Sound in Windows Vista

Windows Vista has a lot of new features, but it's hard to point to any single one and recommend an upgrade. Here is one of the things I've noticed so far that will keep me from going back to XP:

Per-application volume levels



This is something that I never realized how much I needed until I tried it. The problem is that Flash content in a browser seems to be a million times louder than anything else - so whenever I looked at a Flash animation or a YouTube video I would have to remember to turn down the volume before it finished loading. Now I can set Firefox to have its own low volume level relative to the main volume level.

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Useful settings in Firefox 2.0

Here are a few settings that I've changed in my installation of Firefox 2.0:

browser.tabs.closeButtons
Default value: 1
New value: 3
Effect: The close tab X button will appear only on the far right of the tab bar instead of every tab. Setting this value to 2 will show the X button only on the currently selected tab.

browser.search.openintab
Default value: false
New value: true
Effect: Searches made with the search box in the upper right corner of the window will now open in a new tab instead of the current one.

browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace
Default value: true
New value: false
Effect: Selecting "Open All in Tabs" from a folder in your bookmarks will no longer close all currently open tabs.

These settings can be changed by entering "about:config" in the address bar.

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