Kit Fox

Akkana's Tweaks to Firefox

I'm not trying to fork anything, just get something I can live with since I spend so much time using the browser. Mostly I'm putting back functionality that the old Mozilla suite (now Seamonkey) had that was removed for Firefox.

Here are the current changes:

• Ctrl-Enter in the URLbar opens the URL you've typed in a new tab (normally Alt; Alt-Enter will still work as well.) This matches the Ctrl-click binding for opening in a new tab, so you don't have to remember when you need Ctrl and when Alt. The ridiculous and useless IE-copied "Stick www. on the front and .com on the end of whatever you typed" behavior is removed.
• Ctrl-H no longer opens the History sidebar; so it's possible to use it for backspacing to delete characters.

Kitfox JAR file

Unfortunately, starting in 3.5, Mozilla broke the ability to change XBL key bindings through an extension, so it's no longer possible to handle the URLbar bindings with the Kitfix Extension.

So the only way is to patch the browser itself: specifically, the file browser.jar.

Here are the patches I make to browser.jar as of Firefox 3.5.7: kitpatch-3.5.7.diff. To apply, do something like this (adjust paths as needed on your system):

$ cp /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.7/chrome/browser.jar browser-orig.jar
$ unzip browser-orig.jar
$ patch -p0 < kitpatch-3.5.7.diff
$ zip browser-kit.jar `find content/`
$ sudo cp browser-kit.jar /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.7/chrome/browser.jar

Or you can just grab my JAR file from 3.5.7: browser-kit-3.5.7.jar.

Older solutions, out of date:

Kitfox Extension

Here's the Kitfox extension (for Firefox 2 or 3): kitfox-0.3.xpi. And here's a source tarball for it (same files, but easier to extract and with a Makefile to generate the xpi): kitfox-0.3.tar.gz. It was generated courtesy of Ted Mielczarek's Extension Wizard (see also the Fizzy Pop project).

The extension currently only includes two changes:

• Disables the silly IE behavior of adding www. to the beginning and .com or .org to the end of anything you type in the URLbar if you hold down shift or control when you hit return. Instead, control opens in new tab (comparable to what happens if you control-click on a link).
• Shift-click on a link does "Save as".

Kitfox Source Patch

I don't expect this collection to be particularly useful to anyone else. However, I'm posting it because there might be people who want bits and pieces of the patch, or might want to see how to make changes like this in the Mozilla source. Note: this is a patch to the 1.8 branch. I have not (yet?) updated it for Firefox 3.

The latest version of the patch is: kitfox-1.8_11_16_06.diff.

Fixes include:

browser/base/content/browser.js:

Make shift-click do "save as"; make control-click do "open in new tab".

browser/base/content/browser.xul:

Disable the autocomplete popup in the urlbar.

browser/base/content/browser-sets.inc:

browser/base/content/browser-menubar.inc:

browser/locales/en-US/chrome/browser/browser.dtd:

Make ctrl-Q quit the app.

browser/locales/en-US/chrome/branding/brand.properties:

browser/locales/en-US/chrome/branding/brand.dtd:

Change the name to Kitfox so I can tell when I'm running it.

toolkit/content/widgets/browser.xml:

Disable all autocomplete popups.

• July 4 2008: kitfox-0.3 to fix some problems with registering in Firefox 3 (source: kitfox-0.3.tar.gz).
• July 3 2008: kitfox 0.2 for Firefox 2 and 3 (source: kitfox-0.2.tar.gz).
• May 27 2007: kitfox 0.1 for Firefox 2 (source: kitfox-0.1.tar.gz).
• November 11 2006: kitfox-1.8_11_16_06.diff diffs for the 1.8 branch.