Book Review: Firefox Hacks

By: David Bogen (dbogen@gmail.com)

There are some books that were just never meant to be read front-to-back. Dictionaries, thesauruses, and repair manuals are rarely noted for their clever writing and gripping plots. Reference books like those are designed to quickly deliver information in a relatively easy to navigate format. Into that same category, one can safely file Firefox Hacks by Nigel McFarlane.

While Firefox is not distributed by the Mozilla Foundation in binary form for any of the BSD's (other than Mac OS X, of course), that has not stopped the adoption of Firefox by BSD users. There is little to no BSD specific information in "Firefox Hacks." The book nonetheless offers a wealth of information about Firefox and its component technologies to users of the software on any platform.

Firefox Hacks contains one hundred self-described hacks. Each hack is rated using a difficultly scale from beginner to moderate to expert. Since much of the Firefox user interface is written in XUL (the XML User-interface Language), the vast majority of the hacks in the book can be employed by BSD users as well as Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X users.

There are obvious exceptions, of course. For instance, Hack #26 "Dial Up Automatically on Startup" contains some information and instructions that simply will not help BSD users. Go ahead and type kudzu --probe all you want. It's not going to get you anywhere on a BSD platform. Nor will modprobe -l. BSD users need to engage their brains while reading the book to avoid thoughtlessly following command-line prompts given for "Linux/Unix." Instead, they need to be aware of how they can substitute BSD-appropriate commands for Linux commands where necessary.

It is not clear to me exactly who comprises the target audience for this book. For instance, Hack #2 defines "Ten Ways to Navigate to a Web Page." The first hack listed is "Click on a Link":

It's not rocket science: left-click on a link, and the current page is replaced with the link's page. If you right-click (Command-click on the Mac), you can open that page in a new window or a new tab, or you can put the link itself into a bookmark or into the copy-and-paste buffer.

That's the sort of information my non-technical parents easily mastered. To describe that as a hack is a real stretch. As a technically inclined individual, I generally don't need that sort of basic guidance.

Contrast that with this text from Hack 13 "Stop all Secret Network Activity" that was rated with the same difficulty level:

Such capability settings are required for each object that offers a network-enabled call interface. So, as another example, WebServiceProxyFactory.createProxy() and its equivalents also require capability preferences.

Clearly, the folks who just mastered left-clicking on a link aren't about to understand a sentence like that. If the reader is expected to understand the text in Hack 13, perhaps the assumption could be safely made that the reader also understands how to navigate to a web page via left-clicking on a link. And, if we make that assumption the first phrase that leaps to mind is "filler material."

Hack 46 "Write Compatible CSS" is obvious filler material that is buried in the middle of the book. That particular hack is filled with all sorts of information detailing how to write cascading style sheets that take advantage of CSS processing bugs in various browsers that are not Firefox. Writing CSS code that works-around bugs in IE may qualify as a hack, but not necessarily as a Firefox hack.

Given the nature of the information in Firefox Hacks, there are some folks who might be very interested in acquiring this book. Users who are very interested in taking complete control of their privacy away from Firefox will likely appreciate Hacks like number 20, "Restrict Script Behavior with Policies" and number 16, "Fine Tune Ports and Sockets." There are other hacks detailing numerous other privacy and security settings that can be manipulated using preferences, about:config, and munging of the raw XUL that comprises the UI.

Those network and system administrators that oversee vast networks of web users will most likely find information they can use in this book. All sorts of information about distributing, managing, locking down, and rebranding Firefox can be found lurking in the various Hacks.

Firefox Hacks seems confused about whether it is targeted at very technical users or more casual users. Much of the information in the book is squarely targeted at experienced users who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty with some under the hood mucking around. However, sections like those detailing how to left click on the link and use the "Find in this page..." command are only going to bore or insult those very same technical users.

BSD users can get much out of this book if they are willing to look past the obvious Linux, Windows, Mac OS X bias. So much of Firefox's UI and behavior are malleable and modified via simple ASCII changes that the content of the book can be appreciated and used by those on platforms other than the Big Three.

Just don't expect to read this book from front to back. Information is sometimes presented in one Hack to then be presented using identical wording in the very next Hack. Most people reading this book do not have memories that short. While Firefox Hacks is well written, it is ultimately a reference tome, not a book to be read from cover to cover.