Mozilla Firefox
Install Firefox
Issues
Privacy and Security
Sneltoetsen (Dutch)
About refreshing Firefox

Floorp is from Japan and comes with excellent privacy, flexibility and unlimited customization
LibreWolf is a custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom
Waterfox is ethical and open

In the address bar under the Shield icon can be the “Report Broken Site” option.
When it is present and when not is not clear at this point in time.

Run

firefox --help

to list all command line options

firefox --headless # To be investigated

Updating as root does not work anymore since Firefox 58

As root do once, if not already done at installation time

usermod --groups users --append user

If there are multiple users who have to be able to update repeat this for each user
Add to /etc/cron.daily this script (if you do not use Thunderbird you can delete the Thunderbird part)

# Check firefox for being user updatable and if not set the correct permissions
filecount=$(find /opt/firefox ! -group user | wc -l)
if [[ $filecount -ne 0 ]]; then
  echo filecount is: $filecount
  chmod -R g+w /opt/firefox
  chown -R root:user /opt/firefox
  echo Cron updated firefox permissions on `date`
fi
 
# Check thunderbird for being user updatable and if not set the correct permissions
filecount=$(find /opt/thunderbird ! -group user | wc -l)
if [[ $filecount -ne 0 ]]; then
  echo filecount is: $filecount
  chmod -R g+w /opt/thunderbird
  chown -R root:user /opt/thunderbird
  echo Cron updated thunderbird permissions on `date`
fi

After saving it to mozilla.sh do

chmod 740 mozilla.sh

Now a normal user can update firefox with via Help | About

If this does not work then update manually. See below

This is obsolete since the “Normal users” way above works and is far more convinient

Or use this script ( /home/user/firefox.sh )
If you use profiles add -p after /opt/firefox/firefox

#! /bin/bash
FIREFOXVERSION=`/opt/firefox/firefox -v`
/opt/firefox/firefox
NEWFIREFOXVERSION=`/opt/firefox/firefox -v`
if [[ $FIREFOXVERSION != $NEWFIREFOXVERSION ]]; then
	sudo /bin/chown -R root:users /opt/firefox/*
	sudo /bin/chmod -R g+w /opt/firefox/*
fi

Do

chmod 740 /home/user/firefox.sh

As root do if there are multiple users

chown user:users /home/user/firefox.sh

Place /home/user/firefox.sh in the Firefox launcher in the field Command: This field has a browsebuton to help you with this
Now a normal user can update firefox with via Help | About

When Firefox is installed in /opt it can be updated manually

• Close Firefox
• Download a copy of Firefox
• Login as root in a terminal window
  • Move the firefox-[versionnumber].tar.bz2 to /opt
  • Extract it with tar xf firefox-[versionnumber].tar.bz2
• Log root out (or not)
• Start Firefox with the quicklaunch button
• Check the version via Help | About

Close Firefox first
Start the Firefox profilemanager from the command line:

firefox -p

Start Firefox with a certain profile:

/opt/firefox/firefox -P "profilename" -no-remote

Firefox is based on a HTML style sheet. To remove the tabs remove the margin from the top which squezes them out of view. Search for “ Firefox customize style sheet” to find more information

GET versus POST. The POST method is better for your privacy

Always show the scrollbar. In about:config set:
toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true

Use css to Customize the scrollbar¹⁾. There is also an addon but it can not set the width wider

Keyboard shortcuts - Perform common Firefox tasks quickly
Mozilla's index
Both are searchable

Can do calculations

Multiple pages as homepage: Separate them with a “|” in the settings

• Prevent untouched pinned tabs from loading. In about:config set browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand to true
• Unload tabs manually goto about:unloads

You can use Ctrl-T or Ctrl-Y to open a new tab at the default location
In about:config set browser.tabs.insertAfterCurrent setting to true

To be able to toggle between the current tab and the previous tab do

• In the address bar: about:config
• In about:config enter in the search box: browser.ctrlTab.sortByRecentlyUsed
• Set to true (toggle with the <> icon on the right side)

Do

• Preferences | Privacy & Security | Click on the “Change Master Password…” button
• Enter the old password
• Click on “OK”

Now there is no password set for the saved logins and passwords database in Firefox

To reset the master password do

chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul

Source Reset your master password if you forgot it

Copy logins.json and key4.db to a save place
These files can also be used to load a new instance of Firefox (on an other computer) with this password vault

To save the SSD do, in about:config:

• Turn the cache off: Set browser.cache.disk.capacity to zero
  
• Set browser.cache.disk.enable to false

Todo: Investigate other cache settings

In about:config:

The “refresh” proposal from Firefox after Firefox has not been used for some time (60 days) is super misleading. It wipes out many settings and data like bookmarks and history. To turn it of set browser.meta_refresh_when_inactive.disabled to true

Block automatic page refreshing, instead displaying a message allowing them to manually refresh the page. Set accessibility.blockautorefresh to true

Firefox translate page and one more
Settings in about:config. Search for “translation”:

• Turned on / off via “browser.translations.enable” and click on the toggle icon on the right
• browser.translations.alwaysTranslateLanguages is handled via the contex menu
• browser.translations.neverTranslateLanguages is handled via the contex menu
• browser.translation.ui.show set to 'true'
• browser.translation.detectLanguage set to 'true'

Enabling translations in about:config does not enable translation, not even after a Firefox restart
In about:preferences General tab under 'Translations' there is an error message: 'Failed to get the list of available languages for translation. Refresh the page to try again.' That has been done. The issue persists.
Solution: Check the firewall / Pi-hole DNS server for blockages. After disabling blockages and installing languages translation worked without having to restart Firefox. Open tabs have to be reloaded before the translate icon shows up on the right in the addressbar

If Firefox has a sustained high CPU load check about:performance. The high CPU load might be caused by an Add-on. Click on more next to the Add-on on top of the list and check CPU usage:. Try to disable some functionality of the Add-on. If that not possible try if disabling the Add-on with the high CPU load solves the issue

When you are installing a certificate on Firefox and get

Please enter your master password

enter the Firefox master password of the password vault

Turn them off by clicking on the Settings button in Privacy & Security | Permissions | Notifications and then mark “Block new requests asking to allow notifications”

• Find a video where you can see the Picture-in-Picture toggle.
• Right click on the toggle.
• Click: “Hide Picture-in-Picture toggle”

More on Picture-in-Picture

Check which WebGL versions are supported In Settings > Performance > Off: Use recommended performance settings > On: Use hardware acceleration when available

Firefox is being updated by an other instance

This can also mean that there is an other instance running. It not necessarily means that an update is in progress

• about:support
• about:healthreport
• Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data
• Firefox FTP folder
• Firefox Beta
• Deleting autocomplete entries
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Usage share of web browsers
• User activity, OS and hardware involved

Main subjects on this wiki: Linux, Debian, HTML, Microcontrollers, Privacy

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