Firefox Memory Leak on OSX

Coming back to work after a long weekend I found this on my iMac.  Lets just say it wasn't working so well.  50 GB worth of memory paged out to the swap file due to a Memory Leak in Firefox.  And they wonder why I prefer Safari.  By the way I only had three tabs open. :/

Gmail Themes for Firefox

I have used these themes before but now theres a single add-on for all 3:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8434?collection_uuid=c194cfdd%26%2345%3B3be7%26%2345%3B5724%26%2345%3B27bf%26%2345%3Bd5571e12aa30a

Installing Firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu

Just a quick note. If you noticed the new Firefox 3.5 release and want it in Ubuntu just run the following command.

sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5

Google Chrome theme for Firefox

This is how my Firefox looks. Note that this isn't maximized or trimmed, there just isn't a title of menu bar. The menu is accessible via a drop down on the top right as well as window controls.

Here is a list of the addon's and tweaks I used to get this look:

• Chromifox: This is the primary theme used.
• Stylish: For minor CSS tweaks.
  
  • Chromifox Falconer: Move the tabs to the top of the screen.
  • Chromifox Fixes: Fix for Zombie mode and minimized tabs.
• Autohide: This extension allows you to go into Zombie mode and hide the titlebar.
• Compact Menu 2: This extension allows you to hide the main menu and add a toolbar icon instead.
• FaviconizeTab: Lets you minimize tabs to just show their icon.

Extra settings:

• When using Autohide you will need to open up about:config and set the setting extensions.autohide.zombieBorder to 0. This will remove the titlebar and border when you go into zombie mode. (Shift-F11)

Runnig Firefox Pre Releases

I always like the latest and greatest so here are instructions for running the latest and greatest Firefox builds while maintaining browser auto-updated and extensions.

First off you need to download the latest night build from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/. Alternately you can get the 3.1 Beta witch is not updated as often but still has the newest features at http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.1b1/. The second option may be more stable but it will replace your Firefox install where as the nightly installs in a separate location.

Regardless of witch version you install when done you will have a few problems, namely most ad dons will report out of date and won't load. To fix this open up Firefox and navigate to about:config. Now search for the setting extensions.checkCompatibility or add it if needed. Also set it to false. This will simply make extensions load even if their versions don't match Firefox. Now some addon's still may not work but all of my major addon's work just fine.

Also while here we want to change a few other settings. Next find the setting general.useragent.extra.firefox and set it to Firefox/3.0. This just changes the Firefox version reported to web sites so the Install Extension links in https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox still work correctly.

Also we want to enable the new TraceMonkey Javascript Engine witch is much faster and one of the best features of 3.1. To do so again in about:config find the setting javascript.options.jit.content and set it to true.

You should now be all set, just restart Firefox and check out some sites. Also note that extensions and settings are shared between all versions of Firefox but noting we changed will break Firefox 3.0.

My Firefox Extentions

Here is how I see the world.

(Picture coming soon)

• AdBlock Plus: Kill the Adds.


• Download Statusbar: Less intrusive file downloads.


• Firebug: Easy access to view a page source.


• Firecookie: Play with cookies.


• FoxProxy: Intelligent proxies with regex.


• Ubiquity: Keyboard based actions.


• Greasemonkey: User scripts.


• Stylish: User Styles
  
  
  • Folders4Gmail
  • Gmail Redesigned
  • Gcal Redesigned
  • OS X Style Google Reader