Making Firefox behave more window'ish

[Axeia]

This was written with people used to windows in mind, but even if you've never used windows you might find some of the things mentioned on this page to be useful.

Autoscroll
Under windows Firefox when you press the middlemouse button (the scrollwheel) an icon pops up under your cursor and if you move the mouse up on the screen it scrolls up, and moving it down scrolls down. Untill the middlemouse button is pressed again.

To get the same behaviour under linux you'll need to start op Firefox and enter about:config in the address field and hit enter.
It will warn you about how this might mess up your Firefox, just click the "I'll be careful, I promise" button.
In the new screen that just showed up at the top in the filter field type in autoscroll.
Double click it and you're done (a boolean set to false is set to true), Firefox will now behave the same way as it does under windows as far as auto scrolling goes.

Backspace as back button
Firefox under windows takes you one page back when you press the backspace button, this is done to match the file/internet explorer behaviour of windows.
Now you could do two things.

1. Learn the file explorer (konqueror, dolphin, nautilus) back button key under linux, as this one works in firefox as well.. and you have unity between programs.
   alt+left arrow
2. Adjust Firefox behaviour to match windows bavhiour.
   1. In the adres field type about:config again
   2. promise to be careful
   3. In the filterfield type: browser.backspace_action.
   4. Double click the result
   5. Replace the result that just popped up with the number 0 and hit enter.

Fixing the looks
As Firefox by default looks like a GTK application under linux it means thatunder KDE4 is plain ugly (in my opinion).
Under Gnome it's not as, but if you play around with the gnome GUI a bit and customise it Firefox will stick out like a sore thumb there as well.

The only way to make it pretty is by setting a theme.

1. Naver - My personal favorite, it's green.. so it fits openSUSE quite well.
2. Oxygen - Fits in with the KDE4 desktop enviroment.. but only the default one, it wont adept itself if you changed your kde4 settings.
3. Strata Aero - Vista like

Sorry couldn't find any win2k ones, and you need a mozilla account for a XP look, just search for XP on addons.mozilla.org if you're interested

[richyf89]

Hi there, thanks for this.

One thing I would like to mention. My favourite theme for firefox is this one:

Chromifox 2

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9427

I think it is really nice.

I would also recommend this addon/plugin for firefox:

Cooliris | Discover More

Enjoy!

[geoffro]

Only for windoze

/Geoff

Originally Posted by richyf89

I would also recommend this addon/plugin for firefox:

Cooliris | Discover More

Enjoy!

[Havoc65]

here is one i use its vista like but green instead of the blue
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...nature&cat=all

[Axeia]

Originally Posted by Havoc65

here is one i use its vista like but green instead of the blue
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...nature&cat=all

Saw that one, but as it was a mix of Vista and XP I decided not to post it

To everyone.. my apologies for the horrible English in the OP, missing words and all.
Wrote it while being rather sleepy and only got 10 minutes after a post to edit it on these boards.

> To everyone.. my apologies for the horrible English in the OP, missing
> words and all.
> Wrote it while being rather sleepy and only got 10 minutes after a post
> to edit it on these boards.

forget THAT...your english is GREAT (what is your first language?)..

missing words were not missed (i personally didn't miss any!)..

remember the only purpose of language is to communicate, and yours
absolutely DID communicate...(if anyone thinks language is so English
teachers have jobs grading/marking our writing, well...you are wrong!)

and, thanks for the tips....having not used Windows since 1995 i had
no idea about that scroll feature, and *alt+left arrow* was also new
to me..

THANKS, both are pretty cool!!

[Axeia]

Originally Posted by Yosuf Mossad Mohammed Vitriolus

forget THAT...your english is GREAT (what is your first language?)..

missing words were not missed (i personally didn't miss any!)..

I'm Dutch, so Dutch is my first language.
"As Firefox by default looks like a GTK application under linux it means thatunder KDE4 is plain ugly (in my opinion).
Under Gnome it's not as, but if you play around with the gnome GUI a bit and customise it Firefox will stick out like a sore thumb there as well."
That bit in particular was quite bad

Originally Posted by Yosuf Mossad Mohammed Vitriolus

THANKS, both are pretty cool!!

You're welcome, glad to be of help.

[Dexter1979]

Dutch: Bedankt, erg handig.
English: Thank you, very convenient.

I'm Dutch as well, altho I live in Ireland now so I speak English most of the time.

[Dexter1979]

Can I add one more thing to it:
in the about:config window filterfield type browser.urlbar.clickselectall. Double click this (change the boolean from false to true).
Restart firefox and now when you click the address bar it will highlight the whole URL. Just like in Windows.

[Axeia]

Originally Posted by Dexter1979

Can I add one more thing to it:
in the about:config window filterfield type browser.urlbar.clickselectall. Double click this (change the boolean from false to true).
Restart firefox and now when you click the address bar it will highlight the whole URL. Just like in Windows.

Nice one, thanks for the addition.
Always use ctrl+l myself so didn't even notice that one was missing.