Firefox

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Firefox is ace, easily my favourite browser I've used over the years. So here's a quick setup guide and a list of my favourite plugins.

Setup

Firstly, download Firefox from here and install. Start it up, and look in the menu bar for Tools>Options.

Under the main tab the first things I change are the homepage and the default download location. I would definitely set a download location, as there's nothing worse than spending longer looking for a file than actually downloading it.

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I've never changed a setting in the next 3 tabs (tabs, content and applications), so I'll skip those and move onto the Privacy tab. Despite it's name, I'm not really concerned about privacy, rather the mess of temporary files web browsers have a habit of leaving behind. I always set this to delete my browsing history and temporary files every time Firefox is closed, giving me a nice clean session every time I browse the web and ensuring I'm viewing the latest versions of websites rather than old stuff that's been cached on my PC.

Moving onto the advanced tab.... The only thing I change in here is the 'use smooth scrolling' tickbox. It's quite a nice feature, but I find websites with a lot of images don't like this setting. In general, it's best left off.

Add-ons

There's a bazillion add-ons for customizing a tweaking Firefox to your liking. Here's a few of my personal faves I really couldn't live without;

Adblock Plus

Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.

NoScript

The best security you can get in a web browser!
Allow active content to run only from sites you trust, and protect yourself against XSS and Clickjacking attacks.

All In One Gestures

This extension allows you to execute common commands using mouse gestures, rocker navigation, scroll wheel navigation and page scrolling.

English Dictionary
Pretty self explanatory; corrects spelling mistakes. How else do you think I spell 'diarrhoea' correctly?

FireTune

Usually you have to optimize Firefox manually, which can be time consuming and difficult for the novice user. FireTune helps you here - it includes all the performance optimizations. The only thing you must do is: make your selection. FireTune does the work for you.

Adblock is an absolute babe! And that FireTune app seems to have made a difference - my FF starts quicker now and loads pages much quicker. Hell, even Facebook loads in less than a couple of seconds now even on my crappy connection. Cheers for all this!

Also - Oooooooh, slider thingy!!

Addons:

I use downthemall for my downloads (i use a rapidshare premium account so lots of http:// downloading).

I dont use noscript, find it gets in the way a lot have to constantly switch it off so stopped installing it now. Adblock works just fine with the correct list.

Also use greasemonkey with 3rd party scripts from userscripts.org (eg. youtube HD- automatically load youtube vids in fullscreen and auto-HD res where available, facebook fixer - allows you to see full images on mouse rollover and other common tweaks)

Will look into firetune never used it before!