The migration went smooth, but by default the Linux Mint Firefox Google search functionality is useless, but luckily it wasn’t too much effort to fix.

First step is to change the home page by choosing “preferences” from the “edit” toolbar and changing the URL on the general tab. This still doesn’t help your results though if you search for something in the search box in the top right corner of the browser. To fix this head to this site, and look down the page until you find the link for your countries Google search. Click the link and it will be added to the search providers in the search box.

To remove the Linux Mint search provider and make your selected plugin default click on the search provider icon on the left hand side of the search box and select “manage search engines”. Select the default and click the remove button, then highlight your chosen provider and simply move to the top of the list with the “move up” button.

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Restore The Refresh Button Placement In Firefox 4

Pre Firefox 4

Firefox 4

As developer my life revolves around the refresh button, sure I can use the F5 key but its not the same, when I change application focus between my IDE back to the browser, 9/10 times I am already using the mouse and with multiple screens its just easier to have the refresh button on the left.

Luckily its pretty easy to achieve, in order to reposition the refresh button simply select “view->toolbars->customize” in the applications top menu. You should now see the refresh and stop buttons have left the location bar and are sitting to the right, simply click and drag the refresh button to you preferred location and click done to save your preferences

To get started open a terminal and enter:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable

Potential Issue: depending on your network, corporate firewalls often block Port 11371, which is used to communicate with the key server causing timeouts. If this happens to you the key can be downloaded over port 80 using the command:

sudo gpg –keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 –recv-keys CE49EC21

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Close Firefox if its currently running and open again and enjoy your new look browsing experience.

Steps to revert your Google Results

Download and install the Grease Monkey addon for Firefox here.

After Firefox restarts, go Tools -> Greasemonkey -> enabled, if you go back again you should see this option now has a tick next to it indicating the plugin is active.

Go to the userscripts site and click on the install button for the “Google Classic” script. this will display a Firefox prompt click the “Install” button here.

Now visit Google.com and your results pages should look like the familiar interface you are used to.