26 June, 2008

How to update Firefox (again)

Rather sooner than I'd intended, I've had to 'upgrade' Firefox on my work PC to v.3 – a rendering issue I encountered in Safari 2 was reported as having reappeared in Fx3, so I needed to see and hence resolve it.

I'm not complaining about having to install Fx3, just not yet. Four key extensions are still incompatible, as is my favoured theme, so I've lost functionality in a GUI I don't particularly like – hardly an 'upgrade', and I won't be inflicting it on my home machine for now.

There was also the issue of finding time for customisation, so I'll make a quick note of what I did, for my own future reference as much as for others' possible interest.

Initially, I repeated the same tasks as when I upgraded from Fx1.5:

• Checked the 'Options' submenu. My selections had been carried over from Fx2.
• Checked 'about:config' to verify the customisation I'd applied according to Lifehacker's instructions had been carried across:
  • Decrease the minimum tab width, to minimise scrolling. Fifty pixels (half the default) is enough for me.
  • Restore the Fx1.5 style of tab closing: one 'close' button at the right of the entire tab bar rather than one button per tab.
  • Prevent prefetching of unselected pages.
  • Remove the 'Go' button from the address bar.
  They had.
• Similarly checked the built-in search facility:
  • Removed engines I don't use, via the dropdown menu.
  • Reconfigured the ones I kept, by manually editing the .xml files in /Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/searchplugins/.
    Specifically, I renamed 'Amazon.co.uk' and 'eBay.co.uk' to 'Amazon' & 'eBay' (I'm in the UK, so I know they're .co.uk sites)
  These amendments hadn't been carried across, so I had to reset them.

Repolishing the user interface ('chrome') was slightly different this time: instead of directly editing 'userChrome.css', I installed the 'Stylish' plugin and a few scripts recommended by Lifehacker, to:

• Hide the search box magnifying glass and location bar 'Go' button.
• Hide the 'Edit' (but not 'Help') menu, as I already know the standard Windows keyboard shortcuts.
• Hide the 'Open all in tabs' item in bookmark folders.
• Remove the 'throbber' (the 'page loading' indicator - there's one in each tab, so the one at the top right is irrelevant).

Many, many more scripts are available, and to be examined when I have more time.

Next, I double-checked my extensions.

• I removed two I don't really need – including two of the incompatible ones.
• I checked the remaining two via their developers' websites.
  • As last time, a compatible update of one (the indispensible 'Clone Window') was available, just not via the official Mozilla interface.
  • The other wasn't, but I found an alternative offering much the same functionality.

It may be worth mentioning a few extensions I use which have further effects on the user interface:

• Adblock. Not 'Adblock Plus', the less compromising 'Adblock'.
• Clone Window.
• Menu Editor – refines context menus, so, for example, I can't accidentally 'Send Image...' when trying to 'Save Image As...'.
• Undo Closed Tabs.

Posted by Ministry at 14:53 | 507 words