Mozilla Firefox needs no special mention to anyone who is associated with internet. Perhaps the fastest and most reliable browser in this world is the most popular one too as they achieved the Guiness Book of World Records for most download in a single day. The key to their success has been continuous improvement of the browser and large committed group of high-quality developers, which Mozilla Foundation could cheaply leverage due to the open source nature of the product. Mozilla Foundation surely do not believe in resting on their laurels. Mozilla Firefox 4 suits the idiom perfectly as it is coming up with some features we could have never imagined in a browser. So let us sneak into that world.

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The download manager of Firefox is one of the most advanced features of a modern internet browser. From the age old Windows' default download options in Internet Explorer to Opera or Maxthon's improved download managers, we have seen them all. But effectively, Firefox download manager is the quickest we have seen so far, atleast for a browser. So what if I help you to do the icing on the cake in this article. I will share with you some tweaks and tricks of Firefox download manager solely. So let's get on with Firefox 3.

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Gone are the days of buggy, infection prone and troublesome Internet Explorer. The popular product on which I want to throw some light on, needs no introduction. The Guinness record holder software for maximum downloads in a single day is the one and only Firefox. I am writing this article in Firefox and most likely you are going to read it in Firefox too (if not, why not?). So without further ado, I present you my choice of top 10 smart browsing hacks for Firefox:

1. How to rapidly search any website directly from Firefox address bar
2. HowTo Speed Up Firefox
3. How to Type URL's Faster
4. How to Navigate Tabs from Keyboard
5. How To Make Advanced Configuration Changes in the Guts of Firefox
6. 13 Time saving Keyboard shortcuts in Firefox
   
7. How To Get Rid of The Annoying Scroll Tab Button
8. How to Start Downloading Add-ons Immediately
9. How to Limit Firefox Memory Usage
10. How to Move or Remove The 'close tab' Button
11. Bonus Tip: How to Personalize Firefox

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The following is a detailed of Google Chrome browser. I have taken it through the paces, tested many features and even tried to run it on Linux.
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The test machine runs on Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4 Ghz (x2) with 2GB RAM. I tried loading single page PHP manual (16.5 MB) on Windows Vista from our local server with 100Mbps LAN connecting it. At the same time I was running the Javascript console to measure performance of page loading. I was also searching for the term cgi in the page being loaded. It takes about 2 minutes to load it in Firefox. 20 minutes later the page was still loading in Google Chrome!

The page up / page down keys were pretty unresponsive in the tab as well as the Javascript console. It appears Google Chrome parses pages as it loads the. As of the time of this writing the single tab with PHP manual has consumed 576 MB of RAM and still increasing. I could see the Javascript Console was using the same process which explains which it was hanging along with the browser tab. Read after the break for more details.

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Every one in my company knows about pkill, an obscure Linux command because we use Firefox (we are 100% Linux based) as the default browser. What is the relation, you ask? The answer is simple.

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Firefox download manager is still flaky, even after three major versions. Often the download stops for no apparent reasons. At least in version 3, you can safely stop and then resume the download, which works as expected.

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My most favorite Firefox 3 feature is the automatically generated Most Visited folder on Bookmarks tab. It allows me to quickly browse my important work related websites. The FastDial add-on also provides a similar feature but it does it the Opera way. Whenever you open a new tab / window, it displays your 12 favorite website, which you can just click on to open.

People are reporting that Firefox is significantly faster on slower machines. I don't feel it as I am on a high-end Core 2 Duo.

What is your most favorite feature in Firefox 3?

These add-ons are so useful that I cannot work for a single day without them and so I would suspect most web developers and QA Engineers. These plugins / add-ons makes Firefox a formidable web development and testing platform. They are:

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Selenium Remote Control (RC) is a test tool that allows you to write automated web application UI tests in many programming languages against any HTTP website using any mainstream JavaScript-enabled browser. Selenium RC is a powerful and simple framework for running (scheduled or manually) automated UI centric regression tests for web applications / services. Here are few simple tips for Selenium RC java client. I used JUnit for tests. You can use NGUnit too.

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