FireTune takes the heat off non-techie Firefox users
- By Matt Stephens
- October 11, 2005
One of the nice features about Firefox is that it is customisable to the n’th degree; for example you could spend an age tinkering with the performance settings, tuning the browser to the perfect level of optimization for your system. However, many of the settings are buried away in about:config and other nooks and crannies, and are largely undocumented in the product itself.
As Firefox grows in popularity and reaches beyond its “early adopter” techie user base, more and more users will want to customise and performance-tune it, but won’t be prepared to spend their time trawling the web for scraps of information.
If you’re a FireFox user and you haven’t tried it yet, consider using FireTune, as it does a lot of the fine-tuning for you. The UI is nicely thought out and quite friendly for non-techies.
On startup, FireTune warns you to create a backup of your Firefox config before applying any changes. As this is a “do-it-all-for-you” GUI tool, it should ideally offer to do this for you: and luckily it does – there’s a “Create backup” button on the main screen, as well as a “Restore” button. It doesn’t get much easier than that (other than if it just backed up your settings automatically - perhaps in version 2…)
The tuning process is very quick and painless: choose your options and click the Tune It button, and that’s basically it. Hours of trial & error saved… Highly recommended.