Tuesday's Tech Tip: Optimizing Firefox 3

Well, now that all the cool kids are using Firefox 3, I guess it's time to share some tips and tricks.

1. Adblock Plus

I'm a fan of Adblock Plus. Who wants to look at ads anyway? ABP zaps the majority of them from your browsing experience. Go to your menu and click on Tools --> Add-ons. A little window pops up, showing you your installed add-ons. Click on Get Add-ons and type Adblock Plus into the search field. Then click the Add to Firefox button.

It will be installed the next time you load Firefox. Take the time to tell it what "list" to use when blocking ads. I use "EasyList (USA)". I think it asks you what you want to use when you install it. If not, you can click the down arrow on your new ABP icon (looks like a stop sign to the right of your search bar) and tell it what you want.

If you want to see the ads on a particular site, just click the down arrow next to the ABP icon and say "Disable on this site."

2. Full-screen mode

Firefox has a nice full-screen mode that hides all the extra junk (called chrome) and maximizes your screen's real estate. Hit your F11 key to toggle full-screen mode on and off. What I like about it is that not only does it hide all the chrome, but it auto-hides -- and reveals -- your open tabs whenever you hover your mouse near the top of the screen.

3. Robots

Type about:robots into your address bar and hit enter.