Download HAck

This next group of hacks deal with the download manager in Firefox. For those of you that don’t use the Firefox download manager, skip this section. I don’t know about you, but I personally hate the download manager, it is annoying and generally a distraction when it pops up with its messages and warning, so, let�s do away with it. Follow these steps to tweak/destroy your manager.

1. With Firefox up and running, type about:config and hit enter.
2. Take your pick of the following attributes to modify.
3a. browser.download.manager.showAlertInterval at default shows the alert message for 2000 milliseconds or 2 seconds. I personally set it to 500 milliseconds; all I need is a quick blurb telling me my download is done.
3b. browser.download.manager.openDelay at default opens up the download manager immediately, which can be a big pain if you are downloading 10Kb files to your desktop, you don’t need that annoying manager to pop up. I have this guy set on 30,000 milliseconds or 30 seconds. If a file is larger than 30 seconds of download time, I might want to watch its progress.
3c. browser.download.manager.closeWhenDone at default is set to false so that your manager doesn’t close itself. I set it to true just to get this thing out of the way the moment it is done, I like to watch progress, but I don’t need to waste space or the time to close it.
3d. browser.download.manager.flashCount at default flashes the download manager icon in your taskbar for 2 seconds, I prefer zero seconds to reduce annoyance, adjust to your preference.
4. Restart your browser.


These hacks are just my personal preference, you may like it just the way it is, or you may want to do more. Browse through the about:config and you’ll find tons of stuff to tweak. Verdict: personal preference, doesn’t increase performance, maybe productivity.

This last hack is less of a hack and more of a good habit you should pick up. I tend to clear my cache and download list at least once a week, sometimes more often. This will usually increase performance and it will also update all content, but on a slow connection this could hurt your performance, especially if you have pictures loaded in your cache that don’t change. Do this at your own digression.