McFang – Exercising Futility

Posting drivel that is not of interest to anyone.

Posts Tagged Firefox

Firefox’s XML Slowdown

Jul 1

Posted by mcfang in Software | No Comments

For many months a buglet had been niggling at me. Anytime I opened an XML document in Firefox the entire browser would freeze for several seconds. If I was trying to debug a RSS feed or an XML settings file this would quickly become extremely annoying.

Today I fixed it.

First I tried a few of the obvious things. I already knew that this was not a core Firefox bug because this did not happen on any other PCs – it had to be something related to my PC. I checked the default profile with all addons disabled – still froze. I tried using a profile in another user’s account – still froze.

Then I had an idea how to find the culprit: I fired up regmon. After a few tests I quickly narrowed it that the freeze was happening right after loading the key HKCR\feed\shell\open\command\(Default)

I checked the contents of that key and I saw immediately what the problem was. The key was pointing to a program on a shared folder – so every time Firefox loaded XML it would attempt to mount this shared folder and this was the cause of the freeze.

After deleting the registry key my Firefox is back to being speedier than ever!

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A Quick Look at Firefox3

Jun 22

Posted by mcfang in Internet | No Comments

I’ve been testing Firefox3 for a few days now and it has been a great improvement over previous versions.

The new Location bar – really is the Awesome bar! I’m already getting used to the new look of the suggestions, and sourcing from bookmarks as well as history is a great improvement.

Firefox is finally using sqlite for bookmarks and history. This makes a noticable difference in speed and also allows for some more advanced features in the bookmarks system.

The unobtrusive Password Manager drop-down is another great improvement. It waits until after you submit the form before asking, and it no longer blocks the interface so the user can easily ignore it.

Addons

As for Addons, these have already been updated to support Firefox3:

Adblock Plus
Add Bookmark Here2
ColorfulTabs
Greasemonkey
Locationbar2
Menu Editor
NoScript
QuickProxy
Web Developer

Addons still waiting for updates:

AutoCopy and Copy Plain Text (inter-related)
No-Referer
Organize Status Bar
Paste and Go 2
Permit Cookies

Preferences

I found that a few preference changes are required to optimise the performance and experience:

browser.tabs.tabMinWidth;60
browser.tabs.closeButtons;0 // only 1 close button, on current window browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground;true // load tabs in background
browser.fixup.alternate.enabled;false // disable automatically adding of www. and .com to urls

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Firefox save-as for unknown mime-type

Feb 18

Posted by mcfang in Internet | No Comments

If Firefox 2.0 does not recognise a mime-type it forces you to jump through hoops every time you wish to save a file of that type – never giving you the option to make a default action (eg. save-as) for the type.

Getting tired of this I eventually did some research to find a solution, case in point is the RAR file type (application/x-rar; application/x-rar-compressed).

Option 1: An Addon

Add the Mime-Edit extension that allows you edit any mime-type’s properties and actions, even those not recognised by Firefox.

Option 2: Hack

If you are confident in XML manually edit mimeTypes.rdf in your profile folder:

<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:application/x-rar-compressed"
NC:fileExtensions="rar"
NC:description=""
NC:value="application/x-rar-compressed"
NC:editable="true">
<NC:handlerProp RDF:resource="urn:mimetype:handler:application/x-rar-compressed"/>
</RDF:Description>

<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:handler:application/x-rar-compressed"
NC:alwaysAsk="false"
NC:useSystemDefault="false"
NC:saveToDisk="true">
<NC:externalApplication RDF:resource="urn:mimetype:externalApplication:application/x-rar-compressed"/>
</RDF:Description>

And in the section <RDF:Seq RDF:about=”urn:mimetypes:root”> add in this new row:

<RDF:li RDF:resource="urn:mimetype:application/x-rar-compressed"/>

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Firefox addons of awesome

Dec 31

Posted by mcfang in Internet | No Comments

Addons I have used or tried in Firefox 2.0

Addons kept

AdBlock Plus: wildcards work great for blocking troublesome adsites and iframes.

Permit Cookies: block 3rd Party cookies and/or block all untrusted sites.

Add Bookmark Here 2: an easier way to add a bookmark deep in your hierarchy of bookmarks.

Auto Copy: text selected with mouse is automatically copied (works with Copy Plain Text).

Copy Plain Text: copies selected content as plain-text instead of html.

Colorful Tabs: generate tab colors by domain name.

Paste and Go 2: mapped to a mouse-button this can open a link from your clipboard in a new tab with a single click.

Stop-or-Reload Button: save precious toolbar space by merging the stop & reload buttons.

QuickProxy: turn browser proxy on/off with a single click.

Web Developer: world’s most important Firefox addon.

No-referrer: block the referrer string from being sent to 3rd Party sites.

Bookmark Duplicate Detector: detects and cleans duplicate bookmarks. Also makes backups for bookmarks file.

Kelvin’s Australian English Dictionary: Australian dictionary without all the US-American misspellings.

Greasemonkey: used with Youtube video downloader and Niconico video downloader.

Locationbar2: highlight domain or subdomain, and make sections of the URL clickable.

Menu Editor: edit the context menus, promote Save Image, hide send-to and set-wallpaper.

Configuration Mania: disable SmartBrowsing, Tab button on active tab only, Disable link prefetching.

Extended Statusbar: add some simple page stats to the statusbar.

NoScript: blocks 3rd Party Javascript and Flash.

Addons removed

ErrorZilla Mod: never used the buttons it provided.

Linky: make all urls clickable. (I found Paste&Go worked better for me)

MR Tech Local Install: was useful to install addons from local files, but gained too much uneccessary clutter with recent updates.

Searchbar Autosizer: I eventually removed the searchbar completely, rendering this addon meaningless.

Tab To Window: browser would often crash if I tried to use this.

Restart Firefox: expected to save session and restart browser, but does not restore ALL windows >_<.

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