Comments on: The most annoying Firefox thing

By: Cleaning up is hard to do « Motho ke motho ka botho

Cleaning up is hard to do « Motho ke motho ka botho — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:27:18 +0000

[...] I use the precompiled Firefox binary and keep it in a hidden folder in my home directory, which is why the first part of the first line looks funny. The second part resizes the window to 1280×1024, because the -height and -width flags for Firefox, have never, in my experience, worked. But that’s not news. [...]

By: M Belsky

M Belsky — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:28:08 +0000

I am trying to specify Firefox’s height and width for a batch file I’m making for myself to start a few apps at the same time.

This is what I’ve gotten so far.

@rem Open Some Firefox Windows With Settings & Sizes Remembered
Start “” firefox.exe -no-remote -new-window -p “FirefoxProfileNameYouCreate1″ http://www.first_url.com -width 585 -height 520
Start “” firefox.exe -no-remote -new-window -p “FirefoxProfileNameYouCreate2″ http://www.second_url.com -width 585 -height 520

@rem Start 1st Program (Minimized option used. /min)
cd “C:\Program Files\1st Program”
Start /min “” 1stProgram.exe

@rem Start Last Program
cd “C:\Program Files\Last Program”
Start “” LastProgram.exe

Initially, I believe I was able to get the window sizes to stick using this command:
Start “” firefox.exe -cache -p “FirefoxProfileNameYouCreate1″ http://www.first_url.com -width 585 -height 520

the problem was that if i had a firefox window open before running the command, the profile (-p) would be ignored and firefox would use the current profiles settings. So I found the -no-remote switch to force firefox to use the specified profile but that caused the height and width to be ignored. For my uses this is okay because it is just for my convenience and each time I run my batch file, the windows open is the previous toolbar setup and window size and position.

Basically, I was able to get multiple window sizes and positions remembered ance set up, but am still not able to specify that info in the command line format.

If anyone who is better than me at batch files can play around with the switches ive mentioned in a way that will allow the windows sizes to be specified from the command line that works when an existing instance of firefox is already open, I would be very grateful.

Thanks.

M Belsky

By: George Mandis

George Mandis — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:09:14 +0000

Oh my god, I thought I was going crazy. I’m so glad someone else has found this problem. The JavaScript work-around is clever.

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:44:48 +0000

I remember using that plugin a few years ago, when I did a little web page design work. You’re right, it is convenient. It’s useful for previewing pages and the effect a window size has on the design.

It would be a little too much to install, for me that is, when all I want is the same size window each time.

By: Binny V A

Binny V A — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:21:10 +0000

If you want to do it in Konqueror, this will work…
konqueror –geometry=800×600+0+0

By: Ted

Ted — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:26:52 +0000

Thanks for the tip. This used to really annoy me.
I also found this works even better. Type

javascript:window.resizeTo(1065,755);window.moveTo(205,5);

in the location box. These can be saved as bookmarks with different sizes & window positions to suit your needs/mood.

This can also be embedded into a web page (like a browser start page) to automatically do this on Firefox startup.

// Get the firefox window to behave nicely
window.resizeTo(1065,755);window.moveTo(205,5);

By: lordalan

lordalan — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:57:23 +0000

The most excellent Web Developer plugin allows you to change Firefox's resolution on-the-fly to whatever you want. HTH Alan

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:39:57 +0000

Yes, I spotted the extension before I found the javascript trick. But since I generally eschew extensions and because I usually open Firefox to a blank page and because I use a bash script to trigger the program anyway … this is convenient. To each his own, of course. Funny how something like that doesn’t work, and yet is listed as a command-line option.

By: eksith

eksith — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:58:27 +0000

Those are the correct, and presumably current, arguments according to the command line KB, but it doesn't seem to work in Windows either. There is an extension available to set specific window sizes. I don't know that might be worth it though, since it's more bloat. You could write up a little script to copy a profile file from a different location, overwrite the existing one and command FF to use that using the -profile argument.