Sunday, September 23, 2007

Speed Up and Integrate Firefox

Don't get me wrong, Kubuntu comes with a very capable web browser in Konqueror -- except that Konqueror isn't compatible with everything. Although I love Konq's integration with the rest of KDE, it doesn't work well with Facebook or my University's website or Windows Live Mail (which I still use, since I've had that email since grade 7 and everyone knows it by now. Also it's a good email to toss at the various companies that want to know what mine is). So I've switched to Firefox.

Speed Up Firefox

Taken from this website, this section is all about getting firefox to load webpages faster. First, type "about: config" in the location bar.

  1. Search for network.http.pipelining, and change its' value to true

  2. Search for network.http.pipelining.maxrequests, and change its' value to 8

  3. Search for network.http.proxy.pipelining and change its' value to true

  4. Search for network.dns.disableIPv6 and change its' value to true

  5. Search for plugin.expose_full_path and change its' value to true

  6. Right click anywhere in the list, select new, then integer. Create a value called nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set its' value to 0

  7. Right click anywhere in the list, select new, then integer. Create a value called content.notify.backoffcount and set its' value to 5

  8. Right click anywhere in the list, select new, then integer. Create a value called ui.submenuDelay and set its' value to 0

  9. Right click anywhere in the list, select new, then integer. Create a value called browser.cache.memory.capacity and set its' value to the maximum memory you wish Firefox to use at a given time. 16MB is a good default, so enter 16384

  10. Search for layout.spellcheckDefault, and set its' value to 2. Now Firefox will check spelling on both input fields and text areas

Integrate Firefox with KDE


Now that we've got Firefox loading webpages faster, it would be nice if it started to use KDE programs and dialogs rather than the default Gnome ones or embedded players. So let's teach the old fox some new tricks.

  1. Go here and download the kgtk deb. Right-click the file, and install it. Now, open up the KDE menu editor (select "run command" from the menu and type in kmenuedit) and find the entry for Firefox. Change the command value to read "kgtk-wrapper firefox %u", save and exit. Now Firefox will open files in the usual KDE style.

  2. Open up any webpage in Firefox, go to File, and tell Firefox to print the page using "PostScript/default" -- it should be the default if you haven't installed any printers yet. Now type "about:config" into the location bar again, and search for print.printer_PostScript/default.print_command. Change its' value to read kprinter. Now, right click anywhere in the list, select new and boolean. Create a value called print.always_print_silent and set its' value to true. Finally, right click anywhere in the list, select new and boolean. Create a value called print.postscript.cups.enabled and set its' value to false. There! Now Firefox will use the normal KDE dialog to print files

  3. Open up about:config. Search for network.protocol-handler.external.mailto and make sure its' set to true. Now, right click anywhere in the list, select new and string. Create a value called network.protocol-handler.app.mailto and set its' value to kmail. Firefox will now open e-mail files in kmail.

  4. Open up adept, and install the kget program. Now, download the Flashgot extension. Restart Firefox, and configure Flashgot to use kget as a download manager. (Personally, I like Firefox's native download manager, so I don't use this tip. But if you wanted the complete KDE Firefox experience...)

  5. Open up about:config. Search for browser.download.hide_plugins_without_extensions and set its' value to false. Now, go to the Edit menu, select preference, then content and then click the manage button next to file types. Change all the values dealing with audio files to use "/usr/bin/amarok" to open them. Now when you download an mp3 Firefox will automatically play it with KDEs' premier music player.

  6. Now that we've got Firefox all KDEified, we may as well make it our default browser. Open up System Settings and select default applications. Select Webbrowser and set it to open Firefox in the following browser: kgtk-wrapper firefox. Apply the settings and you're done!
There! Now your speeded up Firefox integrates into KDE almost as well as Konqueror, while allowing you to maintain compatibility with just about every site on the web.

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