A cookie is a file created by a web site that stores information on your
computer, such as site-specific preferences when visiting that site.

Accept cookies from sites

By default cookies are enabled. Uncheck this optionpreference to disable the
use of cookies. Note that some sites may not work properly when cookies are
disabled.




Keep until:





* they expire

This is the default optionpreference. When set, this allows websites to
specify how long a cookie will be stored by Firefox. This makes
it possible for a site to remember your preferences and login information
across browser sessions.

* I close Firefox

With this optionpreference selected, Firefox will remove all
stored cookies when closed.

* ask me every time

With this optionpreference enabled, Firefox will ask you how long
you would like to keep a cookie (or refuse it entirely) every time a web
site attempts to set one.







To control which sites may or may not set cookies, click the
Exceptions... button.




To display the Cookie Manager click Show Cookies....




Learn more about cookies, the individual optionspreferences, and how you can
gain control over what sites are allowed to store cookies on your computer
by reading about Managing Cookies.



Private Data



Always clear my private data when I close Firefox

You can choose to have Firefox clear your private data when you
close it. To configure what data is cleared, click the Settings...
button.




Ask me before clearing private data

With this optionpreference selected, Firefox will ask you before
automatically clearing the data specified by clicking
Settings....




If you wish to clear your private data right now, you can click the
Clear Now... button to do so. To clear your private data from
outside the preferences dialog, either press CtrlCmd+Shift+Del
or select Tools > Clear Private Data....

From Mozilla Firefox Help

Remember visited pages for the last ... days

Here you can specify how long you want Firefox to remember what
pages you have visited. The default is 9 days.

Remember visited pages for the last ... days

Here you can specify how long you want Firefox to remember what
pages you have visited. The default is 9 days.

From Mozilla Firefox Help


Feeds are specially formatted documents which summarize the content of web
sites. For example, a feed might summarize the latest news headlines from a
news site or the latest posts on a blog. You can view the content of feeds in
Firefox, create Live Bookmarks for them, or add them to a feed reader
on your computer or on the Web. The optionspreferences in this pane determine what
Firefox does when you view a feed.

Show me a preview and ask me which Feed Reader to use

When you view a feed within Firefox, you will be shown a preview of
its contents. With this optionpreference selected, you are always given a
choice of what you would like to use to subscribe to the feed at the top of
the preview page.

Subscribe to the feed using

Instead of displaying a preview of the feed when you view one, you can have
the feed be opened directly in a feed reader by selecting a reader from the
list of available readers. You can choose to use an application on your
computer to subscribe to feeds by clicking the Choose Application...
button and finding the application on your computer. Alternately, you can
choose to automatically subscribe to feeds by saving them as Live Bookmarks.
To choose a subscription method, simply select it from the list.

From Mozilla Firefox Help

The Download Actions dialog, which can be opened by clicking the
Manage... button, contains file types that you have downloaded.
You can choose what Firefox should do when clicking on a specific
file type by selecting the file type you want to modify and clicking the
Change Action... button.

This will display the Change Action dialog, where you can choose to have
the file type opened by the default application, opened by a particular
application, saved to disk, or shown with an installed plugin. For example,
if you view lots of media files on web pages, you might want to specify that
Firefox always open media files in your media player instead of
asking where you want each media file to be saved.





* Open them with the default application:

Select this optionpreference to open this file type in the default
application for that file type (determined by the operating system).

* Open them with this application:

Select this optionpreference to specify another application that should
handle this file type. You will see a dialog asking you to specify the
application to use.

* Save them on my computer:

This optionpreference will save the files to disk (automatically if you
have selected the Save files to optionpreference in the
Main panel).

* Use this Plugin:

Select this optionpreference to let a plugin handle this file type.

From Mozilla Firefox Help

Default font and Size

Web pages are usually displayed in the font and size specified here.
However, web pages can override these choices unless you specify otherwise
in the Fonts dialog. Click the Advanced... button to access the
Fonts dialog and to change this and other fonts optionspreferences.

Fonts Dialog




1. From the Fonts for drop-down list, choose a language
group/script. For instance, to set default fonts for the West
European languages/scripts (Latin), choose Western. For a
language/script not in the list, choose Other Languages.

2. Select whether proportional text should be serif (like "Times
New Roman") or sans-serif (like "Arial"). Then specify
the font size you want for proportional text.

3. Specify the font to use for Serif, Sans-serif and Monospace fonts.
You can also change the size for Monospace fonts.







You can also set the minimum web page font size. This is useful to
prevent sites from use overly small fonts that are barely readable.




Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections
above

By default Firefox uses the fonts specified by the web page
author. Disabling this optionpreference will force all sites to use your
default fonts instead.




Character Encoding

The character encoding selected here will be used to display pages that
do not specify which encoding to use.



Colors Dialog



Text and Background

Here you can change the default text and background color to be used on
web pages that haven't specified that information. Click on the color
samples to select colors.




Use system colors

Check this optionpreference to use the colors defined in your operating
system settings instead of the colors specified above.




Link Colors

Here you can change the default colors for Web links. Click on the color
samples to select colors.




Underline links

By default, links are underlined on web pages. Uncheck this optionpreference
to disable this. Note that many sites specify their own styling rules
and this optionpreference has no effect on those sites.

Allow pages to choose their own colors, instead of my selections
above

By default, Firefox uses the colors specified by the web page
author. Disabling this optionpreference will force all sites to use your
default colors instead.

From Mozilla Firefor Help

Move or resize existing windows
Uncheck this optionpreference to disable moving and resizing windows
using scripts.

Raise or lower windows


Uncheck this optionpreference to make sure scripts cannot raise (bring
to the front) or lower (send to the back) windows.


Disable or replace context menus


Uncheck this optionpreference to prevent web pages from disabling or
changing the Firefox context menu.


Hide the status bar


Uncheck this optionpreference to force the status bar to be displayed in
pop-up windows.


Change status bar text


Uncheck this optionpreference to disable changes to status bar text (such
as displaying scrolling text messages or preventing the link address from
being displayed while the mouse is over a link).

Enable Java
Java is a popular programming language for the Web. A single Java program
can run on many different kinds of computers, thus avoiding the need for
programmers to create a separate version of a program for each kind of
computer. Uncheck this optionpreference to disable Java applets in
Firefox. Note that in order for Java applets to work, you must
install the Java plugin.

From Mozilla Firefox Help

New pages should be opened in:

This optionpreference controls whether links from other applications or from
web pages which request to open them in new windows are opened in a new
window or a new tab in the most recent window.

Note: If you have chosen to open pages in new tabs,
Firefox will ignore this optionpreference and will open a new window
from a link if the page author specified that the new window should have a
specific size, because some pages can only be displayed correctly at a
specific size.



Warn me when closing multiple tabs

When you close a window with multiple tabs, Firefox will ask you
to confirm your choice. This prevents you from accidentally closing the
whole window when you intended to only close the current tab. Uncheck this
optionpreference to disable this warning and have Firefox
automatically close the window.


Warn me when opening multiple tabs might slow down
Firefox

When you open a large number of tabs at once, Firefox will ask you
to confirm your choice. This prevents you from accidentally slowing down
your system while the pages are loading. Uncheck this optionpreference to
disable this warning.



Always show the tab bar

If you're only viewing one web page in a Firefox window, the tab
bar is not normally shown. Check this optionpreference to always show the tab
bar, including when only the Firefox window contains only one
page.


When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately

When you middle-click on a Web link (or hold down CtrlCmd while clicking
with the left mouse button), the page will be opened in a new tab. That page
will not be displayed and will load in a background tab. Check this
optionpreference to load and display the page in a new foreground tab
instead.

Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on
startup

Select this option if you want Firefox to check whether it is the
default browser at startup. This will ensure Firefox is used
whenever an application tries to display a web page. You can also click the
Check Now button to do a check right now.

This section contains optionspreferences determining how Firefox
downloads files.
Show the Downloads window when downloading a file
With this optionpreference selected, Firefox will open the Downloads window when you start
downloading a file.

Close it when all downloads are finished

Select this optionpreference to have Firefox close the Downloads
window when all downloads currently in progress finish.




Save files to

By default downloaded files are automatically saved to the Desktop,
eliminating the hassle of specifying a download location for every file you
download. You can choose a different folder by clicking the Browse...Choose...
button.

Always ask me where to save files

With this optionpreference selected, Firefox will ask you where
you would like to save every downloaded file (instead of using the default
location specified above).

From Mozilla Firefox Help

When you open Firefox, by default your home page is displayed. Your home page
might be a commonly-visited web site, a search engine, or perhaps your email
account, but the choice is up to you. You can change your home page or
choose to display a different page or set of pages on startup in this
section.

When Firefox starts

By default, when Firefox starts it opens your home page (listed in
the textbox immediately below), which corresponds to the Show my home
page option. Alternately, you can choose to display a blank page on
startup (perhaps to eliminate the time required to load that page from the
Internet) by selecting the Show a blank page option.




As a final alternative, you can have Firefox reopen the windows and
tabs you had open the last time you ran Firefox, effectively
restoring you to where you were when you last stopped browsing the Internet.
This can be a handy way of saving what you were doing when you close
Firefox, perhaps to install an operating system update. You can
choose this option by selecting Show my windows and tabs from last
time.




Home Page

If you've set Firefox to show your home page when you start
Firefox, you specify your home page by typing it here. You can
also click any of the buttons below the textbox to choose a special home
page:



* Use Current Page sets the currently-displayed page (or pages,
if you have multiple tabs open) as your home page

* Use Bookmark sets the selected bookmark (or if you select a
folder, the set of bookmarks in that folder) as your home page

* Restore to Default resets your home page to the default home
page

From Mozilla Firefox Help

Add-ons are managed in the Add-ons manager. Select Tools > Add-ons to open it.
Updating Add-ons
By default, Firefox will periodically check when a new version for
one of your installed add-ons is available

If any are available, it will
prompt you at the next start to install any updates. You can change this
behavior in the Update tab
of the Advanced panel of OptionsPreferences.


You can check for updates manually by selecting the Extensions or
Themes panel and clicking the Find Updates button. If
updates are available, the Add-ons manager displays an Updates
panel, where you can choose the updates you want to install. Click the
Install Updates button to update those add-ons.
You need to restart Firefox for changes to take effect.


Disabling, Enabling, and Uninstalling Add-ons


If you want to get rid of an extension, you can either disable it temporarily,
so it is easily available should you want to enable it again in the future,
or uninstall it. Themes can only be uninstalled since all themes except the
current one are disabled automatically.



To disable or enable an extension, select the extension of your choice and
click its Disable or Enable button. To remove an add-on from
Firefox, select the add-on you wish to remove and click its
Uninstall button. You need to restart Firefox for changes to
take effect.


Further functionality


Further functionality such as Visit Home Page and About is
available by selecting the add-on of your choice, pressing
Ctrl and clicking onright-clicking the
add-on and selecting the respective item from the context menu.


Tasks specific to extensions or themes

Configuring Extensions


Extensions often provide a dialog to configure their functionality. To open
the optionspreferences dialog of an extension, select the Extensions panel, select
the extension of your choice, and click its OptionsPreferences button,
or simply double-click the extension.


Switching Themes


To switch between your installed themes, select the Themes panel, select the
theme of your choice, and click its Use Theme button. You need to
restart Firefox for changes to take effect.
of the Advanced panel of OptionsPreferences.

From Mozilla Firefox Help
You can download and install many add-ons from Firefox
Add-ons. Internet searches will find many other add-ons as well.


When you click on a link to install an add-on, Firefox displays a
dialog asking you for permission to install the add-on. You can choose to
allow the download and installation or to cancel the process.

From Mozilla Firefox

Add-ons are small pieces of software which change or add to the appearance or
functionality of Firefox. There are two kinds of add-ons: extensions
and themes.

Extensions


Extensions add new functionality to Firefox. They can add
anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the
application to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user while
minimizing the size and appearance of the application itself.


Themes


Themes modify Firefox's appearance. They allow you to change the
look and feel of Firefox and personalize it to your tastes. A
theme can simply change button images, or it can change every piece of
Firefox appearance.

From Mozilla Firefox Help

To rearrange the items (icons, buttons, text boxes, etc.) on your toolbar,
right-clickpress Ctrl and
click on any part of the toolbar that is not a text box and select
Customize.... This will bring up the toolbar
customization dialog.


Drag and drop any items you want to and from the toolbars (excluding the menu items). You can also rearrange icons
already on the toolbars by dragging and dropping them wherever you wish. When
the toolbars and items are arranged the way you want them, click
Done.


Special Toolbar Items


There are a few special items that are available to you when customizing the
toolbar. They are as follows:

* Separators: These allow you to separate items on the
toolbars with a small vertical line.

* Spacers: These allow you to separate items on the
toolbars with a fixed-size space, usually around 20 pixels on most
themes.

* Flexible spacers: Spacers allow you to separate items
on the toolbars with a space. These spacers automatically resize to fill
all of the empty space on the toolbar. These are good for positioning
items on the right of a toolbar.

The optionspreferences for the Download Manager are accessible by opening the
Downloads section of the Main panel in the OptionsPreferences window.
They allow you to change several downloading optionspreferences. More information
regarding the various optionspreferences is available in the OptionsPreferences page.

Downloads



This section contains optionspreferences determining how Firefox
downloads files.




Show the Downloads window when downloading a file

With this optionpreference selected, Firefox will open the Downloads window when you start
downloading a file.




Close it when all downloads are finished

Select this optionpreference to have Firefox close the Downloads
window when all downloads currently in progress finish.




Save files to

By default downloaded files are automatically saved to the Desktop,
eliminating the hassle of specifying a download location for every file you
download. You can choose a different folder by clicking the Browse...Choose...
button.

Always ask me where to save files

With this optionpreference selected, Firefox will ask you where
you would like to save every downloaded file (instead of using the default
location specified above).