tabs in Firefox

The most famous feature of Firefox is Tabbed Browsing. This is a feature which allows users to open up a link as a new tab within their current Firefox window, rather than opening up an entirely new Firefox window. The benefits of this are faster loadup times for pages opened as tabs, less overall system memory usage, less buttons for open instances of Firefox on the Windows Taskbar, the ability to load pages in the background while reading the current page, and the convenience of being able to switch back and forth between pages just by clicking their tab.

Opening, Closing and Switching Tabs: Whether you use tabbed browsing or not is up to you, however it is generally recommended that you do, and there are some basic things you can do to make better use of this feature:

· To open any link as a new tab you simply need to click your center mouse button while pointing to a link. If you don't have a center mouse button, hold down the CTRL key then left-click on a link to get the same result.

· If you want to force a link to open as a new tab in the foreground, you need to hold down the SHIFT key and use the relevant methods above.

· If you want to close a tab quickly, simply click the center mouse button on the tab, or press CTRL + W or CTRL + F4 while viewing the tab. Or you can just click on the red 'X' on the tab itself.

· To switch quickly between open tabs, press CTRL + Tab Key to go to the next open tab, or SHIFT + CTRL + TAB Key to go to the previous open tab.

· If you want to go to a specific open tab, press CTRL and a number key corresponding to that tabs position from the left. For example, pressing CTRL + 2 will jump to the second open tab.

· You can rearrange the order of open tabs by dragging and dropping them.

In fact, if you click your middle mouse button on a range of things in Firefox, they will typically open up in a new tab (substitute CTRL for middle-click). For example, click the middle button on the back or forward arrows at the top of Firefox, and the previous or next pages you've visited will open in a new tab. Middle-click on an item in your history or your Bookmarks and it will open in a new tab. Middle-click on the Homepage toolbar icon and your home page will open in a new tab.

Streamlined Firefox Layout: More viewing space

You are looking for more space on your browser; here are the tips to do that in Firefox. You can do this by streamline all the short cut buttons on to a single tool bar and get more vertical space for viewing.

Before:

After:

In View menu select Toolbars and then select Customize…

From the Customize Toolbar window drag the items over to the fist tool bar. You can also drag and drop the items existed on Navigation Toolbar.

Finally, go to the View menu, and under Toolbars uncheck both Navigation Toolbar and Bookmark Toolbars.

You can always restore to original settings by clicking on Restore Default Set button in Customize Toolbar window.

Uninstalling Firefox completely

Sometimes you may face strange behavior and annoying problems after you upgrade to higher versions of Firefox. One of the best solutions is uninstall everything and reinstalling entire package. However uninstalling Firefox does not remove your favorites, profiles, bookmarks, settings and any tweaks. If you want to completely remove all traces of Firefox from your system follow these steps:

I request you to take backups of your book marks, favorites or setting if needed before uninstalling everything.

1. Go to Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs in XP or Control Panel>Programs & Features in Vista, and if a 'Mozilla Firefox' entry (or similar) exists, select it and click Change/Remove and uninstall it. Reboot if required.

2. Go to your Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla directory in XP, or the \Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Mozilla and \Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\ directories in Vista and delete the entire \Firefox subdirectory and all of its contents. Note that this will delete all of your bookmarks and saved settings, so if you want to backup any or all of your current Profile, see the Customizing Firefox section on page 7 of this guide first. Typically all that I would recommend you backup and restore is your bookmarks.html file.

3. Go to your \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\ directory and delete it and all of its contents.

4. Use the Registry Editor (Start>Run>Regedit) and delete the following keys - that is, right click on their name in the left pane of Registry Editor and select Delete:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\firefox.exe]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MozillaPlugins]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\mozilla.org]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins]

How to import IE and Opera settings to Mozilla Firefox

Typically you will get an option to import all IE and Opera setting at the time of you installing Firefox, by any chance if you said no to import option, you can still import all setting from IE and Opera web browser at any time.

Import option will let you import the Internet Options, Cookies, Browsing History, Saved Form History, Saved Passwords and Favorites.

To import go to File menu and click on Import… option.

Choose the browser, click on Next button

Choose items, Clicking on Next will import selected items