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Mozilla Tips & Tricks II
Summary:
- Mozilla Add-ons
- Plugins & Sidebars
- Commandline Options
- Mozilla-based Browsers
- Mozilla Firefox
Compatibility notice: Everything introduced here works on Mozilla 1.0 and Netscape 7.
Unsupported Mozilla 1.0 RPMs for Mandrake Linux 8.2 are available from the downloads page? or from the 'unsupported' directory of your favorite Mandrake Linux FTP mirror.
Mozilla Add-ons
Mozilla is distributed with several add-ons:
- a mail / news agent (Mozilla Messenger / News)
- an IRC client (Chatzilla)
- a terminal emulator (xmlterm, unmaintained, doesn't work here)
Project data are usually distributed in so-called XPI (cross-platform installation) archives (these archives can be unpacked with 'unzip', by the way). Installing these archives on Linux requires running Mozilla as 'root'.
Most of these add-ons do not provide uninstall routines. To uninstall these add-ons, edit '/usr/lib/mozilla/chrome/chrome.rdf', '/usr/lib/mozilla/chrome/overlayinfo/navigator/content/overlays.rdf' and perhaps '/usr/lib/mozilla/chrome/overlayinfo/communicator/content/overlays.rdf' as 'root' and remove the appropriate entries (example), then remove their files.
Notice that surfing mozdev.org often requires a lot of patience …
Ad blocking with Banner Blind
Banner Blind is a banner blocker for Mozilla which blocks images based on their size. A set of preconfigured sizes is provided and custom sizes to block can be configured.
Install Banner Blind via mouse click from the project's installation page. Restart the browser and configure Banner Blind via 'Tools' - '~BannerBlind'.
Searching faster with ~EasySearch
~EasySearch puts the functionality of the 'Search' sidebar tab into the personal toolbar.
Install ~EasySearch from the project's installation page. Close the browser. As 'root', run
chmod o+r /usr/lib/mozilla/chrome/easysearch.jar
Start Mozilla and the search field should appear in the Personal Toolbar (you might have to enable that toolbar via 'View' - 'Show/Hide' first).
~EasySearch can be configured via 'Edit' - 'Preferences' - 'Advanced' - '~EasySearch'.
Add the 'Google toolbar' to Mozilla
Googlebar emulates Google's toolbar for MSIE.
Install Googlebar from the project's download page. Close Mozilla. Form a terminal, run this command as 'root':
chmod -R o+r /usr/lib/mozilla/chrome/googlebar/content/
to allow users other than 'root' to display the bar. Right-click on an empty space on the new 'Googlebar' to configure available searches. Use the 'Google' logo drop down menu to set your Google preferences.
Encrypt your mail with Enigmail
Enigmail interfaces the Mozilla mail client with the GPG or PGP encryption software.
Installing and configuring Enigmail is bit more involved, check out the Enigmail Help Information for details.
Search more sites
Mycroft is collecting an impressive number of search plugins for Apple's Sherlock for use in Mozilla's 'search' sidebar. These plugins allow you to search such sites as ebay, CPAN, RPM Find, ~SourceForge, Xrefer, Slashdot, Google Groups and many many more.
Go to the project's download page. Either choose the plugins you want to install or get the complete archive and unpack it as 'root' into '/usr/lib/mozilla/searchplugins/'.
If you've got the '~EasySearch' add-on installed, you can access the new plugins from your personal toolbar. If not, make sure that 'Edit' - 'Preferences' - 'Navigator' - 'Internet Search' - 'Advanced' is checked and open the search tab in the sidebar. Use the 'using' drop down menu to select the site you want to search.
To create your own search plugins, read The Search for Mozilla and have a look at the '.src' files in '/usr/lib/mozilla/searchplugins/'.
You can get a Mozilla search plugin for this site from the Downloads page?, the Mandrakesoft Bugtracker also offers one.
Changing the user agent string quickly with uabar
uabar allows you to change the 'user agent' string your browser sends to the web server on the fly. This is useful to circumvent stupid 'browser detection' scripts which refuse browsers other than MSIE or Netscape 4.x entry.
Install 'uabar' from the the project's installation page. Close the browser. Run this command as 'root':
chmod -R o+r /usr/lib/mozilla/chrome/uabar/content/
to make uabar accessible for users other than 'root'. Start Mozilla and you will have a new bar from which to change the user agent string.
Mozilla in your own language
If English isn't your language of choice, you can get 'language packs' for quite a range of languages from the Mozilla Localization Project.
Plugins & Sidebars
A list of available plugins complete with installation instructions is available from the plugindoc: linux page. You should also check out Plugger (included in Mandrake Linux) which makes external programs behave like browser plugins.
The sidebar directory on dmoz collects a lot of the available sidebars for Mozilla.
If you are into web development, have a look at ZVON's sidebar collection which contains references for HTML, XHTML, CSS and more.
~LiveSidebar offers some colorful and potentially useful '~LiveSidebar Cool Tabs' free of charge.
You can add a Freshmeat sidebar via this Freshmeat Sidebar URL
To create your own sidebar, check out Netscape's My Sidebar Developer's Guide or have a look at Sidebar in a Can.
Commandline Options
Among the more interesting commandline options are
- Window size: -height xx -width yy starts Mozilla in a window xx pixels high and yy pixels wide.
- Profile management: Use -~ProfileWizard or -~ProfileManager to manage and / or create a new profile. -P profile starts Mozilla with the profile profile and -~SelectProfile pops up a profile selection window. Notice that you can create a Common Netscape Profile for Linux and Windows.
- Start with components: -addressbook, -news, -mail, -edit.
-compose starts with the 'compose new mail' window. -chrome path starts Mozilla with the skin located in path.
Mozilla-based Browsers
The Mozilla has always stated that the "intended target audience (of Mozilla) is the development community." Officially, Mozilla is dubbed a "fully functional technology demo for those interested in seeing what can be done with Mozilla technology, and those who want to create Mozilla-based products and packages."
Of course, that shouldn't keep you from using it if you're not a developer, but it helps to explain the astonishing number of browsers which are built using 'Mozilla technology', the core being NGLayout (dubbed 'Gecko' by Netscape marketeers), the layout engine, and XPFE, the cross platform graphical toolkit.
Basically, there are two classes of Mozilla-based browsers: browsers which implement 'NGLayout' and 'XPFE' and browsers which only use 'NGLayout' and replace XPFE with widgets native to the respective operating system. Latter have the advantage of providing a unified look and feel with other applications of the environment and of usually being less resource hungry. The use of native widgets, however, makes them non-portable to other operating systems.
Cross Platform
Following browsers implement NGLayout and XPFE:
- Netscape is the proprietary sibling of Mozilla, courtesy of AOL/~TimeWarner (who also sponsors the Mozilla development). It offers proprietary add-ons (like an integrated AIM and ICQ client) and adds some polish to Mozilla. Netscape 6.2 is based upon Mozilla 0.94, Netscape 7 on Mozilla 1.0.
- Beonex Communicator tries to provide the polish of Netscape without going proprietary. Version 0.8 is based on Mozilla 1.0. Available for Linux and MS Windows.
Single Platform (Linux)
- Galeon is the most popular and advanced browser to implement Mozilla's NGLayout. They have replaced XPFE with the equally popular GTK+ widget set. Galeon requires the GNOME desktop to be installed, but you can run it on every other window manager / desktop environment just as well. Mandrake Linux package: galeon.
- Skipstone also uses GTK+, but refrains from bindings to a specific desktop environment and concentrates on core browsing capabilities. Mandrake Linux package: skipstone.
- 'Nautilus', the GNOME file manager, embeds NGLayout to gain some web browsing functionality.
Single Platform (other)
- K-Meleon dubs itself as 'the unbloated Mozilla for Windows'.
- Chimera uses NGLayout and Cocoa, the native Mac OS X graphical toolkit.
Mozilla Firefox
Firefox is very slow to make the initial connection to a web site:
By default Firefox uses IPv6 adddressing, many (most) DNS servers don't handle IPv6 correctly which results in a significant delay (several seconds) while Firefox recovers. The solution is to disable IPv6 by setting network.dns.disableIPv6=true in the Firefox configuration file user.js . For more details see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.dns.disableIPv6
It's even easier with Firefox 2.x:
Enter about:config in the Firefox address line (URL) and Firefox settings will be displayed.
Scroll down to: network.dns.disableIPv6
Double click on the line and the setting will be toggled to true.
Restart Firefox.
For more details see http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/edit
Note that this only affects the delay in making the initial connection to the web site while the domain name is resolved to an IP address. It does not affect the speed at which the page is subsequently rendered. If you have wondered why there's no similar delay under Windows, it's because Windows doesn't support IPv6.
Related Resources:
Mozilla End user documentation
Mozilla 1.0 Resources
Mozilla Unix
dmoz: Mozilla
Netscape Solutions (all platforms)
Revision / Modified: June 27, 2002
Author: Tom Berger
Legal: This page is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License. Standard disclaimers of warranty apply. Copyright LSTB and Mandrakesoft.
