Editing configuration

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Revision as of 10:49, 7 May 2006 by Rod Whiteley (talk | contribs) (Clarify, adding ChromEdit and Stylish links)
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Mozilla applications are highly customizable, and there are a number of standard ways to change their appearance and behaviour. Basic settings can be changed using the application's dialog boxes. The main Options or Preferences dialogs can be reached from the "Tools" or "Edit" menus. (See menu differences in Windows, Linux, and Mac.)

Modifying preferences—adding, removing and setting

To make more advanced changes to the application’s behaviour—in particular, if you have been instructed to “set a preference”—you should either edit the user.js file, or use the about:config interface. Note that whilst it is often quicker to use about:config, editing the "user.js" file has the advantage of portability: your preferences will never be overridden, and they can be transferred to a different profile, or backed up for safe keeping.

Modifying appearance

To modify the way in which Web pages and e-mails are displayed, you should edit the userContent.css file. To modify the appearance of the application itself, you should edit the userChrome.css file.

External links

  • The ChromEdit extension provides a convenient way of editing configuration files.

    At the time of writing (May 2006) ChromeEdit is not officially available for current versions of Mozilla aapplications, but an unofficial updated version is available.

  • The Stylish extension provides another way to change styles. It does not use userContent.css or userChrome.css, and changes take effect without restarting the application.