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Mozilla Tips

The following tips are offered for Mozilla and Netscape 7.

Netscape 7 = Mozilla + AOL branding + Instant Messenger + ICQ + Java 2 Runtime Environment + WinAMP + RealAudio + Net2Phone + Netscape Radio - popup blocks

Netscape 7.1 (based on Mozilla 1.4) is the final release of Netscape.

"Mozilla is Netscape without the commercial add-ons and with even more stable and up-to-date code than has yet been incorporated into Netscape." PC Mag

Tip #1: Turn the Sidebar Off!

Personally I find the sidebar ugly, annoying, cluttering, and not really that useful. You can turn it off by hitting the F9 key or with View -> Show/Hide -> Sidebar.

Tip #2: Use Tabs

Mozilla does tabbed panes really well, making it easy to multiplex your web surfing experience. To open a new tab, hit Ctrl + T. You close it with Ctrl + W or the X you see off to the right of the tab name. Also, you can open new browser windows in a new tab instead. Just enable it under Edit -> Preferences -> Navigator -> Tabbed Browsing :: Open tabs instead of windows. Pretty cool, eh?

Tip #3: Block Pop-Up Windows

If you really enjoy pop-ups ("The Super-Duper X10 Spy Cam!", "Try AOL 10.0!", "Free trial issue of Time Magazine!") then skip to the next tip. Otherwise uncheck Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Scripts & Windows :: Allow webpages to open unrequested windows. This still allows requested pop-ups, for instance if you click a JavaScript button or link, but it puts you back in control.

Note: AOL has removed this feature from Netscape 7.0! But the Netscape Unofficial FAQ tells you how to restore this option.

Tip #4: Block Advertisements

Right-click on an ad image, and select "Block Images From This Server". Typically banner ads are served from common sites, so you'll start to really reduce the number of ads you see. If you go too far and block legitimate sites, you can undo it by right-clicking on the space where the ad was and choosing Unblock Images From This Server. Or, by going to Tools -> Image Manager -> Manage Image Permissions. For a even more effective solution, you could set up a filtering proxy such as Internet Junkbuster.

Tip #5: "Turbo" Mode

Memory is cheap. Browsing should be fast. Under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced you can Enable Quick Launch. This only is available on certain operating systems (including Windows). It will preload the browser into memory, placing an icon in the taskbar. When you click the icon, you'll get a new browser window instantly.

Tip #6: Email Labeling and Sorting

Labeling lets you color code email in one of five categories: Important, Work, Personal, To Do, or Later. Right click on the message and choose Label. You can even sort your email folder based on their labels, under View -> Sort By -> Label. I find this useful to organize messages that normally would just get left behind in my Inbox.

Tip #7: Setting Autocomplete Preferences

Autocomplete remembers the URLs you type into the location bar. You can control how it works under Edit -> Preferences -> Navigator -> Smart Browsing :: Location Bar Autocomplete :: Advanced. I like "autocomplete best match as you type", "show list of matching results", and "match only websites you've typed previously."

Tip #8: Switching Themes

Classic sucks! Modern rocks! If you don't like one look, try the other, under Edit -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Themes. More themes are available on sites such as mozdev.org.

Tip #9: Use the Addressbook

Mozilla's addressbook is pretty good. It can import from a variety of types including Outlook, Outlook Express, LDIF (from Directory Servers) and a few plain text types. It can export to LDIF and comma or tab seperated text files. Open the addressbook and look under Tools for these features.

Another cool feature is the "Get Map" for street addresses, that pops it up in MapQuest.

Tip #10: Foreign Characters In Email

Mozilla's mail client has a nifty component to insert foreign characters (e.g ñ, µ, ©) when composing an email. Select Insert -> Characters and Symbols. For instance to insert the ñ choose the category "Accent Lowercase", then Letter n, Character ñ and Insert.

It works equally well for plain text and html formatted emails.

Tip #11: Try the Calendar

Mozilla's calendar is at this time still in beta, and scheduled to be a part of the 1.1 release. But it's already quite usable. If you want to check it out, there's a single-click install available from the Calendar project page.

Tip #12: Multiple Inboxes

The old Netscape Communicator never supported multiple IMAP inbox folders, but Mozilla does. This is a very useful feature, say if you have a personal IMAP account at your ISP and another at your work. It can be configured under Edit -> Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings on the mail window.

Tip #13: Installing the Java Plugin

Java can do some really cool things. In addition it's very secure, unlike other methods of doing dynamic content on the client-side. For these reasons, many sites continue to use it on their pages. If you don't have Java installed, you can get it from the java site. Mozilla should detect if you have Java installed by looking for the JAVA_HOME environment variable.

Tip #14: Add a "Favorites" Icon To Your Homepage

A "favicon" is a icon that shows in the address bar of some browsers, including Mozilla and Internet Explorer. There are several ways to create one, choose whatever makes the most sense:

  • Use png2ico to convert an image to the proper format.
  • Use Microsoft Paint to save an image as a .ico file.
  • Use ppmtowinicon from the NetPBM package to do the conversion.
  • Use the free online editor at favicon.com to upload and save an image.
  • Choose and save a favicon from a site such as this.

Once you've saved the favicon.ico file, add lines such as the following in the <head> section of your page: 


<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/ico">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico">
See Also
Netscape 7 Upgrade Guide (PDF). How-to guide on upgrading from previous version of Netscape to Netscape 7.
101 Things that Mozilla can do and IE cannot.
Great Salon.com article on Mozilla
ArsTechnica Review of Mozilla
Mozilla Keyboard ShortCuts