Mozilla Firebird Help

If you are running Windows XP and want your menus to fit in with the default (Luna) style, add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

Unfortunately, the current default menu appearance in Mozilla Firebird is some sort of a compromise between the flat Windows XP menus and the 3D appearance of older versions of Windows. If you want the menus to appear native to the Windows Classic appearance, add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

In addition to changing themes, you can personalize Mozilla Firebird even more by using your own toolbar background image. Add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

It's easiest to place the image file in the same location as the userChrome.css file. The image can be of any image format supported by Mozilla Firebird.

In order to make the active tab easier to distinguish among the currently opened tabs, you can also change the colors for the tabs. Add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

If you don't want the title of the active tab to be bold, add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

You can remove the close button from the tab bar by adding the following code to your userChrome.css file:

You can still close tabs by right clicking on them and select Close Tab, or by pressing Ctrl+W

Some people like to place all their toolbar items on the same row as the menu. In order to save horizontal space, you can remove top menu items that you don't use. Add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

The default window icon for Mozilla Firebird has not yet been decided. Because of that, the red Mozilla icon is used instead, and on some operating systems the default system icon is used. You can change this icon to whichever you want by following these simple steps:

1. Go to the folder you installed Mozilla Firebird in (e.g. >C:\Program Files\Firebird\) and then go to the subfolder chrome.
2. While in chrome, create a new subfolder called icons, then go to that folder and create yet another subfolder called default.
   The full path to this folder could be C:\Program Files\Firebird\chrome\icons\default\
3. Choose the icon you want to use (on Windows use .ico files, on Linux use .xpm files) and then place it in this folder and rename it to main-window.[filetype], e.g. main-window.ico on Windows and main-window.xpm on Linux.

In addition to the main window, you can also change the icon on the Bookmark Manager and JavaScript Console. The icon names are bookmark-window.[filetype] and jsconsoleWindow.[filetype], respectively.

After this is done, restart Mozilla Firebird and you should be able to see your chosen icon in the title of the browser windows. A nice Qute icon for Windows made by the author of the default theme in Mozilla Firebird can be found here.

To display the Sidebar on the right side of the window instead of the left, add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

By default, the Search bar on the toolbar is relatively small. To specify your own width in pixels, add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

If another program wants to display a web page in the default browser, Mozilla Firebird will reuse an existing window by default, which means that it will navigate from a page you might be reading. To stop this, add the following code to your user.js file:

What about new tabs instead of windows then? If you prefer tabs instead of windows, you must also install Tabbrowser Extensions, a very powerful extension that enhances the functionality of the tabbed browsing. After installing the extension, follow these instructions (make sure you didn't forget to add the above code to your user.js file):

1. Make sure you didn't forget to add the above code to your user.js file.
2. Select Tools > Options > Extensions, select Tabbrowser Extensions and click Settings.
3. Expand the Category list and select the topmost sub-item (it's supposed to read Advanced Tabbed Browsing but the Category list is too narrow).
4. In the Window Mode drop-down listbox, select Use multiple browsers only when I open them.

Done! Now any link opened by an external program, such as your e-mail client, will open in new tabs.

The tab bar is normally not shown when only one tab is opened in a window. To force the tab bar to stay visible all the time, add the following code to your user.js file:

Note that you can still manually hide the tab bar in a window by clicking on the Close Tab X button when only one tab is opened.

Mozilla Firebird has a built-in pop-up blocker that is activated by default. However, it doesn't stop web pages from opening in new windows by using the target="_blank" or the illegal target="_new" properties. To force such links to open in the same window, add the following code to your user.js file:

When this feature is turned on, it shrinks any image that is bigger than the window to make the whole image visible. When this is done, the cursor over the image changes to tell you that if you click, the image is restored to full size. To turn off this feature, add the following code to your user.js file:

By default, Mozilla Firebird displays annoying error messages if a connection fails, instead of quitely displaying the error information in the browser window as Internet Explorer does. To turn off the error messages and use pages instead, add the following code to your user.js file:

Note that this feature is still a bit buggy as it removes the last visited page from the Back button history.

By default, Mozilla Firebird displays progress windows when downloading files. If you're downloading many files at the same time, these windows can clutter up your desktop. To use the Download Sidebar instead, add the following code to your user.js file:

Find As You Type, a fairly new feature introduced in Mozilla, has a few hidden preferences that can be changed to better fit your needs. Add the following prefs to your user.js file:

For information about what Find As You Type is, read the documentation.

Mozilla Firebird 0.6 has a Smooth Scrolling feature enabled by default. Later nightly builds have the feature disabled. To enable or disable this feature, add the following code to your user.js file:

Mozilla Firebird has a few options that allow you to decide what scripts can and can not do with windows. These options are availabe from Tools > Options > Web Features > Advanced. However, this list of options doesn't cover them all. There are some other useful options which can be applied by adding the following code to your user.js file:

If you are using Netscape 6/7 or Mozilla, you can share your bookmarks with Mozilla Firebird. All bookmarks are stored in a file called bookmarks.html and is stored in the profile folder. For example, if you want to use the bookmarks for Netscape 7 in Mozilla Firebird, add the following code to your user.js file:

Remember to use two backslashes for the path separators if you're using Windows, e.g. C:\\Path\\bookmarks.html instead of C:\Path\bookmarks.html.

By default, if you enter a search term in the address field and press Enter, a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search is performed, and you're taken to the first result of that search directly. If you prefer to see the standard search result list instead, add the following code to your user.js file:

Of course, you could also change to a completely different search engine by changing the string to something else. The default search string is: "http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=".

You can disable the display of bookmark icons and "favicons" by adding the following code to your user.js file:

When you click on the throbber, you are directed to www.mozilla.org. This can be changed to any URL by adding the following code to your user.js file:

Mozilla Firebird allows you to prevent URLs from being saved in the pull-down menu for the Location Bar. This restriction helps protect user privacy and prevent users from "stumbling" into sites that other users had previously viewed.

Andrew Mutch has written a page explaining how to implement this restriction. Read it here.

Advertisements on websites are annoying, often breaking up text and flashing to get your attention. There is a neat trick that you can use to block most of the ads on Web pages.

Because of the length of the code in this tip, it is available in a separate page.

You probably just find the blinking above annoying. To stop it, add the following code to your user.js file:

Some sites using scrolling marquee tags. If you don't find them useful, add the following code to your userContent.css file:

If you added the code, this text should not scroll after restarting Mozilla Firebird.

Many sites use frames to display their contents, and sometimes the frames are too small. To force all frames to be resizable, add the following code to your user.js file:

Note that this will also make the frames appear with a fixed-width border and thus, may make the pages look funny.

This neat trick will change the mouse pointer when you hover it over links that will open a new window. Add the following code to your userContent.css file:

This tip will change the mouse pointer when you hover it over links that will perform a JavaScript command. Add the following code to your userContent.css file:

Some web sites offer content in multiple languages. You can choose several languages in Mozilla Firebird and they will be treated in order of priority. In order to change the priority, you have to know the language code for your language. The code for Swedish is sv, which is used in this example that should be placed in user.js:

Note: There is a request filed to put this option in the Options window.

While holding down the Ctrl key, you can select table cells. Just click on any non-link portion of the cell. You can select multiple cells, either by clicking individually on the cells you want to select or by just dragging with the mouse. Once selected, you can use Copy and Paste just like you would on a text selection.

By default, Mozilla Firebird doesn't try to render a web page for 250 milliseconds, because it's waiting for data. If you add the code below to your user.js file, Mozilla Firebird immediately tries to render the page, even without complete data. The drawback is on slower machines where doing a "reflow" may actually cause the total page load time to be longer.

Pipelining is an experimental feature, designed to improve page-load performance, that is unfortunately not well supported by some web servers and proxies. To try it out, add the following code to your user.js file:

To specify in which folder the cache is stored, add the following code to your user.js file:

Remember to use two backslashes for the path separators if you're using Windows, e.g. C:\\Path To Cache instead of C:\Path\Path To Cache.

Normally, Mozilla Firebird determines the memory cache usage dynamically based on the amount of available memory. To specify a specific amount of memory cache, add the following code to your user.js file:

To disable the memory cache completely, add the following code:

Many preferences in Mozilla Firebird are not yet (or will never be) implemented in the redesigned Options window. The following link displays the original Preferences window, derived from the Mozilla codebase: chrome://communicator/content/pref/pref.xul. By default, clicking on chrome: links doesn't do anything, so you need to right click the link and select Copy Link Location and then paste the link to the address field and press Enter.

Note that many of the preferences in this window will have no effect in Mozilla Firebird, such as the Quick Launch option. Also, this window will most probably be removed completely in future versions of Mozilla Firebird.

Andrew Mutch has written a comprehensive tutorial that explains how to modify Mozilla Firebird to run in a kiosk-style mode. Read all about this here.