Firefox is a fantastic browser, but it isn't always very Mac-like, as evidenced by the
recent discussion on how to switch tabs. Here are a few tips to make things better:
- Interface:
The default theme for Firefox is a bit of a dog's ear, and the official Firefox Themes listings aren't much help either. Download something more Mac-like from Arronax's GrApple. If you want a brushed metal Safari look, then try Safarish. It would probably look even more authentic if you used Metallifizer to get the brushed metal window edges. To Aqua-fy the widgets (whilst you're waiting for the next version of Firefox, which promises an Aqua interface), install the Aqua Firefox Set.
- RSS Reader:
To get a Safari RSS-like browser before Tiger, install Sage and then, to get rid of the horrible PC look, download John Hicks' Sage CSS file. Save it wherever you like, and then in the Sage Settings, use the Sage CSS file as the custom style sheet.
- Listening to Amazon Audio Samples:
There's a bug in Firefox which means that it handles some files improperly, and deals with some files according to their extension rather than their MIME type. This rears its ugly head when trying to listen to audio samples on the Amazon website. Instead of passing the RealPlayer stub file to RealPlayer, it downloads it and names it hurl.exe. If you have Virtual PC installed, it (VPC) will then launch automatically and do nothing. All you have to do to listen to the files is change the name from hurl.exe to hurl.ram and then open the newly-named file.
- Giving Yourself More Options With Downloads:
I find that for some file types (eg: EXEs), Firefox will pop up a dialog box asking you what you want to do with the file. All the options are grayed out, except Save To Disk, but annoyingly it won't let you tick the box that says Do This Automatically From Now On. The solution to this is to install the MIME Type Editor extension, and then add the relevant MIME types using the Mimetypes command that will appear in the tools menu. You can find the correct MIME type for a given file extension here. Once you've added a MIME type, you can specify what Firefox should do with that sort of file. No more pointless dialog boxes!
- Managing Bookmarks:
Finally, did you know that there is a shortcut for deleting a bookmark in the manage bookmarks window? It's clearly listed in the Edit menu, but I never thought to look there because I know all the Edit menu shortcuts (hmmmm). The shortcut is the totally unintuitive Command-D. Thankfully, this is will be changed in the next version of Firefox, according to their bug list.
[
robg adds: The pure extensibility of Firefox is one reason I really love the browser. There are some real gems hidden on the
Firefox extensions page.
DownloadStatusBar,
WebDeveloper, and
Flash Click to View are three of my favorites...]