Customizing Firefox 3.6 for Netbooks

Owning a netbook has it advantages, the small 8.9 to 10 inch screen is not one of them. Firefox's default user interface takes up 25% of the vertical space on your netbook. Below is my collection of Firefox 3.6 customizations that will help you reclaim over 20% of your netbook's screen and make Firefox run faster.


- Default Firefox 3.6 in Lucid Lynx, notice the wasted space on menus


Remove the Bookmarks Toolbar:

- Right click Firefox's blank menu area and un-check the Bookmarks Toolbar


Make The Tool Icons Smaller:

- Right click Firefox's blank menu area and select Customize


- Check the Use Small Icons box


Remove the Status Bar:

- Under View un-check the Status Bar Box


Remove The Menu Bar and Make It An Icon:

- Download the Compact Menu 2 addon


- Select Yes


- Compact menu 2 replaces your menu bar with a small blue icon

By right clicking the Firefox menu area and selecting Customize, you can configure Compact Menu.



Show The Download Manager as a Tab:

- Download the Custom Download Manager addon


- The old download Manger Window


- The tabbed download window

To change any of Custom Download Manager Settings, go to Tools>Addons



To access Firefox's Configuration File
Type about:config into the URL address bar

- Ignore the warning, and select I'll be careful, I promise


- The main about:config page


Autohide The Tab bar when only displaying a Single Tab:
- Type browser.tabs.autohide into the filter box
- Double click the browser.tabs.autohide entry to set the value to true


- The constantly displayed tab bar is probably the most annoying "feature" added to Firefox, it's a complete waste of space


Make Firefox Run Faster By Enabling Piplining:
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining, it will make several attempts at once, which really speeds up page loading. It's not very nice to slam websites with multiple requests. Be a good person and limit yourself to a reasonable number.
- Type network.http.pipelining into the filter bar
- Double click the network.http.pipelining entry to set the value to true
- Type network.http.proxy.pipelining into the filter bar
- Double click the network.http.proxy.pipelining entry to set the value to true
- Type network.http.pipelining.maxrequests into the filter bar
- Double click the network.http.pipelining.maxrequests entry and set the maxrequests to 15
- Right-click anywhere inside Firefox about:config page and select New-> Integer
- Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set its value to 0 (zero)


Stop Firefox from Loading Pages in the Background:
Firefox downloads webpages from links it thinks you may click. This may make the experience seem faster but really it just bogs down Firefox and your netbook.
- Type network.prefetch-next into the filter bar
- Double click the network.prefetch-next entry to set it to false


Customize Backspace Button:
The Ubuntu default is set to scroll up when the backspace button is pressed.
I prefer for it to go back in my page history (like it does in Microsoft Windows).
- 0 Pressing backspace button will go back a page in the session history
- 1 Pressing backspace button will scroll up a page in the current document and [Shift]+[Backspace] will scroll down.
- Type browser.backspace_action into the filter bar
- double click the browser.backspace_action entry and set the value to 0

Now that your done you have a lean, mean and fast netbook optimized version of Firefox 3.6

- That's a pretty netbook version of Firefox, eat your heart out laptops

Check out my "Best Extensions for Netbooks Guide". (coming soon)

Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover? Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.