Stop Browser Resizing In Firefox
June 5th, 2004There’s a simple little fix that prevent webpages from resizing your Firefox browser that I put in every time. There’s nothing I hate more than a website that resizes my whole browser to the size of a 40×40 ad, forcing me to expand it back to my regular 1024×768 size.
Easy Method: At top on the menu, choose Tools, then click Options. Go to the Content tab, and to the right of Enable Javascript is the Advanced button. Click that and uncheck the selection “Move or resize existing windows”.
Note: Personally, I like to disable all options in this window for best result as it prevent websites from controlling my browser’s behavior.
Hard Method: In the address bar type about:config and hit Enter. Do a search for resize. You will see dom.disable_window_move_resize. Right click that and choose Modify. In the box that pops up, type true and hit OK.
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January 19th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
Thanks for the tip - I googled onto this post while searching for a way to stop Firefox from resizing when browsing some sites…thanks!!
January 19th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
Glad it helped. :)
June 22nd, 2006 at 3:43 pm
[...] I hate not having control over something as simple as my web browser. Have you ever gone to a website where they resize your browser to conform to their interface. Many websites that have video content (such as Comedy Central) do this using javascript. It bothered me so much I looked around online for a solution (Firefox only, I don’t use IE). There’s a simple little fix that prevent webpages fro m resizing your Firefox browser that I put in every time. There’s nothing I hate more than a website that resizes my whole browser to the size of a 40×40 ad, forcing me to expand it back to my regular 1024×768 size. To stop this from happening, in the address bar type about:config and hit Enter. Do a search for resize. You will see DOM.disable_window_move_resize. Right click that and choose Modify/Toggle. In the box that pops up, type true and hit OK. Restart the browser and you won’t have the problem anymore. [Source] [...]
June 29th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
[...] Source: Stop Browser Resizing In Firefox < GoodBlimey.com June 29, 2006, 1:23 pm [...]
November 26th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Found your page through Stumble
Worked great. Thanks
November 26th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
great advice, thanx alot!
December 6th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Nice — thank you.
Ooh, look at all the other “helpful features” that can be turned off too! :-)
December 20th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
WELL I STUMBLED UPON THIS SITE BY LUCK…MANY THANKS MY FRIEND!
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
I stumbled across this page, and this is some great info. Thank you
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:20 am
I stumbled across this page and found the answer to the question I had never bothered to ask. How can I stop my browser resizing? I thought it is just something I had to put up with. I am glad I do not any more
January 4th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Thanks… Really helpful! (got here through stumbleupon)
January 9th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
I stumbled onto this site too, and I sure am glad I did. Thanks very much for this info. Sure there are things in life that are more annoying than having your browser resized, but I can’t think of any at present. :)
I checked out some offending sites, and this tip really works 100%.
January 14th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
[...] Tired of javascript resizing your browser windows without so much as a please? Well I was and I happen to run Firefox (the greatest browser on the planet). A quick google turned up this article which happens to mention a feature of firefox I didn’t know about, stopping any javascript that tries to resize your browser window. Combine this with Tabmix plus and you can force any javascript that opens pop-ups to open them in new tabs rather than new windows. I’ve always found Firefox extremely slow opening new windows in comparison to tabs. [...]
January 26th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
[...] Stop Browser Resizing In Firefox After getting tired of ads and pages resizing Firefox, I decided to look for a way to fix it. Pretty easy, as usual, when you know where to look for it. (tags: firefox firefox-extensions plugins) [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Ooffff… What a friggin’ relief! Many thanks!!!!
February 15th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
that’s great, didn’t know it was that easy to stop such an annoying thing, thanks!
February 16th, 2007 at 10:20 am
You are the MAN! Or woman. Whatever. You are it.
February 19th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
You should also look at this link: http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/edit
which explains that opening a special URL, “about:config”, will open a hidden editor allowing you to adjust special browser properties that are not exposed in the usual “Preferences” panels. Once you open this URL, scroll and look for ‘dom.disable_window_open_feature’ and set all the options to ‘true’ by clicking on each line (they toggle true/false). From then on, every window will be resizable, have scroll bars, and all the other features you normally expect in a window.
February 20th, 2007 at 3:32 am
All such functions (and furthermore tabbed browsing etc.) copied Firefox from Opera.
Your linked article “What About Opera?” isn’t up to date. Opera can do everything what Firefox can do - and most things were first included in Opera and then in Firefox ;-)
February 20th, 2007 at 5:32 am
bebo: I’m not going to update an article I wrote in 2005, because at the time that was what Opera had issues with.
Most of the points I brought up then still applies today. Opera suffers from feature-creep and is bloated with features most people won’t even use. Opera does a lot of things decent, rather than being really good at one thing, and this is because they stretch their programmers too wide to cover all the little things the browser does, rather than focus on the fundamentals. With Firefox, you can add features as you like, rather than be forced to deal with it in the UI.
On top of that, Opera still suffers from irregular rendering issues, even though it complies with W3C standards very well.
And don’t get me started on the UI, which is busy, complicated, and user-unfriendly. If you don’t mind wading through a slew of crap to get what you want with the browser, than I guess your patience is greater than mine when it comes to browsing online.
March 4th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Awesome, just what I was looking for (via Google) to stop wanted popups from shrinking my whole browser in single-window mode. Much appreciated.
March 10th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Thank you so much for posting this solution. Often pages that display pictures would resize your browser, in theory to allow a small window to view the picture but for me, it was always too small. Now I can keep fullscreen goodness! :)
April 1st, 2007 at 9:45 am
Thanks a lot. I didn’t think it was possible to do something about it but I got on this page through Stumble Upon and I’m glad it brought me there.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:58 am
thanks for the tip!
April 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
good hack thanks!
April 20th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Thanks soooo much for this tip. This has been the bane of my browsing existence for ages now!
June 13th, 2007 at 2:32 am
[...] Window Resize - This one happens to me the most when I’m using StumbleUpon. I stumble for a while everyday and when I do this, I like to have multiple tabs open at the same time, and as it always happens, I will stumble on some photographer’s website and it will force the browser window to resize to fit the photograph on that particular page. No matter how good your work is, I will give it a negative vote for resizing my window without my permission. (Here’s an easy way to get around this). [...]
October 5th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
[...] link has a great tip on how to prevent Firefox from resizing pop-up windows from Real Estate or Auto [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 4:22 am
[...] At top on the menu, choose Tools, then click Options. Go to the Content tab, and to the right of Enable Javascript is the Advanced button. Click that and uncheck the selection “Move or resize existing windows”. Link [...]
February 27th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Thanks a bunch for this trick - you saved my PC from being thrown outta the window!
March 11th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
[...] this happened a few times I went to look for a way to Stop browser re-sizing you Firefox window and I was really quite [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Both methods dont work for me, specifically this page: http://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=398292
I tried restarting FF, but nothing.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:36 am
If you have not done it yet reduce memory hogging when you minimize firefox. type in about:config in address bar THEN right click in the white field, CHOSES NEW then BOOLEAN Type in config.trim_on_minimize and click OK then highlight TRUE and click ok.
Restart the browser. When you have to the properties tab you can watch all excess memory be dumped when you minimize firefox. Ron
June 12th, 2008 at 6:39 am
PARDON ME — OPEN WINDOWS TASK MANAGER and then in properties tab you can see memory use drop when minimized. SORT by Mem Usage so firefox is at or near top and watch it. Ron
June 12th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Ron: Additionally, this page at Mozillazine lists more ways to conserve memory usage in Firefox.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
The instructions for using about:config should be changed as the current release of Firefox (3.1) presents the options differently. Now, use the right-mouse-click context-sensitive pop up menu and choose “toggle”.