So you've downloaded and installed Mozilla Browser Suite. Now what? You probably could use it as is right away, but you might still run into some trouble on the Internet. Even without any specific effort to configure Mozilla, it's more secure than most others. But we want to get the most out of it, right? Why else would we go to all the trouble of getting it in the first place? To some degree, these instructions may help you configure Firefox Browser and Thunderbird Mail Client, since those two are based on Mozilla.
Keep in mind as we go along, there are three major issues. We want the software to provide:
Open Mozilla, and most of the time the browser window will be the first thing you see. Like most programs, there is a menu line at the top of the program window. We start by clicking on the "Edit" menu. Look all the way down to the bottom for the word "Preferences" and click on that. A small window will open. There is a "tree" on the left, showing all the various types of settings you can adjust. On the right side of the window is a larger pane that allows you to select various options within each group. Start with something simple, and click on the plus-sign next to "Appearance," then "Fonts." At the top, you can select your default language encoding group. This allows you to select the types of letters used in the alphabet of your native language. If you see nothing you recognize, you may be out of luck. We'll stick with English in this example, meaning we'll use the "Western" encoding. The next box down allows you to decide if you want most of the webpages you read to display the text in serif or sans-serif. Below that, choose what fonts you would prefer to see for each type of text display. My favorites are:
| font style | font name |
|---|---|
| serif | Georgia |
| sans-serif | Arial |
| cursive | Chancery |
| fantasy | Impact |
| monospace | Courier New |
Simply click on the small arrowhead on the end of each small window for the font names and you'll see a list of what Mozilla can find on your system. When you've made your choices, notice there are a couple of size settings you can make on the far right side. The top "Size" setting covers all but the monospace font. What you want depends on your eyes, the size of your monitor, and the resolution setting you use for your desktop display. It helps to have a standard sample webpage on which to test this. Make adjustments after looking at a very simple and generic page, such as the one you are reading now. You can change them later if you don't like what you see. Because monospace fonts tend to be differently sized than other fonts, there's a separate setting for that.
You can play with other settings, but for now click on the tree window item "Theme." Mozilla comes with two themes built in, and there are plenty more you can download at your leisure. For now, you are most likely looking at the "Modern" theme, which is light blue with dark blue accents. Since it drives me nuts, I usually click "Classic." Mozilla will tell you the change won't take effect until the next time you run the program. If you are just dying to see what's available, look down at the bottom of the right pane and click the link, "Get New Themes." When you are finished, click the minus sign on the tree pane next to "Appearance" and collapse the list. Then click on the "Navigator" plus sign if the tree isn't already open.
1. Basic Browser Settings -- These affect how the browser acts. First, click on "History." You'll notice there's not much to do here. The issue is partly annoyance and partly privacy. If in your browsing habits, you are greatly dependent on being able to find the address of a website by seeing where you've visited recently (history), then you need to leave this alone. However, be aware that if anyone else ever sits down to use your computer, they'll be able to see the list of places you've been. Aside from that, too large of a history collection can make it hard to search, depending on your skill level. I keep the setting at 3 days, so only places I visit frequently show up in the URL window drop-down list.
In the left pane of the Preferences window, jump down to "Internet Search" and set your favorite search engine. On the right is a drop-down list of search engines Mozilla knows about. Most people choose Google. That means when you want to find something on Google, all you need to do is start to type a keyword or two into the URL bar in the browser, and Mozilla will drop down an option to search for that item. If you click the drop-down, Mozilla automatically asks Google to display a search list for the keyword(s) you typed.
One of the most popular and useful features of Mozilla and a few other browsers is tabbed windows. That is, instead of opening a bunch of new browser windows, you can have all your windows displayed inside the main application window, and each open webpage will have its own tab at the top of the frame for quick jumping back and forth. It allows you to open a Google search page, for example, and open various listings in a new tabbed window so that you don't lose your search list. You can open several tabs at once to compare what's on the pages. For comfort, I recommend you select to hide the tab bar when only one window is open, and select your preferred method of telling the browser to chase a link by opening a new tab.
2. Security Settings -- Move down the tree to the item marked "Privacy and Security." Open the list under it. Click on "Cookies." Cookies are little bits of information that your browser saves and can refer back to if the server to which you connect asks. So if you go to a website that comes up in multiple languages, and you don't want to have to keep choosing your native tongue, it's likely the server will offer your browser a small bit of text to hold as a key. The next time you visit the site, your browser will tell the server which language you want to see.
However, some cookies have a more sinister purpose. Some will be no more than an ID tag that stays in your browser as you surf the Web. Just as TV is paid for by displaying commercials, so many websites are supported by advertising companies willing to pay for the right to display their ads on the webpages there. Many of these advertisers have ads all over the Web, and each time you visit a place they support, they give you several cookies. Each of them records information about where you got it, when, and so forth. Each time you visit one of their ad sites, their server asks your browser to show them the cookies -- all of the ad cookies. These cookies are like a secret ID card, and pretty soon the advertiser knows an awful lot about you. They collect this information and sell it, including all the personal details they can glean from what your browser tells them.
Some cookies are actually a bit of computer code that can execute commands that feed the server a lot of information about you, by convincing your system to tell your private information. The nice thing is that you can train Mozilla to accept nice cookies and refuse the rest. Naturally that requires you learn whom to trust, and whom not to trust. The simple answer is to deny cookies from websites you didn't actually visit, sites you don't want knowing about you, and just about any cookies from anybody you don't want to consider friendly.
In the right pane of the settings window, click on the option to accept cookies based on your privacy settings. Everything else we can ignore for now. After this, each time you've been online and you are ready to close Mozilla, take a moment to train the browser which cookies sites you like and which you don't. We'll look at that later.
Next, click on "Images" in the tree list. I despise graphics that are constantly flickering and moving. It distracts me from reading. So I tell Mozilla to accept all images for now, but run animations only once. I also tell Mozilla not to display graphics in my mail, and we'll explain that later when we discuss the Mozilla mail client. You'll also see a button about managing permissions. As with cookies, so we can train Mozilla to reject images from certain servers. There's a whole section later on training Mozilla.
For popup windows, Mozilla shines. Click that item in the tree list and click the button that tells Mozilla to block any popup window you don't specifically request. Some site will offer pictures, for example, in a separate small popup window. If you click on the link, you will want that popup. However, Mozilla will not allow the webpage to popup windows on its own.
3. Advanced Settings -- Open the tree list for "Advanced." The first item is "Scripts & Plug-ins." Here's where we deny webpages the power to mess with your browser. First, notice that you can disable javascript completely, but then some of your favorite sites won't work. So enable it for the browser, but not for your mail. Then look in the box below and turn off most of the options. I leave on "Change status bar text" because I don't mind text scrolling across the bottom of my browser window. I also don't mind if scripts change images on the webpage. Everything else I keep turned off. At the bottom of the right pane, I disable plugins for mail.
Next we look at cache. This is the ability of the browser to save a bunch of stuff for reuse later. For example, if you visit a website at least once each day, and the graphics never change, then let your browser save them in cache. That way you don't waste time downloading them again and again. If you have enough harddrive space, 50MB is not too big for a cache. Making it too small can make your browser work too hard, and perhaps unstable. We can leave everything else pretty much as is.
Now we are done. The other items we skipped are reserved for you to discover for yourself. Naturally, as you learn more, you can go back and change anything we've discussed already.
If you are truly paranoid about viruses and other nasties in your email, simply resolve to read all your mail using webmail. That is, go to the mail website and read your mail by logging in and reading it in your browser. If you really must download email to your machine, let's make it safe and sane. You'll notice I haven't mentioned the "newsgroups" connected with most of the mail settings. If you don't know what that is, I won't have room to cover that here, except to say it's like an electronic bulletin board -- thousands of them -- where lots of people post messages. If you use this feature, just remember to keep the same security settings as you do for email, and you should be safe.
You first need to tell Mozilla how you want your email handled. In the Preferences window, there's a tree item called "Mail & Newsgroups." Open the list and let's make some adjustments. First, I need to rant about something. From the beginning of the Internet, the one thing that made it all worthwhile for some people was email. It was a way to send simple messages across the world as quickly as the wires could carry the electrons. It began as simple, plain text. Over the years, there has arisen a very strong standard for plain text messages sent by email. I wrote a a style guide for such things using the format I explain. It's based on the best research and advice of experts. This works best, and departing from the guidelines can result in problems. One of the greatest heartaches Internet technicians suffer every day is the large number of people refusing to abide by a few simple rules. If you insist on sending fancy formatted email with lots of pictures, I will not help you. Go back to AOL.
For savvy Netizens, let's make Mozilla do it right. Click on "Message Display" and choose "Fixed width font" for plain text messages. Drop down to character encoding and choose what matches your native language. I prefer "Western (ISO-8859-15) because it allows proper display of special characters used by European languages.
Down the tree list there is "Composition." Here we tell Mozilla how to format outgoing email you send. Since we are assuming that email is plain text, we want to make sure messages we receive and forward on to others will keep the message all together. Attachments are a really bad idea most of the time, so choose "Inline." Then, when you click the "forward" button, the composer window opens with the original message pulled in with yours. You can clean up the message before sending it on. A lot of bad email software keeps adding all the header information -- like everyone to whom the message was sent -- inside the message. That's just plain naughty, an invasion of privacy. How do you know that message won't eventually be sent to a spammer, who will then add all those addresses to their spam list? Next, set plain text messages to wrap at 72 characters. That's easier to read and is less likely to be mangled by somebody else's bad email software when they read your message.
Next, click "Send format" in the tree list. Click the button that tells Mozilla to convert every message to plain text. For the purposes of this tutorial, we are now through with the Preferences window, so click the "Okay" button at the bottom to save all your settings.
Now we need to tell Mozilla about your mail accounts. Take a look at the bottom of the window frame of Mozilla, and on the right side are some tiny icons. One of them should resemble a mail envelope sitting in a blue tray. Click on that icon, and Mozilla will open a separate window for email. As soon as that window opens, a wizard usually pops up to guide you through setting up the first account. Mozilla will allow you to handle several accounts separately from the mail window, but we're going to start with one.
There are some bits of information you must get from your email provider to get this working:
Most of the time that will be enough information. Mozilla will probably try to download that account right away. You can usually stop it. To see more detailed options, go back to the main Mozilla menu line but this time in the Mail window, and click "Edit" again. This time you will see an option near the bottom saying something about mail account settings. Click on that and a mail account settings window will open. On the left pane is a tree view of each account with the various types of settings that belong to that account. Click on the account nickname and you'll see the basic settings you just gave the setup wizard. You can change them here if something is wrong. You can also add more accounts from this window with the "Add Account" button.
Click on "Server settings" and look in the right pane. You'll see some information about a pop mail server. That's because Mozilla keeps the functions of sending and receiving separate. The word "POP" means receiving. Many mail servers are designed to tolerate frequent checking, but for dialup users that's not a good idea. If that's you, then turn off the option for checking for new mail every few minutes. I also turn off checking on startup, because I want to choose when it happens. Most everything else is pretty harmless, except for the "Leave mail on server" option. If you turn that on, it doesn't actually download your email, but simply copies it. If you don't really need all those messages saved on the mail server, you need to turn that off.
On that pane is a button marked "Advanced." If you have only one account, you may never need to use this. If you have several accounts, you need to make sure to check this for each account. These days, each of your several accounts will refuse to send mail for one of the others. That is, if the mail is from your home account, with the return email address to match, and you try to send it out through the server at work, it may refuse. You'll need to setup a separate sending server for each account. Create all your accounts, remembering that you are only setting up to receive mail after the first account is setup. Scroll down to the bottom of the tree view in the left pane, and click on the "Outgoing Server (SMTP)" item. The right pane will display the information for the first account you setup. Click the "Advanced" button and a small window will open, with a list of your one SMTP server. Click the "Add" button and put there the information for each account's outgoing server. Close that window, then go back to each incoming account, click the server settings dialogue, and click the "Advanced" button. In a small window you will see all the sending (SMTP) servers you just added; pick the proper SMTP server for each POP account.
Most of the time you don't need to worry about "port numbers" unless your email provider tells you something specific. Some providers use different numbers for security reasons.
Close the accounts settings window and click on any one of your accounts in the left tree pane of the mail window itself. In the right pane you'll see a list of things you can do with that account. In the tree, you'll see folders under each account. Their use should be obvious. When you download new mail, it goes to "Inbox" and if you delete, it goes to the "Trash" folder. For now, there should be no mail listed in any of them. If you click on the button at the top of the mail window that says "Get Messages" Mozilla will download the email for the account that you are viewing. You can check them all at once by clicking the right edge of the button. A list will drop down, allowing you to choose one account at a time to check, or all accounts at once.
Look in each account's inbox. Click "Inbox" in the tree pane and the messages will be listed in the top of the right pane. Click on any message in the list and it will be displayed in the larger area below. If you want to delete without opening the message, right-click and the context menu will let you delete it. However, if you consider the message spam, tell Mozilla by right-clicking, selecting "Mark" and choose "Junk" from the menu list. If you've already opened the message, click on the "Junk" icon on the top bar of the mail window. Keep doing this over a period of time and Mozilla will learn. When you are quite certain Mozilla has it worked out, you can create a filter that automatically sends spam to the Trash folder. Once you are finished processing your mail, right-click on the trash folder and choose the menu option to empty it. You can selectively delete only the junk mail by clicking in the mail window menu on "Tools." The drop down list includes an option for deleting all the messages marked as junk.
Eventually, when you are certain Mozilla knows what qualifies as spam, you can select from that same tools menu "Junk Mail Controls..." which will open a wizard. You'll notice this must be applied to each account individually. About halfway down is an option to automatically move everything Mozilla thinks is junk into the trash as soon as you download it. Click the radio button on, then select the folder -- Trash -- where you want the spam dropped. It helps to keep checking now and then to insure there are no false readings, tossing good messages in with the spam. Also note that Mozilla responds to mouse clicks all over the interface. For example, in the message list window, if you click on a message in the list with your pointer in the column lined up under the junk icon (across the top of the pane, between "Subject" and "Sender") Mozilla will mark that message as spam.
One last setting for email here. In the mail window menu line, find "View" and go down to "Message Body As" to open the options. Select "Plain Text." There is a very good reason for this. One, you need to get used to seeing all email as plain text, and teach all your correspondents to send it that way. Two, if you allow formatted mail to display, it is possible for someone to insert hidden codes that will execute commands in any HTML window. For example, it's possible to hide image links in the formatting code that will try to pull an image off a server on the Web when you display the HTML in a viewer. In doing so, the code will send a signal that will tell the sender -- like a spammer -- your email address is not just a good guess, but a real address where somebody opens advertising mail. You'll get a lot more spam. Your friends can still send attachments that you can open while you are offline, and Mozilla will show there are attachments when you open the message. You can still view the HTML from your friends in a new window.
Cookies -- There are three types of cookies:
Differentiating requires a bit of mental preparation. First, pay
attention to where you go. If you click on links willy-nilly, you
are sure to find some evil surprises now and then. Hover your mouse over
this link.
Down in the status bar at the bottom of your browser, you'll see the web
address ("URL" or "URI" is the official abbreviation) to which the link
sends you. Between the first part with the http:// and the
next slash symbol (/) is the most important part for now.
The link in this case refers to a section named webs on the
network named tconline.net. By now you probably know most
URLs begin with something like www, a portion of the
Internet known as the WorldWide Web. Often you don't need the
www for your browser the find the network address. From the
same website, you may receive cookies that come with and without that
part. However, since Mozilla lists cookies alphabetically, you'll find
them separated in the list, so check the whole list.
That list is found by going to the top of your browser application
window to the menu line, the menu marked "Tools." Near the top is the
item "Cookie Manager" -- click that and you get another drop-down list.
Drop to the bottom and select "Manage Stored Cookies." The cookie
manager is a small window. The top part is a window listing the cookies
Mozilla has accepted. If you haven't used Mozilla yet, this should be
empty. Once you've been online a bit, break the connection and open this
window. By keeping track of places you know you've visited, you can pick
out the cookies from places you did not visit. Those are called "third
party cookies" and you mostly want to avoid them. First, click on the
offending cookie, then click the radio button that says something like
"Don't allow sites ... to set future cookies." Then delete the cookie.
We have told Mozilla to put that website on a list that refuses all
cookies from them. Eventually, you will learn to recognize all the
cookies from advertiser websites, like doubleclick,
tribalfusion, servedby, hitbox,
etc. Those are tracking cookies and no one has any business doing that
to you.
One more thing: be aware that some cookies only appear to be third
party cookies, but are safe. If you visit some weblog sites, you must
accept cookies from another site that runs the little comment boxes that
open when you want to post a response. An example of this is
blogspot.com and haloscan.com. The latter
website provides the comment popups. Pay attention to the status bar on
the popup window and you'll learn to recognize that you did indeed visit
this URL.
There are plenty of places you'll go but don't want their cookies. That's why you must make sure you turn that radio button off when you don't need it. Simply remove those cookies. Part of the reason is that so very many website servers will check to see if you accept cookies. If not, they won't let you see their webpages. So take their cookies, then delete them later. The places you know and trust, you always leave their cookies alone.
Images -- Some advertisers just don't accept any limits. If they could get away with forcing you to buy their stuff, they'd do it in a second. They are barely tolerated because they often make part of Net possible that would otherwise be missing. However, they have to accept limits and behave themselves. Some refuse. When you visit a webpage and see an ad that offends you, right-click on the image. One of the menu options will be to block images from that particular server. Since most ads shown on a webpage are sent from a different server, this works most of the time. The next time you click on a page that links to that server, there will be a big blank spot instead of an ad. Pay attention to the address Mozilla shows you for that ad -- some webmasters are now agreeing to server ads internally, and you may end up blocking all the images from the place you visit. Some may like it that way, and pages load faster, but they probably won't look right. Also, this trick won't work on Flash ads. You will either have to block all Flash images or learn the advanced techniques in blocking them. There's not room to cover that here.
Importing -- Mozilla is pretty intelligent. It knows how to find all your Internet settings from other applications. For those who run Windows, this is especially easy. As soon as you install Mozilla, it will grab a copy of your bookmarks from Internet Explorer. Check the "Bookmarks" menu in the browser and you should see them in a folder. Mozilla will also import your Outlook or Outlook Express settings and mail. If you weren't asked when you installed Mozilla, you can do it manually.
Open the mail window. Click on the main menu "Tools" and drop down to "Import..." A wizard window will open asking you which of several items you wish to import. That might be your addresses, mail, or some settings. It's a bit more complicated for Linux and Unix machines, but usually still works. Also, be aware that if you are migrating all your personal files to another computer, you can copy the entire Mozilla folder to your new machine and Mozilla will simply resume where it left off. Simply put the folder in exactly the same place in the file structure as the it was on the old one.
In Windows XP, that's found:
C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\
For Linux and Unix, it's:
~/.mozilla
You may want to consider removing the cache subfolder
from the Mozilla folder, as you may recall we set it to something like
50MB of stuff you need not copy. Mozilla will create a new cache when it
restarts. If you are burning this stuff to a CD Linux and Unix people,
change the folder name from .mozilla to something like
xmozilla before writing to CD, then change it back after
copying to your new home. Notice that Mozilla doesn't keep it's stuff
all over the system, but saves everything in one place.
There are plenty of things you can do to modify Mozilla's behavior
that cannot be found in a menu or wizard. If you are smart enough, you
can find a file named prefs.js that will list all the
things you've changed. However, it will not list anything else that is
possible to change. For that, you need a special trick. In your URL bar
at the top of the browser, type this in:
about:config
exactly as you see it here. Then hit ENTER. Mozilla will
open a special page that lists every setting built in to the program.
Some are simply true/false to turn something on or off. Some are based
on keywords, and others use simple numbers. It would impossible for me
to list here every option. That would be a small book, and I don't know
most of them, anyway. However, there are a couple of items we can look
at to get an idea how it all works.
First, something simple. Scroll down the window to an item labeled
browser.download.dir. Click on that label. On the far right
is a column where you can change the location of where you want your
downloads to be saved. I set mine to a folder in my home directory
called downloads. Since I run Linux, that would look like
this: /home/jeh/downloads. For Windows it would use the
normal Windows/DOS path structure. Right click on the line and select
the option "Modify." This will open a small window and allow you to
enter the full path name of the directory you prefer. Then click "Okay"
to save it. You'll notice it changes immediately in the list. Make sure
what you type in that box is an actual directory and properly
spelled.
The configuration options are in alphabetical order, for the most
part. Somewhere around three-fourths of the way down you should find
options for mailnews.xxx. Please note that in computers, to
alphabetize means a dot or period comes before letters, so this comes
after mail.wrap. Look for the item referring to "flowed
format." There is an on-going debate about this. A huge proportion of
Americans learned the Internet through AOL (and Windows). They would
like to bring all their bad habits with them when they finally decide to
choose another Internet Service Provider. One of those bad habits is to
send email with huge long lines of text that wrap to the width of the
display window. They have even tried to make it an alternative standard
accepted by the International agencies which establish guidelines for
Internet use worldwide. However, this ignores the way the human eyes and
brain work. If a line of text is more than 75 characters long, it
becomes difficult to read. The eyes tend to lose place on which line is
next when returning from one side to the other. This is why most
webpages confine the actual reading material, like articles, to a narrow
space. Flowed text is a bad habit, but all the standards are pretty much
voluntary. We can't make people build email software that does it right,
nor can we force people to send us email that way. What we can do is
tell our browser to wrap the lines at 72, the old and correct
standard.
On the line labled:
mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support
right-click and select "Modify" again. When the box pops up, replace
the word false with true. Then click "Okay"
to save it.
One more setting and we're done. Scroll down a bit further to
mailnews.reply_on_top
and click on it. Modify it from 1 to 0
(zero) and save. One of the worst habits of people is to reply to a
message by writing above it. First, people reading it will see the
reply, then have to read on to get the context. In the meantime, if you
start typing a reply at the top, it builds the habit of not noticing how
long the message is getting. Soon, you have a stack of replies each on
top of the other and the original message is way down at the bottom.
This takes up extra time to read and understand, and extra time to send.
Most veteran users consider it rude.
Proper etiquette is to set your mail composer to begin the reply at the bottom. This way if you have a signature block, it will be at the bottom where it belongs. Also, get used to scanning down from the top, cutting into the original message and answering directly below the words to which you want to direct individual comments. Longer and more involved responses should be at the bottom. If you aren't bright enough to understand all this, the least you can do is learn to write your responses at the bottom and try to cut out parts of the original message that aren't necessary. Shorter mail is better mail because it travels faster, is less likely to be mangled in passing, and demands less of the reader.
All the other settings you can learn on your own. As they say, "Google is your friend." Happy surfing!
Ed Hurst
04 February 2005
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior -- "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23)