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# &brandFullName; &pref.pluralCaps;

This document explains all of the &pref.plural; available in the &pref.pluralCaps; window of &brandFullName;.

In this section:

- General &pref.pluralCaps;
- Privacy &pref.pluralCaps;
- Content &pref.pluralCaps;
- Tabs &pref.pluralCaps;
- Downloads &pref.pluralCaps;
- Advanced &pref.pluralCaps;

## General &pref.pluralCaps;

### Home Page

Here you can specify the page (or tab group) that &brandShortName; will show when you launch it or press the Home button. Enter the address in the Location(s) field.

Click Use Current Page(s) to use the page you're currently visiting. You can also use multiple home pages. If more than one browser tab is currently opened, this button will set the whole tab group as a start page.

To specify the home page(s) using a bookmark, click Use Bookmark.... Selecting a whole bookmark folder will load all the bookmarks inside it in tabs.

If you don't want a home page to be loaded, click Use Blank Page.

### Default Browser

&brandShortName; should check to see if it is the default browser when starting
Check this option if you want &brandShortName; to check whether it is the default browser when starting. This will ensure &brandShortName; is used whenever an application tries to display a web page or when you open an HTML file. You can also click the Check Now button to do a check right now.

### Connection Settings

Your organization or Internet service provider may offer or require you to use a proxy. A proxy acts as an intermediary between your computer and the Internet. It intercepts all requests to the Internet to see if it can fulfill the request using its cache. Proxies are used to improve performance, filter requests, and hide your computer from the Internet to improve security. Proxies are often part of a corporate firewall.

#### Connection Settings dialog:

Direct connection to the Internet
  This is the default &pref.singular;. Choose this if you don't want to use a proxy.
Auto-detect proxy settings for this network
  Choose this if you want &brandShortName; to automatically detect the proxy settings for your network.
Manual proxy configuration
  Choose this if you don't have a proxy location (URL). Ask your system administrator for the names and port numbers of the servers running proxy software for each network service and enter the information in the appropriate fields.
Automatic proxy configuration URL
  If your workplace has a proxy configuration file, ask the system administrator for its URL and enter it here. Click Reload to load the settings.

## Privacy &pref.pluralCaps;

The Privacy panel contains &pref.plural; related to your privacy. As you browse the web, information on where you have been, what pages you have visited, etc. are stored here. You can click the corresponding Clear button on each but the Passwords tab to clear that information. If you really want to delete all your Passwords at once, click View Saved Passwords and then click the Remove All button in the Password Manager dialog.

### Clear Private Data Settings

&brandShortName; also allows you to clear certain or all items by pressing &accelKey;+&shiftKey;+`Del` or selecting Tools > Clear Private Data.... You can also change the &pref.singular; to make &brandShortName; clear your data when you close &brandShortName;. &pref.pluralCaps; for this are in the Clear Private Data dialog.

To display section-specific &pref.plural;, display a section by clicking on its tab.

### History

Here you can specify how long you want &brandShortName; to remember what pages you have visited. The default is 9 days.

### Saved Forms

Save information I enter in forms and the Search bar
When you enter information in web forms, &brandShortName; remembers what you type and automatically makes suggestions when you enter information again. To stop this behavior, uncheck this &pref.singular;.

### Passwords

Remember Passwords
&brandShortName; can securely save passwords you enter in web forms to make it easier to log on to web sites. Clear this checkbox to prevent &brandShortName; from remembering your passwords.

Set/Change Master Password...
&brandShortName; can protect sensitive information such as saved passwords and certificates. If you create a Master Password, &brandShortName; will ask you to enter it once per session as soon as it is needed. You can set or change the master password by clicking this button.

Remove Master Password...
Click this button to remove your current master password. You will have to enter your current master password to do this.

View Saved Passwords
You can manage saved passwords and delete individual passwords by clicking the View Saved Passwords button.

### Download History

The Download Manager (accessible from Tools, by pressing &accelKey;+`J`&accelKey;+`Y`, or by clicking the View Download History button) stores shortcuts to your recent downloads. The Downloads &pref.plural; are available in the Downloads panel.

Remove files from the Download Manager:
Choose whether the list of the recently downloaded files is purged upon successful download, or when &brandShortName; exits, or whether you want to purge the list manually. To purge the list, click the Clear Download History Now button below or the Clean Up button in the Download Manager.

### Cookies

A cookie is a file created by a web site that stores information on your computer, such as your preferences when visiting that site.

Allow sites to set cookies
By default cookies are enabled. Uncheck this &pref.singular; to disable the use of cookies. Note that some sites may not work properly when cookies are disabled.

To display the Cookie Manager click View Cookies.

Learn more about cookies, the individual &pref.plural;, and how you can gain control over what sites are allowed to store cookies on your computer by reading about Managing Cookies.

### Cache

Pages you view are normally stored in a special cache folder for quicker viewing the next time you visit the same page. You can specify the amount of disk space the cache can use here.

## Content &pref.pluralCaps;

Block Popup Windows
By default, &brandShortName; blocks annoying popup windows on web sites. Unchecking this &pref.singular; will disable popup blocking.

Some web sites make legitimate use of popup windows. Therefore, you can allow these sites to open popups anyway. To do so, click Allowed Sites, enter the site name, and click Allow.

To remove a web site from the list, select it and then click Remove Site. To clear the list completely, click Remove All Sites.

Warn me when web sites try to install extensions or themes
&brandShortName; will always ask you to confirm installations of extensions or themes. To prevent unrequested installation prompts which may lead to accidental installations, &brandShortName; warns you when a web site tries to install an extension or theme and blocks the installation prompt. To allow installations from certain sites, click Exceptions, enter the site name, and click Allow. Uncheck this &pref.singular; to disable the warning for all sites.

Load Images
By default images are loaded on web pages. Uncheck this &pref.singular; to disable images completely.

- for the originating web site only
  Enabling this &pref.singular; will make sure that only images located at the current web site are loaded.

Depending on if you enable images, you can change which sites are blocked or which sites can load images by clicking Exceptions. Enter the site you want to allow/deny images from and click Allow to allow images, or click Block to block the images.

Enable Java
Java is a popular programming language for the web developed by Sun Microsystems. A single Java program can run on many different kinds of computers, thus avoiding the need for programmers to create a separate version of each program for each kind of computer. Uncheck this &pref.singular; to disable Java applets in &brandShortName;. Note that in order for Java applets to work, you must install the Java plugin.

Enable JavaScript
JavaScript is a scripting language commonly used to construct web pages. JavaScript is often used to dynamically validate forms and select buttons. Disabling JavaScript may cause some sites to not work properly.

#### Advanced JavaScript Settings

Move or resize existing windows
  Uncheck this &pref.singular; to disable moving and resizing windows using scripts.
Raise or lower windows
  Uncheck this &pref.singular; to make sure scripts cannot raise or lower windows.
Disable or replace context menus
  Uncheck this &pref.singular; to prevent web pages from disabling or changing the &brandShortName; context menu.
Hide the status bar
  Uncheck this &pref.singular; to force the status bar to be displayed in popup windows.
Change status bar text
  Uncheck this &pref.singular; to disable annoying status bar text scrolling and Web address hiding.

### Fonts & Colors

Default Font and Size
Web pages are usually displayed in the font and size specified here. However, web pages may override these choices unless you specify otherwise in the Advanced Fonts dialog.

Click the Advanced... button to access more fonts &pref.plural;.

#### Advanced Fonts Dialog:

1. From the Fonts for drop-down list, choose a language group/script. For instance, to set default fonts for the West European languages/scripts (Latin), choose Western. For a language/script not yet in the list, choose Other Languages.
2. Select whether proportional text should be serif (like "Times New Roman") or sans-serif (like "Arial"). Then specify the font size you want for proportional text.
3. Specify the font to use for Serif, Sans-serif and Monospace fonts. You can also change the size for `Monospace fonts`.

You can also specify the display resolution, which is normally 96 dpi.

Furthermore, you can set the minimum font size to be used on screen. This can be useful on some sites that use very small fonts that are barely readable.

Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above
By default &brandShortName; uses the fonts specified by the web page author. Disabling this &pref.singular; will force all sites to use your default fonts instead.

Character Encoding
The character encoding selected here will be used to display pages that do not specify which encoding to use.

#### Colors Dialog:

Text and Background
Here you can change the default text and background color to be used on web pages that haven't specified that information. Click on the color samples to select colors.

Use system colors
Check this &pref.singular; to use the colors defined in your OS settings instead of the colors specified above.

Link Colors
Here you can change the default colors for Web links. Click on the color samples to select colors.

Underline links
By default, links are underlined on web pages. Uncheck this &pref.singular; to disable this. Note that many sites specify their own styling rules and this &pref.singular; has no effect on those sites.

Allow pages to choose their own colors, instead of my selections above
By default, &brandShortName; uses the colors specified by the web page author. Disabling this &pref.singular; will force all sites to use your default colors instead.

## Tabs &pref.pluralCaps;

Open links from other applications in:
When other applications on your computer display a web page, &brandShortName; opens the page in the most recently displayed tab or window. You can make &brandShortName; open the page elsewhere by changing this &pref.singular;.

Force links that open new windows to open in:
&brandShortName; opens new windows from links when web pages request them. If you prefer to use tabs as you browse, this behavior may be counterproductive. You can force &brandShortName; to open links that would normally be opened in new windows to be opened elsewhere. To do so, select the checkbox for this &pref.singular; and choose the behavior you desire.

Note: If you have chosen to open links in new tabs, &brandShortName; will ignore this &pref.singular; and will open a new window from a link if the page author specified that the new window should have a specific size, because some pages can only be displayed correctly at a specific size.

Hide the tab bar when only one web site is open
If you're only viewing one web page in a &brandShortName; window, the tab bar is not shown. Uncheck this &pref.singular; to always show the tab bar.

Select new tabs opened from links
When you middle-click on Web links (or hold down &accelKey; while clicking with the left mouse button), the links will be opened in a new tab. That tab will not be shown directly; it will be loaded in a background tab. Check this &pref.singular; to load the link in a foreground tab instead, which will show that tab directly.

Warn when closing multiple tabs
When you close a window with multiple tabs, &brandShortName; will ask you to confirm your choice. This prevents you from accidentally closing the whole window when you wish to close only the current tab. Uncheck this box to skip past the warning and have &brandShortName; automatically close the window.

## Downloads &pref.pluralCaps;

This panel controls how &brandShortName; handles different file types such as applications, compressed files, and multimedia files.

### Download Folder

Ask me where to save every file
&brandShortName; will ask you where you want the file to be saved whenever you download a file.

Save all files to this folder:
This is the default &pref.singular; in &brandShortName;, and the default folder is the Desktop. You can specify a different folder where all downloads will be saved by clicking the Browse button.

### Download Manager

Show Download Manager when a download begins
Select whether or not you want the Download Manager to automatically appear when a download begins.

Close the download manager when all downloads are complete
Select whether or not you want the Download Manager to be closed when all downloads are complete.

### Download Actions

The Download Actions dialog, which can be opened by clicking the View & Edit Actions... button, contains file types that you have downloaded. You can choose what &brandShortName; should do when clicking on a specific file type by selecting the file type you want to modify and clicking the Change Action... button.

This will display the Change Action dialog, where you can choose to have the file type opened by the default application, opened by a user-selected application, saved to disk, or shown with an installed plugin. For example, if you view lots of media files on web pages, you might want to specify that &brandShortName; always open media files in your media player instead of asking where you want each media file to be saved.

- Open them with the default application:
  Select this &pref.singular; to open this file type in the default application for that file type (determined by the operating system).
- Open them with this application:
  Select this &pref.singular; to specify another application that should handle this file type. You will see a dialog asking you to specify the application to use.
- Save them on my computer:
  This &pref.singular; will save the files to disk. If you have the Save all files to this folder &pref.singular; enabled, the files will be saved automatically.
- Use this Plugin:
  Select this &pref.singular; to let a plugin handle this file type.

To remove an automatic rule for a file type, select that file type in the Download Actions dialog and click the Remove Action button.

## Advanced &pref.pluralCaps;

The advanced panel contains many &pref.plural; that are less likely to be used by most people but are still useful and sometimes critical &pref.plural; for some people.

### General tab

#### Accessibility

Allow text to be selected with the keyboard
Also known as Caret Browsing, this specifies whether a moveable cursor is displayed, allowing you to select text with the keyboard. Some accessibility aids, such as screen readers and screen magnifiers, use the system caret to determine which area of the screen to read or magnify. You can toggle this mode by pressing `F7`.

Begin finding when you begin typing
When this &pref.singular; is enabled, &brandShortName; will find within the current web page what you type as you type it. While you are finding typed text in the page, the Find Toolbar will automatically display at the bottom of the window to show information about what you've found.

#### Browsing

Resize large images to fit in the browser window
This feature is similar to the one seen in Internet Explorer. It makes images that are larger than can be fit on the screen shrink automatically so you can view the whole picture. Click on the image to view it at full size.

Use autoscrolling
Autoscrolling is a useful feature which allows you to scroll the page by just holding down the middle mouse button (usually the scroll wheel) and move the mouse up or down. Some people find this annoying, so autoscrolling can be disabled with this &pref.singular;.

Use smooth scrolling
Smooth scrolling can be very useful if you read a lot of long pages. Normally, when you press `Page Down`, the view jumps directly down one page. With smooth scrolling, it slides down more smoothly, so you can see how much it scrolls. This makes it easier to resume reading from where you were before.

#### Languages

Some web pages are offered in more than one language. Click the Edit Languages... button to specify your preferred languages.

Languages Dialog:
To add a language, press Select a language to add..., choose the language, and click the Add button. Remove a language by selecting it in the list of active languages and clicking the Remove button.

You can reorder languages to determine the preferred one in case a page is provided in two or more of your selected languages. Do this using the Move Up and Move Down buttons.

### Update tab

&brandShortName; can check whether updates to installed extensions, themes, or &brandShortName; itself are available.

Automatically check for updates to:
By default &brandShortName; automatically checks for updates to itself, to extensions and themes, and to search engines so you'll always know you have the most up-to-date version. You can turn off this behavior by unchecking the appropriate checkbox here.

When updates to &brandShortName; are found,

Ask me what I want to do
  Updates to &brandShortName; are typically installed automatically by default. Select this &pref.singular; to manually control how and when updates are installed.
Automatically download and install the update
  When this &pref.singular; is selected, &brandShortName; updates will be automatically downloaded and will be installed the next time &brandShortName; is restarted. The Warn me if this will disable extensions or themes &pref.singular; determines whether you will be warned before the installation of an update which would require an incompatible extension or theme to be disabled because no newer, compatible version exists. The warning will allow you to postpone installation of the update, though at the expense of improvements included in it.
  If all extensions and themes are compatible or can be updated to be compatible, the &brandShortName; update will be installed. Upon restart you will be asked to install any needed extension and theme updates so that you can continue to use them.

Show Update History
&brandShortName; automatically records the updates you have installed. You can view information about these updates by clicking this button.

Note: You must be running &brandShortName; as an administratorroot or as the user who originally installed &brandShortName; to install &brandShortName; updates.

### Security tab

#### Protocols

Use SSL 2.0
Specifies whether you want to send and receive secured information through SSL2 (Secure Sockets Layer Level 2), the standard protocol for secure transmissions. All secure web sites support this protocol.

Use SSL 3.0
Specifies whether you want to send and receive secured information through SSL3 (Secure Sockets Layer Level 3), a protocol that is intended to be more secure than SSL2. Note that some web sites may not support this protocol.

Use TLS 1.0
Specifies whether you want to send and receive secured information through TLS (Transport Layer Security), an open security standard similar to SSL3 (Secure Sockets Layer). Note that some web sites may not support this protocol.

#### Certificates

Certificates help perform encryption and decryption of connections to secure sites.

When a web site requires a certificate:
When a web site requests a secure connection, &brandShortName; will by default automatically use an appropriate certificate. If you wish to manually choose a certificate (for example, if you wish to use a certain type of encryption instead of what is automatically selected), select the &pref.singular; Ask me every time and you'll be in complete control of what certificates you use while browsing.

View Certificates
Click this button to view stored certificates, import new certificates, and back up or delete old certificates in &brandShortName;.

Revocation Lists
&brandShortName; can use Certificate Revocation Lists (also known as CRLs) to ensure that your certificates are not invalid. Click the Revocation Lists button to manage the CRLs installed on your computer.

Verification
OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) is a way to validate your certificates every time they are viewed or used. &brandShortName; does not use OCSP by default, but if you want to enable it, you can do so here. You will most likely only need to change this if your Internet environment requires it.

Security Devices
Security devices can encrypt and decrypt connections and store certificates and passwords. If you need to use a security device other than the one in &brandShortName;, click the Security Devices button.

10 November 2005

Copyright © 2003-2007 Contributors to the Mozilla Help Viewer Project.