Disable new Switcher in Firefox 3.1

A Tech article with View Comments posted 28 October 2008.
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User Scott posted a comment on the MozillaLinks.org website describing how to get rid of the new Firefox 3.1 tab switcher that I deeply dislike. Go to “about:config” and change both of these to false, then restart your browser.

browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed

browser.ctrlTab.smoothScroll

Impressions of Firefox 3.1

A Tech article with View Comments posted 16 October 2008.
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I have begun to play with Firefox 3.1 beta2, and I have mixed feelings. I installed version 3.1~b2~hg20081014r20486+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~fta1~hardy (which is quite likely the longest, most involved, most unreadable version string in the history of computing) from Fabien Tassin’s PPA site and decided to try it out.

The Good: It’s really freakin’ fast. On javascript-heavy sites like Google Reader, GMail, or the backend SAGrader tools, the difference is phenomenal. It’s hard to explain, so you have to try it.

The Bad: It’s in beta, and so I really can’t blame it, but many of my extensions don’t work yet. But I’ve had a bug-free experience so far, so for a nightly build, that’s not much of a drawback.

The evil tab switcher

The Ugly: I strongly dislike the “preview” style tab switcher for about 172 reasons:

  1. It’s slow. With many tabs open, it sometimes takes a moment to open. I consider this a regression bug compared to the previous functionality.
  2. It flickers on quick changes. When I switch between adjacent tabs, I get a flash of something else in-between now.
  3. It doesn’t match the rest of my desktop. I use compiz, and my Alt-Tab switching has one slidey, three-item preview switcher and my browser has another. The juxtaposition is jarring.
  4. I don’t like “reflections” effects much, and I like to see the title of what I’m switching to. I get neither with this tab switcher.
  5. It violates the linear nature of having a long row of open tabs. With this new switcher, I can only see what’s ahead and what’s behind one tab. Instead of “I need to switch to a tab three to the right” I now have to think “Ctrl-Tab. Am I there yet? Nope. Ctrl-Tab. Not yet. Ctrl-Tab. Oh, there it is. Once more. Ctrl-Tab.”

Overall: I hope that a way is provided to disable the new tab switcher. With that said, Firefox 3.1 is so much faster that it’s shocking. When it is finally released, I’m going to be excited about the upgrade.

Horizon Information Portal Search Shortcut

A Tech article with View Comments posted 14 November 2007.
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Just a quick one: I finally got tired of clicking through the Wartburg Seminary website, so I made a Firefox Search Shortcut out of the minimum URL needed. Just copy and paste this into a new bookmark in Firefox:

http://library.dbq.edu:8675/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=wts&index=.GW&term=%s

And set the keyword on the shortcut to lib. Then you can type lib Your Mom and get all items in the catalog that are about Your Mom.

Custom Firefox search shortcuts

A Tech article with View Comments posted 2 October 2006.
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I’ve come across a little trick that isn’t complicated at all, but saves me a ton of time searching through CPAN. You can add a custom search shortcut that allows you to skip typing search.cpan.org, then typing your search term, replacing it with something as simple as p Search::Term in the address bar.

To do this, first do a search on the site you’re interested in and bookmark the results. Then open the Bookmark Manager and click properties for the new bookmark.

Custom search shortcut for CPAN

You’ll need to change two things. First, add the keyword that you want to use. In my case, I chose p to stand for perl, but you can pick any letter or phrase you want. Then replace your search term in the bookmarked address (highlighted) with %s. Save the bookmark, and enjoy your new shortcut!