How to Block Distracting Animated Favicons [Firefox Tip]

If you've spent any time stumbling around the net, you've run across a site using an irritating animated favicon—a moving icon that shows up in the address bar, the site's tab, and even the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox. (Here's one at the DHL site.) While there's no way by default to disable animated icons in Firefox other than completely disabling all favicons, there are a couple of possible ways to block a particularly distracting web page icon.

Blocking for a Single Site

If there's a single site that is giving you trouble, you can use the Adblock Plus Firefox extension to block the offending favicon. Just open up Blockable items, find the favicon in the list and choose "Block this item" to get rid of it.

Replace Favicons with Favicon Picker

Instead of blocking the icon, you can choose to replace it with the Favicon Picker extension, although this method requires you to bookmark the site before you can replace the icon. Just open up the properties for the bookmark, and you can either pick an image file to use as the icon, or use the default icon with the Blank button.

Once you've changed the icon, you can delete the bookmark and the change should stick as long as you have the extension installed.

Blocking (Almost) All Animated Favicons

Since almost all of the animated favicons have the filename "favicon.gif", we can use a Stylish user script or dig into Firefox's userChrome.css tweak to hide any image with that file name from appearing as the bookmark or tab icon.

If you are using the Stylish Firefox extension, create a new blank style, and paste in the following code, which will replace animated icons on the bookmarks bar with the default icon and leave the favicon blank on the tab bar.

.bookmark-item[image*="favicon.gif"] .menu-iconic-icon,
.bookmark-item[image*="favicon.gif"] .toolbarbutton-icon
.bookmark-item[image*="favicon.gif"]:not([container]) .menu-iconic-icon,
.bookmark-item[image*="favicon.gif"]:not([container]) .toolbarbutton-icon {
  width: 0 !important; padding-left: 16px !important;
  background: transparent url(chrome://global/skin/icons/folder-item.png)  no-repeat !important;
}
#page-proxy-favicon[src$="favicon.gif"], tab[image$="favicon.gif"] .tab-icon{
  width: 0 !important; padding-left: 16px !important;
}

You should be able to immediately see the favicons disappear by clicking the Preview button. If you are satisfied, click Save and they should be gone.

(Here are some more functional Stylish user scripts that can improve your browsing experience.)

If you don't want to install the Stylish extension, you can still use this tweak by creating a userChrome.css file in your Firefox profile directory, and paste in the same code from above (make sure Firefox is not running).

Note that this style doesn't seem to disable the icons if you are using the Awesome bar to search for a bookmark, or in the bookmarks manager. Got any other tips for killing animated icons? Post 'em up in the comments.

Set Up Mozilla Weave on Your Own Server [How To]

Blogger Marios Tziortzis details how to set up previously mentioned Mozilla Weave—Mozilla's Firefox-syncing tool—on your personal web server. Setting up Weave with your own server means you don't have to rely on Mozilla's servers, and you can keep your private data, which includes passwords, bookmarks, cookies, and browsing history, on your own web space. It's not a terribly difficult process, so if rolling your own Mozilla Weave server appeals to you, it's worth a go. If you don't already have some hosted web space, setting up a personal home web server could do the trick.

Firefox Quick Tip: Get Vista-Like Tab Switch Preview with Control Tab

If you’re stuck with that crappy Microsoft OS called Windows Vista, you might, by now, be hypnotized by some of its eye-candy features that you might now consider them as good features. Okay, so I’m sarcastic with that note. Surely, if you’re going to nitpick Vista, you might find a thing or two that can be considered good and helpful features. Like its Alt + Tab function.

It eliminates the the window switch guessing game since it gives you a preview of the windows. Previously, in XP (and in Vista Home Basic) all you get are icons that don’t tell too much about which window you’ll be switching to. While I think it’s not that much of an issue with web browsing, some consider this functionality a good addition to their browsing experience. And that’s why this is supposed to be slated to be incorporated as a Firefox feature for 3.1 set for release late this year.

But if you want to experience that functionality now, with Firefox 3, then you might want to check out the Ctrl + Tab add-on which gives you exactly that functionality. Ctrl + Tab acts like the Windows Alt + Tab only you get to cycle through Firefox tabs. Getting a thumbnail preview might indeed be a great addition.

This works with Firefox: 3.0pre – 3.1a1pre.

Download Ctrl + Tab Firefox add-on here.

Make Google Reader Widescreen-Friendly [Featured Greasemonkey User Script]

Firefox with Greasemonkey: The Google Reader for Wider Screens Greasemonkey script uses all the horizontal space available in GReader for better viewing on wide monitors. Install the script to take advantage of a wide browser window and scroll up and down less than you have to. The Google Reader for wider screens user script is a free download for Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension installed. Thanks, Andy!

PDF Download 2.0 Beta Adds Advanced Web-to-PDF Conversion [Featured Firefox Extension]

Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): The makers of the previously-posted PDF Download extension have released a 2.0 beta that adds some key features, including a full web-to-PDF converter that retains CSS styling, web links, and layout details. The extension has also beefed up its PDF-to-HTML rendering, and works in Firefox 2 & 3, Flock, and other Mozilla-based projects. The developers have made 10,000 beta sign-ups available, with more to come. Hit the link below for more details on what's new in PDF Download 2.0.