Making Firefox less annoying

[wblock@]

There are two usability problems with Firefox 17 that I'd like to solve, or at least improve.

The first is new. I've been using

xmodmap -e "keycode 115 = Left" -e "keycode 116 = Left"

to set the Windows keys to be arrow keys. So alt-windows is the same as alt-leftarrow, but less of a stretch to type. This stopped working with Firefox 17.

The second problem is with the "smart" bar and completion. I regularly type the first few characters of common sites, using it as command completion. This mostly works, but every so often, it fails to complete and I get search results for (for example) goo. Possibly it's because sqlite is taking too long to return a big query. Can it be changed to delay accepting Enter until the search is complete? Can sqlite be sped up with port config options?

 

[cpm@]

Hi wblock@

Early versions of firefox had a very useful addon to the keyboard shortcuts called keyconfig but unfortunately has not been updated to be incorporated into the latest versions of the browser.

About the second problem, you can use this solution for Linux, but that there should be no problem to implement it in FreeBSD.

 

[SirDice]

In about:config look for:

browser.fixup.alternate.enabled
browser.fixup.alternate.prefix
browser.fixup.alternate.suffix

When you type something in the address bar this "fixup" tacks www in the front and .com on the back and tries to use that as a URL. Very, very annoying. I turned it off completely and now it just shows a "Server not found".

 

[wblock@]

Found this shortcut customizer https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/customizable-shortcuts/.

The funny thing is that when I edited "Back 2" and pressed my alt-win key, it showed up as "Alt+Left"--exactly the same as the "Back" shortcut. So it should have worked, but something changed in Firefox. Removing the xmodmap(1) settings and recreating that shortcut shows up as "Alt+Win", and works.

 

[jrm@]

If you're open to trying plugins to customize keybindings, you might like pentadactyl. You'll definitely have to use the nightly builds though. A combination of the new firefox release model and changes to E4X means a fast moving target for the pentadactyl developers.