
Firefox Tweaks – An attempt to make Firefox suck less - rbcoffee
https://github.com/dfkt/firefox-tweaks/blob/master/firefox-tweaks.txt
======
pbiggar
Not a great attempt IMO.

The networking and UI things are a valiant effort. Mixing them with non-
mainstream security concerns are a bad idea. You may feel that safe-browsing
is tracking by the man, but advising newbies to turn it off is borderline
irresponsible. Similar argument for ipv6 (wtf), error reporting (congrats:
your bugs will never be fixed cause firefox doesn't know about them), and
geolocation ("why doesn't google maps ever know where I am?").

If you apply these, some caveat emptor: when firefox upgrades it usually wont
change these settings for you. So if firefox makes things awesome, you'll be
left behind. You may want that, you may not. Personally, I'd advise against.

~~~
logn
> caveat emptor: when firefox upgrades it usually wont change these settings
> for you

It's not so bad. You can sort prefs by user-defined, they're in bold, and each
one has a reset-to-default option.

Also you can do a whole browser reset which preserves only
passwords/bookmarks. Instructions: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-a...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings)

And firefox profiles might be handy for this too (from the command line add
_\--ProfileManager_ or _-P <profile name>_).

~~~
gry
Yes it is. Everything you've described of my two brothers can't do.

~~~
technomancy
Well considering they don't browse HN or GitHub it's hard to see what the
problem is.

------
mediumdeviation
> Remove "(site) is now fullscreen" nag message and make it faster

For a list that want to make the browser more secure, why do they want to
remove the only line of defense against sites using fullscreen mode for
phishing?

> Disable PDF reader

PDF.js has fewer security vulnerabilities than desktop PDF readers.

> Disable 'safe browsing' aka. Google tracking/logging

This seems like a _really_ bad idea for most users

~~~
bpicolo
The only time I ever see the fullscreen message is when the screen has
essentially already fullscreened itself in a case where I want it to. =/

~~~
nfm
The warning is a bit annoying, but without it attacks like this would be
harder to spot: [http://feross.org/html5-fullscreen-api-
attack/](http://feross.org/html5-fullscreen-api-attack/) (it's just a proof-
of-concept, no malicious payload)

~~~
thaumasiotes
Who are all these people who apparently run their browser maximized? Web pages
generally get _worse_ as the window gets wider. (Unless, of course, they
control their own width, but that's its own obvious prompt to _stop wasting
all your screen space_.)

~~~
J_Darnley
Only with a rubbish, widescreen display are modern websites crap. Get a nice
4:3 or 5:4 display and everything looks good when maximised.

~~~
thaumasiotes
No, it would still have to be a small squarish display. Fixing the aspect
ratio won't fix the problem that you have way more space than the website will
take.

------
codemac
Disabling IPv6?!

This is an... opinionated list. Wish there was more annotation around what
those opinions were.

~~~
Proleps
Don't know if it is still true. DNS lookup didn't work correctly when ipv6 was
enabled.

~~~
TD-Linux
W..what? I don't think this has been true for any Firefox version, ever.
Certainly I'm using v6 right now. (Not on hn of course, it's v4 only)

~~~
vetinari
It used to be issue - in your local network, you had IPv6 automatically with
Vista and newer (the same for Linux distributions). So your browser resolved
AAAA records, trued o open connection to the the host, after few seconds found
out that it is going nowhere, resolved the A records, the site worked.

So it became popular to manually disable IPv6 to speed up the browsing.

------
mintplant

        BLOATWARE
        
        Disable 'Reader Mode':
    

Why? I use this every day to pull the text out of frustratingly-formatted
sites.

~~~
r3bl
My guess is because of the Pocket integration.

~~~
mintplant
Reader mode is a separate feature from the Pocket button.

------
overgard
Ugh, it has "disable webgl" because it's a "debatable" security concern? And
disable ipv6? I hope people know what these settings are for before they apply
these.

~~~
Navarr
Retitle "Project to make Firefox suck more"

~~~
vezzy-fnord
No, this is definitely suckless:
[http://suckless.org/philosophy](http://suckless.org/philosophy)

------
forgotmypassw
The tweaks under appearance and bloatware are good, although I'd probably
leave error reporting on (I'm on the nightly channel for a reason), as well as
WebGL although it would be nice if it could be changed to "click-to-run" style
launching. The rest of the tweaks seems fairly reasonable privacy-wise.

------
gurraman

        browser.urlbar.trimURLs - false
    

Yay! This feature has annoyed me to no end.

------
A010
Why Reading mode is even considered "bloatware"?

~~~
adrusi
Well it was added recently, during the same time as things like pocket and
hello are being added. A lot of people will never use it, so it's fair for
them to put it in the same bloatware category. I use it a lot on mobile, not
so much on desktop. I didn't want to disable it.

I'm not the biggest fan of hello in firefox, but I've gotten some light
mileage out of it, so I guess I can't be too upset. Pocket though just really
shouldn't be in the browser.

~~~
mintplant
Reader mode was added in 2012-2013. Pocket and Hello were introduced in 2015.

~~~
agumonkey
Really ? Did they just add the url icon then ? I never noticed any of it
before this year.

~~~
agapos
Reader mode was present in the Mobile version for a long time, it's port to
the desktop Firefox happened recently AFAIK.

~~~
agumonkey
Aight. Better late than never IMO.

------
Animats
Nice. That's a useful guide for writing an add-on to manage all those
settings, some of which are documented only in very obscure places. Whether or
not you turn them on or off is your business, but they need a user interface.

~~~
technomancy
TBH I don't care if there's a user interface; what I want is to be able to
store my browser's config in git along with the rest of my config. Every other
program I use regularly is configured through sane dotfiles; if I check them
out on a fresh OS install it's all like I want, except Firefox. I have to go
through this insane song and dance of hunting down all my extensions and
remembering obscure about:config settings every time.

In fact, it's a bit cringeworthy that this whole list is presented as a thing
you're supposed to manually enter while using the about:config search.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_a thing you 're supposed to manually enter_

Doesn't everybody know about user.js? Keep that updated and store that in git.
If that file is present in the .../Profiles/<whatever>.default then Firefox
automatically uses it. And Firefox doesn't rewrite it, as opposed to prefs.js.

It's still a hassle, but it's far easier than _manually_ entering things into
about:config. Here are a few of the things currently in my user.js:

    
    
       user_pref("accessibility.blockautorefresh", true);
       user_pref("browser.preferences.inContent", false);
       user_pref("network.dns.disablePrefetch", true);
       user_pref("network.prefetch-next", false);
       user_pref("pdfjs.disabled", true);
       user_pref("plugins.hide_infobar_for_blocked_plugin", true);
       user_pref("plugins.notifyMissingFlash", false);
       user_pref("social.enabled", false);
       user_pref("social.remote-install.enabled", false);
    

I've got more in there but I'm too lazy to look all of them up to make sure
they still apply to the current version of Firefox. The ones I pasted seemed
relevant based on their name.

~~~
technomancy
Sure, but you can't check the profile directory into git, and you can't know
the path of the profile directory ahead of time to make a symlink either. The
way they randomize the path makes it seem like they're going out of their way
to make it automation-resistant.

------
santoshalper
There is a massive bias for change aversion in this list. Basically anything
that Firefox has added in the last couple of years he doesn't like. Not
advised.

------
zobzu
Even thus the changes arent all great many of them are definitely in the "why
isnt this default?" category for me.

For ex webrtc should def. prompt instead of leaking by default, full screen
animation is slow as fuck, pocket is adware, loop and safe-browsing should be
turnable-off in the main prefs, social is adware, yada yada.

------
Radle
Is there any good reason to disable IPv6? I can't take the list seriously,
without a proper explanation.

------
adsche
I agree that these are probably not good default settings, but just now I
learned about pocket, hello, social, ...

Why are these not plugins in the first place, or manageable through the
preferences dialog?

------
tdkl
Disregarding the majority of rants here, I think it's a great list for
everyone to just cherry-pick from for their own needs. It ain't all or
nothing.

~~~
JoshMnem
Yes... it inspired me to make my own version that only has what I need:
[https://github.com/j127/Better-Firefox](https://github.com/j127/Better-
Firefox)

------
scurvy
Why are you disabling IPv6?! It's faster than IPv4.

~~~
warkdarrior
Yep, 50% faster.

------
swrobel
Any feedback on which of these apply to Firefox mobile?

------
ConceptJunkie
Step 1: Install Pale Moon. Step 2: Enjoy.

------
known
Depends on your RAM and CPU.

