Many often-needed browser settings are available in the dialog that opens when you select
+ .Under this entry, set the fonts and colors the browser should use, select a theme, and switch between the German and the English language version.
The first thing that can be changed under this entry is the start page for the browser. Configure Mozilla to start with a blank page, the home page as defined below (which may be your organization's intranet portal, for instance), or the last page visited. In the dialog, define the number of days for which the addresses of visited pages should be stored. lets you define a list of preferred languages, which is useful for pages that are available in several languages. Under , tell Mozilla which search engine to use.
If you do not want Mozilla to show matching Internet addresses from the history automatically as soon as you start typing, disable this feature under + . Alternatively, configure Mozilla to autocomplete addresses in the entry field itself. To do so, select the button then, in the dialog, .
One of the options available in the Mozilla open a new tab for a web page whenever you middle-click a link. Under , specify how the progress of file downloads should be monitored. Enabling causes the browser to open the full-featured download manager dialog. limits the dialog to a progress bar displayed during download. Turn off all download feedback by enabling .
dialog is to haveThis is one of the most important parts of the preferences, with a number of settings related to cookie handling and the built-in password management. In addition to that, there is an entry in which to specify from which web sites Mozilla should accept images.
To maintain a degree of privacy, it is often a good idea to accept cookies only from the server from which the requested document is received. To achieve this, enable
. Enabling may cause some web pages not to function in the intended way. With , inspect the properties of any cookies that have been accepted.Use the
dialog to define similar settings for the handling of graphics. This is especially useful if you do not want to clog an already slow connection (modems) with the download of large images. The dialog also allows you to suppress the animation of any images. To achieve this, just select under the header.In the Mozilla should store any passwords entered. Consider both convenience and security. However, if you use the browser for online banking, you should definitely not have the corresponding password stored by Mozilla.
dialog, decide whetherOften, web pages are not only written in plain HTML. Many sites also use JavaScript or Java to produce some special effects. As a general rule, it is recommended to turn off Java. Under
, you should also turn off JavaScript at least for . Other dialogs available under this entry are related to the browser's and to the used by it.The settings in the
dialog depend on the specific circumstances with which the browser needs to cope, but the default 4096 kB size of the is often too small. A cache is a temporary storage area used for the files fetched from the network so they can be reused.