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Don't upgrade from a previous version, remove old version following steps below to save a lot of heartache:
Remove previous versions of Firefox:
1. Uninstall Firefox from Add/Remove programs in Windows.
During uninstall, I recommend ticking the 'Remove my Firefox personal data and customizations' box as well, as this will delete all of your bookmarks and saved settings, so make sure you've backed them up first!!
2. Go to your \Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox directory and delete it, and all of its contents if it still exists.
3. Remove all Firefox profile data and delete the following directories if they still exist:
In Windows XP:
\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla
\Documents and Settings\[Username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla
In Windows Vista and 7:
\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Mozilla
\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\
This will ensure that all remaining custom data relating to your profile, any cached files, any files relating to installed extensions and themes for Firefox, will all be removed from your system.
4. Find and remove all of the major Firefox/Mozilla-related entries in the Windows Registry. Using the Windows Registry Editor (Start>Run>Regedit), delete any of the following keys if they exist.
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL\]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\firefox.exe]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MozillaPlugins]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\mozilla.org]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mozilla]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\mozilla.org]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\MozillaPlugins]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\FirefoxHTML]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\FirefoxURL]
5. Reboot
Now your ready to install Firefox 4.
Tweaks after install:
If you use an SSD drive, then it's best to move the cache directory to a normal hard drive, as follows:
Type About:config in HTTP bar in Firefox and accept the warning.
Right click and create a new string, name it browser.cache.disk.parent_directory and give it a value of where you want to set cache e.g D:\FFCache.
You have just set the new cache directory.
Speed tweaks:
While in there, look for the following entries and set as follows (double click to edit):
network.http.max-connections - 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server - 20
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server - 8
network.http.pipelining - TRUE
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests - 8
network.http.proxy.pipelining - TRUE
Plugin-container Disable:
On Windows and Linux, the OOPP crash protection feature is enabled for all plugins and the preference dom.ipc.plugins.enabled is set to true, by default, toggle this preference from "true" to FALSE. This will stop the annoying plugincontainer.exe process from running.
Tweaking the look:
Fonts can look pretty weird with hardware acceleration running in Firefox 4, follow below to get them looking right:
Install the Anti-Aliasing Tuner add-on, which allows customization of font appearance, while keeping the full advantages of hardware acceleration. Open the Options for this add-on (under Firefox>Add-ons>Extensions), and set as follows:
Set Anti-Aliasing mode to ClearType and Rendering Mode to 'Natural Symmetric' for BOTH text sizes, then tick all the 'ClearType Level' and 'Enhanced Contrast' boxes and set them to 100%.
You can experiment further to see if you can further customize text appearance to suit your taste, but I found this the best setting.
That's it! Enjoy Firefox 4
