How to tweak
Firefox 2

By Jason Parker (11/10/2006)

The release of Firefox 2 brought a fistful of cool, new features to the open-source browser...along with some interface changes that didn't please everyone. Learn how to take advantage of the new features in Firefox 2, or change your configuration and use extensions to make it look and work more like older versions. If you haven't tried Mozilla Firefox yet, download it now.

Step 1: Customizing tabs

Everyone who has used Firefox knows how useful tabs are. One of the main enhancements in Firefox 2 is the option to close each tab individually using a tiny close button on the right side of each tab. Though this is useful for some, others have found themselves closing tabs accidentally.

If you want to get rid of the close buttons, type about:config into the address bar of Firefox to access your application settings, a long list of saved options that can be tweaked. Type tabs into the filter at the top to bring up all the preferences related to tabs. To modify your close buttons, click browser.tabs.closebuttons, right-click the value (the default is 1), choose Modify, then change the number to 0. This gets rid of all close buttons except the one on the active tab. If you want to remove the close buttons completely, follow the same steps and change the value to 2. You will still be able to close tabs by right-clicking and choosing Close Tab (like in the old Firefox), but this will make the accidental closing of tabs a thing of the past.

For even more control over your tabs, we recommend a handy Firefox extension called Tab Mix Plus. With this extension you can duplicate tabs (with their surfing history), undo closed tabs if you accidentally hit the close button mentioned above, and specify how Firefox loads new tabs using the Tab Focus feature.

Step 2: Session saving

Have you ever had several tabs and windows open with tons of pages loaded, only to experience a computer crash or power outage and lose all those sites? With Firefox 2, saving your session is built in. When you restart after a crash, all the pages you were viewing are restored by default. You can also configure Firefox to always restore your last session (whether you have crashed or not) so you can pick up right where you left off.

To turn this option on, go under the Tools menu and choose Options. Under the Main settings, look under the Startup section and find When Firefox starts. Click the pull-down menu and select Show my windows and tabs from last time. Now every time you start Firefox, you'll be able to continue with all the windows and tabs you had open during your last session.

Step 3: Spell-check

Even if you're a fantastic speller, we all make occasional mistakes. Fortunately, a handy spelling checker has been added to Firefox 2 so you can quickly check fields (in forums and comments, for example) for spelling mistakes before you send your text out to the world.

When you misspell a word, Firefox will now underline it in red. To use Firefox's spelling checker, simply right-click the underlined word to find and select alternate spellings. If the word is not in the dictionary but you know it's spelled correctly, select Add to Dictionary to make sure Firefox will recognize it from then on. If you want to add multiple words to your dictionary or delete a word you added by mistake there's a .dat file that contains your personal info. Browse into your Documents and Settings folder on the drive with Firefox installed. Go into "[your username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[your profile]" and find a file named persdict.dat, which will contain your personal dictionary words. Add or remove terms as you see fit, one for each line.

If you don't want your words underlined or if you're just fed up with Firefox's nagging, you can easily turn the spelling checker off. Display application settings by typing about:config in the address bar, then type spellcheck into the filter at the top. Now, right-click layout.spellcheckDefault, then select Modify from the contextual menu to set the value to 0. The default value, 1, spell-checks all "textarea" fields. The value 2 spell-checks all fields of any kind.