Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

New to Fx 3.0a2pre (Gran Paradiso), starting with the December 20th nightlies (Build 20061220XX), is a warning message when you access about:config the first time (or if you don’t uncheck the ‘Show this warning next time.’ box). I guess you could say about:config is to Firefox as the Registry is to Windows. However, while there a lot of Firefox settings that can be changed via about:config, but I can’t really think of anything that would be critical enough to cause Firefox to stop working. Some changes may produce undesirable effects in which case you just go back in to about:config and undo (reset) the change. Nonetheless the warning is a good idea to keep less experienced users for messing around and making changes that they don’t understand to their Firefox.

News Source: CyberNet Forums

Wow! 2006 is almost over and what a year it has been for Firefox with 11 releases over two versions (1.5 & 2.0)! I am in the process of putting together a Firefox Year in Review Blog entry which I plan to have up tomorrow night. Stay tunned…

Your Firefox User Agent or build ID contains a lot of information about your browser as well as your operating system. Here is break down on what is in your User Agent:

Mozilla/MozVer (Platform; Security; SubPlatform; Language; rv:Revision[; Extension]*) Gecko/GeckVer [Product/ProdVer]

• Mozilla/MozVer ~ All Firefox build IDs start with Mozilla/5.0. Simply put this means the browser meets the standards to be Netscape 5 compatible. This was the first Mozilla based (never released) version of Netscape.
• Platform ~ This is the operating system (but not the version). Possible values include:
  • Windows
  • Macintosh
  • X11 (Linux)
• Security ~ This is the encryption strength of the browser:
  • U: Strong Security, 128-bit encryption (USA)
  • I: Weak Security, 40-bit encryption (International)
  • N: No Security, No encryption
• SubPlatform ~ This is the version of the operating system.
  • Windows:
    • Win 3.11 - Windows 3.11
    • Win 95 - Windows 95
    • Win 98 - Windows 98
    • Win 9X - Windows ME
    • Win NT 4.0 - Windows NT 4.0
    • Win NT 5.0 - Windows 2000
    • Win NT 5.1 - Windows XP
    • Win NT 5.2 - Windows Server 2003 and XP Pro x64
    • Win NT 6.0 - Windows Vista
  • x11 Linux:
    • Linux [Version] Hardware
    • FreeBSD Hardware
    • NetBSD Hardware
    • SunOS sun4u
  • Macintosh:
    • PPC Mac OS X
    • PPC Mac OS X Mach-O
    • Intel Mac OS X
• Language ~ standardized language identifier, Firefox is available in several different languages. The two common English language builds are:
  • en-US = English United States.
  • en-GB =English Great Britain.
• rv:Revision ~ This is the version of Gecko, the browser engine.
• Gecko/GeckoVer ~ This is the date in YYYYMMDD format the revision (or version) of Gecko was was compiled, not necessarily the date it was released
• Product/ProdVer ~ The name and version of the product. Some of these include:
  • Deer Park/1.5
  • BonEcho/2.0.0.1
  • Firefox/1.5.0.9
  • Firefox/2.0.0.1
  • Gran Paradiso/3.0a1
  • Minefield/3.0a2

Below is the user agent as found via Help, About Mozilla Firefox for my current version of Firefox:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2pre) Gecko/20061223 BonEcho/2.0.0.2pre

I am running a Mozilla product compilable with Netscape 5.0, on a Windows platform, with high 128-bit encryption USA security, on the Windows NT 5.1 (XP) subplatform, using an english-US language. My current build of Firefox is based on the 1.8.1.2pre revision of Gecko which was compiled on 12/23/2006. The product name is BonEcho (nightly build) and the version I am running is 2.0.0.2pre.

Now you can see how valuable your user agent/build ID is for troubleshooting, especially when people are not even sure what operating system they are using much less which version of Firefox.

Source: Wikipedia