Part of the reason behind Firefox’s success is the fact that there is an awesome team of individuals behind it, who work around the clock to make it live up to the stringent quality standards, which are a hallmark of Mozilla.

However, there is a second, almost equally important reason as to why each version of Firefox is a runaway success. There’s virtually no limit to the amount of customization you can apply to Firefox. Most of these come in the form of extensions (small add-ons, which add to the functionality).

However, today we are going to talk about another, more covert way of customizing Firefox. All the different settings of Firefox can be accessed from one convenient location using the Firefox “About Config” hack. By typing about:config in the address bar, one can bring up a page listing all the different options. Once on that page, it’s simply a matter of double-clicking and editing those settings to make your browsing experience even better.

Here’s a list of the best, most useful Firefox about:config hacks. All these hacks can be enabled by going into about:config. In case a setting doesn’t show up in the search, just right-click and select New to create it.

Make Firefox Free Up RAM When Minimized:

Unless you have a RAM behemoth for a rig, you will know that RAM is a precious commodity. Simply put, RAM is like a container into which all applications are thrown when they are first run. The applications carry out all their processing in the RAM and then leave the RAM when they are done.

The problem arises in the way Firefox handles RAM. Most programs return unused RAM when they are minimized. Firefox, on the other hand does not do so. So, the Firefox ninjas around the world found an about:config workaround for it:

• In the “Filter” search, type: config.trim_on_minimize

• Right click on the setting and click “toggle” so that the Value turns to “true“.

From now on, Firefox will act like any other Windows app and return all unused memory when minimized.

Stop Websites From Blinding You With Blinking Text:

Some webmasters have this crazy habit of making text on their pages blink. Maybe it’s their idea of looking cool, but in reality, it’s nothing more than a major irritation. Coupled with that is the fact that it really tires your eyes. Here’s how you can change about:config to disable blinking text:

• In the “Filter” search, type: browser.blink_allowed

• Right click on the setting and click “toggle” so that the Value turns to “false“. This disables the blinking.

Paste Text With The Middle Mouse Button:

Linux users will vouch for how awesome pasting with the middle mouse button is. Now, Windows users can get the same functionality within Firefox. You guessed it! You need to go to about:config to do the following:

• In the “Filter” search, type: middlemouse.paste

• Right click on the setting and click “toggle” so that the Value turns to “true“.

Open Search Results In A New Tab:

Every now and then I come across a term on a website that I really need to research. I quickly hit Ctrl+K (the Search Box shortcut), type the keywords, and hit Return, only to remember at the last instant that the search will take me away from my current page. Using the following about:config hack, I configured Firefox to open all searches in a new tab.

• In the “Filter” search, type: browser.search.openintab

• Right click on the setting and click “toggle” so that the Value turns to “true“.

Make Firefox’s Menus Load Faster:

Sometimes, the delay caused while opening a Menu is just a major headache. Here’s how to do away with it using about:config.

• In the configuration window, right click and choose New -> Integer

• Name it ui.submenuDelay and set it to 0

And that’s all that there is to it! It’s simply amazing how a few configuration changes here and there can make your surfing experience so much smoother. About:config hacks really make Mozilla Firefox all the more awesome. No wonder it is one of the most popular browsers in the world.

What about:config hacks are your favourites?

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

• (52)How To Reduce Memory Usage in Firefox with MemoryFox
• (78)7 Ways To Become More Productive With Firefox Tabs
• (45)4 Cool Firefox Tools That Are Not Addons
• (22)View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper
• (24)Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers

In fact, in 1998 when it first went live on the official Google.com domain, the beta was publically labeled by its creators as a “might-work-some-of-the-time-prototype”.

While the mechanics of it have improved dramatically since then, it still relies on the number of backlinks to theorise how important a webpage is. A lot of us have grown sick of what could be called an outdated way to display results and maybe even resent their market dominance.

If you want to shed that mentality of instantly “Googling it” then you’ve got to take the leap, here are five excellent Google alternatives – each one has their own specific goals and a different way of doing things; and no, they’re not Bing, Yahoo! or Wolfram Alpha.

FactBites

Normally, when you search for something on Google, or any of the big search engines for that matter you’re returned results based on the popularity of the page. That’s because search engines link relevance with popularity. FactBites however draws on the web’s vast amount of encyclopedias and information websites such as Wikipedia and more specialised ones to provide you with factual information.

This search engine is great for things such as school work and research for articles or other such works. To put it bluntly, it cuts off all the excess fat that you don’t need and gives you the best of the best.

For example, in the search results above I have searched for ‘American Civil War’ and the results returned are purely factual including many educational websites, Wikipedia and historical sources. The same search on Google returned some educational websites though poorly organised amongst various online stores and enthusiast websites which would not be very useful for those in search of facts.

Quintura

This search engine I liked a lot because it redefines how search results should be displayed. Instead of just showing you a list descending in order of relevance, they have this accompanied by a tag cloud to the left of the screen. This allows you to quickly display alternative results by just hovering your mouse over them. This tag cloud can also be shared or embedded using the appropriate buttons.

Quinturq uses the same method to display results for web, images and videos.

Clusty Search

Ever been doing research for a topic or just searching for stuff in general and get pretty annoyed at how disorganised the results can be? A more organized Google alternative is in order. Often, when I’m looking for sources for an article I have to perform multiple refined searches to get the kind of results Clusty Search could get in one – and organize them into their respective categories too.

Say you’re looking for articles and material relating to Nintendo. Instead of doing five or six different searches, just search for Nintendo and Clusty will gather them into their respective groups while still displaying traditional style results as you can see in the screenshot above.

Results can be clustered into different ways depending on what you’re searching for. Examples include sources, type of material (blogs, reviews, news etc..) and size, quality and so on for images and videos.

Dog Pile

Surprisingly, over 85% of everyday searches return different results when you use different search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask. DogPile performs multiple searches for your term and then aggregates those results into one quality set of results.

Their mission is to have a simple yet effective search engine to give universal results instead of what one engine thinks may be best suited for you.

They have all the standard search functions too for filtering your results and search categories such as Image, video, Web etc, as well as the Yellow and White Pages!

Cuil

The homepage of Cuil is minimalistic, mostly black with your run-of-the-mill search box in the middle. You can also select what language you want your results in. They index websites in English, French, Turkish, Italian, Polish and much more.

The way they display search results is most intriguing. Firstly, you have your traditional results as per usual. In the right sidebar, depending on what you have searched you could have a map, historical timeline, streaming results, category tags and other specific features relating to your search.

For example, I searched for NASA and in the right sidebar there was tag clouds for ‘Space Agencies’, ‘Space Centres’, ‘NASA Problems’ as well as a timeline and resources.

They also have tabs along the top which refine where your results come from. Examples seen in the screenshot are NASA TV and NASA Ames. Thumbnails and favicons are also displayed beside the search results for better presentation and to help you decide if it’s the one for you.

So there you go. Five great Google alternative search engines enabling you to break free from Google and other traditional search engines in style. Do you have any suggestions for other alternative search engines? What do you think of the ones profiled?

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

• (36)The Complete Guidebook To Web Searching [PDF]
• (23)A Quick Guide To Google’s New Search Features
• (12)6 Sites To Search For Images Shared On Twitter
• (18)5 Ways To Do A Site-Specific Search Using Search Engines
• (12)4 Awesome Visual Search Engines to Transform Your Search

I guess you would have to be under a rock not to. Bing really wants to steal the search engine market away from the big G and they realized that the only way to do this would be to build an awesome search engine. And guess what, they did!

Google is already a pretty awesome search engine and all Microsoft really did was get its results on par with Google and add some new features like making decisions for you.

Let’s use a little utility I found called Google-Bing Search. I like to call it Google Vs. Bing (as this is what the “search” button says). It was created by Blackdog SEO. What it does is compare search results from both engines side by side. Let’s take a look at how it works.

We can type in our search terms and hit the button that says Google Versus Bing. It will compare the results side by side in your browser.

Editor’s note: The screenshots below have been separated. You will have to visit the site to get the proper representation of how this app works.

VS.

Well, while we are here, I guess we should test out some searches and see what we get. Let’s start with a simple search for MakeUseOf.com + Karl Gechlik and have a look at the results.

The results returned by Google are as follows:

And here are Bing’s results:

I am pretty impressed. They both returned valid results and in this case, very different results. And this means that I have another resource for searching now. How about one more search? I decided to search for AskTheAdmin and see what I get:

From Google:

And From Bing:

I am really digging this tool and I will be doing a bunch more tests. It will definitely come in handy when comparing these two search engines to have a different set of results every time. Feel free to surf on over do your own comparisons and let us know your findings in the comments!

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

• (14)10 Sites to Compare Google vs Bing Results Side By Side
• (21)Bing: The Next Big Thing From Microsoft
• (4)Yahoo Searchmonkey Expands with Playable Music Tracks
• (1)What Is A Meta Search Engine & How It Works? [Technology Explained]
• (11)Utilizing Windows Search 4.0 (Part 1)

Tag clouds are much easier to grasp than simple lists, as words can be weighted with the help of font size and color.

We see tag clouds on lots of sites these days. Almost in all cases the purpose of the tag cloud is to give user an easier way to browse the site and at the same time see popular content.

Here are some of my favorite ways tag clouds are used on the web.

1. Discover New Music

The Music Artist Cloud is an artist recommendation engine. Try to “Get Artist Cloud” for a band you like and receive a cloud of similar musicians you might enjoy. I love many of the suggested bands and there are yet a few to be explored.

The site also fetches music videos from YouTube which you can watch while noting down discoveries.

2. Extract Information from Twitter

Using Tweet Cloud you can create a tag cloud based on a keyword or Twitter ID. This tag cloud shows you the major words found in the most recent tweets and their occurrence frequency in relation to each other. The cloud rotates in 3D and you can click words to explore them further.

3. Create Fancy Word Art

Wordle was built for no other purpose than to play with it and create pretty word clouds. You provide the text and can tweak fonts, layouts and color schemes. Results can be printed, downloaded and saved to the Wordle gallery. Below are some recent examples.

4. Improve Google Search

Search Cloudlet is a Firefox extension. The next time you search Google, Yahoo or Twitter after installing this tool you will find a tag cloud on top of the search results. This tag cloud derived from search results and shows you all the keywords relevant to your search results.

Users can easily narrow/filter search by clicking keywords on the cloud and adding them to the query. This is a must-have addon for everyone who frequently searches on Google, Yahoo or Twitter.

Where and how Search Cloudlet appears can be optimized within the extension’s option.

5. Analyze Your Texts

Are there words that you use far too often?

Using a tool like TagCrowd you can create a tag cloud from any text and analyze whether or not your use of words is balanced. You can enter a webpage URL, upload a text document or paste a piece of text and finally finetune the options. When done preparing click Visualize! and wait for the result.

Below is an excerpt from Obama’s inauguration speech.

Where do you find tag clouds helpful?

Image credits: modish

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

• (16)Search Google, Yahoo, Bing & Twitter From Your IM Program
• (19)Quickly Search Documents For Words with DocFetcher
• (24)How to Turn Twitter Into Your One-Stop Lifestream
• (21)How To Search Multiple Social Media Sites At A Time
• (20)How to Expand Google’s Universal Search

In fact, as long as you sign into your Qitera account, this tool will function behind the scenes whenever you perform a search on Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. As quickly as you can receive your search results, you’ll also receive a listing from Qitera of relevant bookmarks that you or your friends have added to Qitera’s database.

There’s no longer any need to go on a scavenger hunt to find a webpage you saved 6 months ago. Just think of a keyword contained in the page, and you can draw it up with a Google search.

Are Your Bookmarks Getting Buried in Bookmarks?

Bookmarks are meant to be simple. They are entrusted with the chore of reflecting a user’s personality. However, as humans, we are complicated creatures. Soon, our personalities rub off on our bookmarks, and they can swiftly become complicated as well.

As they breed and multiply, bookmarks become difficult to search through.  However, Qitera offers a remedy for this.  Rather than lock bookmarks into cages, Qitera sets them free and links them directly to Google search results.

You Can Be the Ghost in the Machine!

By synching your bookmarks with Google, you can inject your own personality into Google’s search results. To do so, you will first need to log into Qitera. Once you’ve done so, Qitera will respond to any Google search you submit by simultaneously searching your bookmarks. It will serve up its results a few fractions of a second later, just above Google’s results.

That’s right. Your own homemade search results will trump Google’s findings. This is helpful if, for example, you’re performing a search on “colleges”, and you’d rather browse through your own bookmarks on the subject than to wade through Google’s voluminous (often irrelevant) discoveries.

Listen to Your Friends & Family

In a roundabout way, Google’s search results are organized on the basis of their popularity. However, popularity has its pitfalls. Popular results are of no use if what you’re searching for is not important to anyone outside of your inner circle.

With a Qitera-powered Google search, you can let friends and family chime in with their search results.

Top results will be shown inside of your search page, yet you can still access other related bookmarks by clicking a nearby link stating “Show Results on Qitera”. Doing so will let you browse through screenshots of your bookmarks.

Surveying Your Bookmarks

Personally, I’m a fan of both Firefox & Stumbleupon. Firefox is efficient, giving me the ability to save windows & tabs, so that I can draw up 40 or 50 essential webpages in seconds. Stumbleupon, on the other hand, provides hours of sheer entertainment while at the same time reducing clutter. Plus, it is searchable by subject, such as “Interior Design”.

Do you have a favorite bookmarking application? Do you tend to use multiple apps, as I do? Take a moment to survey your bookmarks, and share with our readers which tools are your favorites.

Photo Credits: James Withers, ycc2106, striatic, and deryckh.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

• (5)Zigtag – A Web App For Extreme Tagging (BETA Invites Included!)
• (9)Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research
• (9)Where To Research Material For Your Homework
• (17)Use Stacks To Save Websites For Later Reading [Mac]
• (4)Two Easy Ways To Synchronize Zotero Data