For some odd reason Firefox likes to resize images automatically so they will “fit in the browser window”. I have found this rather annoying and was glad to discover there is an about:config tweak to prevent this. Thanks to Ryan at CybertNet Forums for this here tip:
- In a new tab type about:config in the address bar or open the about:config editor
- Copy and paste browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing into the filter field
- Double-click the entry to change it to false
- Close tab or about:config editor and changes will take effect right-away.
This tweak works with Firefox builds/versions 1.5.0.X, 2.0.0.X and 3.0a1pre. Ryan and I did a little research with our old Firefox 1.0.8 builds and we discovered it use to be a check (or uncheck) option right form the ‘Options…’ menu under the ‘Advanced’ option and ‘Browsing’ section, ‘Resize large images to fit in the browser window’. While I was looking at the options on Firefox 1.0.8, I had forgotten how long the options menu was then.
Now here is an oddity, the about:config page on Mozilla’s site claims that this is still a user specifiable option by going to “Tools → Options → Advanced → Multimedia → Resize large images to fit in the browser window”. Well, I don’t know what build/version of Firefox they are using, but there is no ‘Multimedia’ section in any of the past, current or future (3.0) builds/versions of Firefox.
