Reduce Firefox 3 SSL Annoyances
2009-03-04 13:43 - Tech
Firefox 3 introduced new handling of "invalid" SSL certificates. They made it much harder to access sites secured with SSL certificates that are not fully validated, such as self-signed certificates. This is good for the security of the poorly informed, but annoying for technical types who frequently end up on such sites. It now takes four (five, I always uncheck "store permanently") extra clicks just to open the page.
There's two preferences that can each reduce that count by one. The browser.xul.error_pages.expert_bad_cert (set to true) preference automatically shows the buttons, and the browser.ssl_override_behavior (set to 2) preference removes the need to click to download the certificate.
It's still annoying, but less so.