Reaching the Secret Settings in Firefox

How
many of the rest of you Firefox users never knew about all of the ‘secret’
configurable controls you can access via the
about:config URL? There’s all sorts of cool stuff you
can do, just by typing about:config in the address box, although if you’re
not a true geek, you might end up, like the Dowbrigade, with
all your New Windows opening the size of a postage stamp and the browser
reading each and every page in an annoying southern drawl.

If you’d like to take a look, a quick guided tour, and get some comprehensible
explications of some of the most useful secret settings, check out Ten
Mysteries of about:config by Nigel McFarlane in Linux Journal

The Firefox Web browser, built by the Mozilla Foundation and friends
is a complicated piece of technology-if you care to look under the
hood. It’s not obvious where the hood catch is, because the surface
of Firefox (its user interface) is polished up to appeal to ordinary,
nontechnical end users. This article gives you a glimpse of the engine.
It explains how the Mozilla about:config URL opens up a world of obscure
preferences that can be used to tweak the default setup. They’re an
improbable collection and therein lies the beauty of Firefox if you’re
a grease monkey or otherwise technical. At the end you’ll know a little
more about Firefox, but only enough to be dangerous.

from Linux Journal