I need to begin by noting something that I wasn’t aware of when I wrote last week’s Beginning with Firefox post; the Preferences window (called Options in the Windows’ version of FF) is not in the Tools menu, but the Edit menu in non-Windows’ versions. That is where we’ll spend a lot of our time this week.

Before we do that let’s look at the (I believe) universal Tools menu.

Web Search – This simply puts your cursor in the (customizable) search box at the top right of the screen. While we’re looking at it click on the small arrow to the left of the search box now, you’ll see the standard search engines that come pre-installed with Firefox – you can ad more which is something that we’ll cover in the future.

Downloads – Here is the window that pops up when you download a file. It’s a way to keep track of them and even monitor where you’re downloading them to on your machine.

Add-ons – This is one of the beautiful features of Firefox (and really just about any open source program). Add-ons are mini-programs that you can install into your Firefox that can make it capable of performing tasks that in can’t “out of the box”. The Firefox installation that I’m using right now has 25 add-ons running that do everything from notify me when I have a new message in my inbox to blocking ads to spell-checking things that I put in text-boxes online… and more.

If you bring up the box it will have a few options that will allow you to change the Theme (just the look of your FF browser window), and add on items that will allow you to play Flash videos (think YouTube), or other media (think CNN or games). If you click the “Get Extensions” or “Get Themes” it will take you to the page on Firefox where these are available.

Java Console, Error Console, Page Info – Probably not something you want or need to dive into if you’re not designing a website.

Clear Private Data – This will enable you to clear your cookies, browser history, and other data that your browser keeps about your habits. It does it relatively thoroughly, be careful that you don’t delete passwords that you want to keep saved!

Now on to the options…

Some of the boxes in this window can be pretty self explanatory. I’ll touch on some things in each tab that will need a little more explaining.

The first box When Firefox starts: the only one that needs some explanation is the last option Show my windows and tabs from last time that will save anything you have open to open it right away next time you start FF up… pretty easy.

In the Downloads section you can set up a folder that it will automatically send all of your downloads to – I suggest creating creating a “Downloads” folder wherever you keep your documents – many Operating Systems will already have one for you to use.

As we move to the Tabs tab I would suggest making sure that the first option New pages should open in: is set to the “a new tab” setting. This is how links that try to open a new window will behave – it’s always easier to have less windows than more. The other options here are simply preference as to how your browser will act and they seem pretty self-explanatory as well.

The Always show the tab bar. option left unchecked will maximize your screen space for surfing if you only have one tab open. If you do keep it unchecked, make sure you remember that CTRL-T (CMD-T on a Mac) is the shortcut for opening a new tab.

In the Content tab you can set how Firefox handles Pop-Ups (some sites you may want to allow to use pop-ups. When a site does try to open a pop up when they’re blocked it will show a small bar beneath the toolbars that will let you know how many it blocked – this will also have an options menu that will allow you to make an exception for that site and to allow future pop-ups from it through. I would suggest leaving all of these options unchanged unless you know you’re visiting sites that will be dangerous – most sites are safe – if you’re visiting a lot of hacking sites (and you’re probably not) you may want to disable Java, but for now leave it checked.

The File Types menu will allow you to set up how Firefox handles certain files based on its extension – for example, do you want MP3s to open up right in FF, download to your computer or be opened by another program.

Feeds will let you set how the program will automatically handle feeds in the future. If you already use Google Reader (again, a future post will cover this) then you can set that up here. For now leave it that it will ask you or set it to the Live Bookmarks option and select the radio button (that’s what the round “check-boxes” are called) next to “Subscribe to the feed using”.

The Privacy tab sets, well, your privacy settings. How long do you want your History Bar to keep track of where you’ve been so you can find pages that you want to go back to quicker? Do you want the Location Bar to remember what you type into it? Do you want the Download Window to keep track of what files you’ve downloaded? This is also where you can set what FF does with cookies (they’re pretty necessary for most contemporary web-applications, particularly anything you sign into). The bottom option will clear your private data, and you can set it to do it every time you close Firefox.

Security settings will help keep your computer safer online. Keep the first two checked for safe browsing. The Add-on warning will be a small bar at the top (with the option to allow that site to install it) and the forgery one will pop something up clearly telling you that the site is fake – like a fake eBay site that tries to steal your password. Very helpful. The Passwords section will help make your browsing and signing in and out of sites quicker by remembering your passwords and auto-entering them when you put in your username on the site in question. If your computer is used by people who you don’t want to know your passwords I’d suggest setting a master password so they won’t be able to change your passwords or hack into your accounts.

The warning messages are messages that will pop up in reference usually to encrypted or non-encrypted pages. This can be very helpful or very annoying.

The Advanced tab doesn’t have anything that you should probably change unless your local techie tells you that it’s necessary. There’s a lot here that could mess up how your browser works. The only thing that you should freely change is the stuff about scrolling, searching as you type or checking your spelling.

That’s the end of the [Basics] for Firefox. In the future, there will be other Firefox posts, but you’re now ready to surf in style!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 4:22 pm and is filed under basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.