[Techtalk] Mozilla/Firefox customization (was Double-click selection)

[Akkana Peck]

Riccarda Cassini writes:
> Today I learnt, that you can type "about:config" in the urlbar to get
> a complete listing of all hidden browser preferences, that you can't
> otherwise access via the GUI. And, you can modify them to your heart's
> content (by right-clicking on the entries) - in case you know what
> you're doing.
> This is ingenious...   The only thing I'm missing there is another
> column with a detailed explanation of what each option is for - people
> like me cannot always immediately guess from the option's name itself.

A few are documented at http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html
and a few others at http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html
(That document also explains how to get the emacs key bindings,
as Cynthia Kiser asked last week.)

> PS:  anyone knows of any other "about:*" tricks I might want to learn
> about?  My first guess "about:about" didn't have the desired effect...

I've long wished there was a good description of all the about: tricks,
but haven't seen one written up anywhere.

If you wanted to make a try at that, it looks like it's implemented
in the netwerk/protocol/about directory.  If you don't want to pull a
whole source tree, you can browse mozilla source with lxr, e.g.:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/netwerk/protocol/about/

It's a nice small package.  If I grep in my local mozilla source tree
for "config" in that directory (grepping from a higher level is
how I noticed netwerk/protocol/about in the first place), I end up
in this file:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/netwerk/protocol/about/src/nsAboutRedirector.cpp

I don't know if that's a complete list of all the "abouts" or not
(probably not), but it's a start, and browsing among the other
files in that directory might tell you more.

If you (that's a general "you" to anyone reading this :-) do write
these up and want them included in he customizing page, or somewhere
else in the mozilla doc tree, or if you set up your own page and
want it linked to, contact me -- I can help with that.
More documentation on useful preferences would be great, too.
(Can't help with getting things included on that texturizer.net page,
you'll have to contact the author if you want it included there.)

	...Akkana