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Without a doubt, my favorite application on my computer is my mozilla Firefox browser. Here are 10 awesome mozilla Firefox tips that I recently discovered.
1. Open a new tab by double clicking on an empty space in the firefox tab bar. This is the coolest firefox tip that I have recently learned. I hated going up to the file menu and clicking on the new tab button. Now I don’t have to!!
2. One of my favorite firefox addons is All-in-One Gestures. This firefox add on allows me to make gestures with my mouse and control my firefox browser. By right clicking my mouse and drag it to the left, I can go back to the last page I was browsing. I can close a tab by right clicking my mouse and moving it down and then to the left. I love how this speeds up my web browsing.
3. For those of you with blogs, I highly recommend installing the Scribe Fire Firefox addon. ScribeFire is a great blog editor that integrates with monzilla firefox.
4. You can go back a page by hitting the “Backspace” key. This is a very convenient way to move back a page.
5. Configure your Firefox addons by going to Tools => Add-ons and then right clicking the firefox addon you want to configure. I did not know that Firefox addons had options you could set. I would like to thank Geekenough.com for this tip!!
6. Did you know that you can tag your firefox bookmarks? Simply go to your firefox bookmarks folder, right click on a bookmark and then go to properties. On the properties page, you can assign a keyword to that bookmark. Then you can go to that bookmark by simply typing that keyword into your address bar. Thanks Lifehack.org!!
7. I am sure that many already know this trick, but I recently learned it. You can bookmark a site by hitting “Ctrl + D”. I am a little embarrassed that I did not know this until recently. You will notice that I added this tip to my blog template hoping that people will bookmark Newest on the Net. I would like to thank seologs.com for introducing me to this shortcut.
8. Another cool way to bookmark a site is to place your mouse pointer over the page’s favicon, left click and drag it to you bookmarks folder. This is a great tip. Thanks Techlicious.TV!!
9. The Mozilla Firefox website has a great list of all of the keyboard shortcuts for Firefox. Instead of listing filling up this article with keyboard shortcuts, here is the complete list. I would like to thank WrongAdvices.com for leading me to this list.
10. Do you have several sites that you like to have open at all times? Well, Firefox allows you to open multiple home pages at one time when you launch Firefox. This save me a lot of time. To implement this go to Tools => Options => Main. From the Main menu you can ask Firefox to use a bookmark folder as your homepage. Put all of the websites that you want to automatically launch into a special bookmark folder and then select that bookmark folder to be your home page.
If you haven’t downloaded the latest mozilla Firefox browser, here is the latest Firefox download.
I hope that you liked this article. Please leave a firefox tip of your own in the comments.
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34 comments ↓
Even though I consider myself pretty adept at all things Firefox, I didn’t know #1. I usually right-click on the empty space and select New Tab, but double-clicking is so much easier and faster. Thank you very much for that tip. Add up all the time that will save me in the future (even at just a tenth of a second each time), and it will be a considerable amount of time saved. So thanks again!
Wow … I never knew firefox was so handy, i will have to test some of these tips out!
Been using firefox for a lont time. Great browser better than IE. But still thanks for the info.
Great post. I love FireFox and have been using it instead of Internet Explorer since it became available.
I really like the Add-ons feature and use SEOquake to see pagerank, indexed pages, cache date and so much more from an addon toolbar.
And the Tabs feature certainly has been a favorite feature.
BTW: if you want to see the source code in FireFox just hit Control+U on any page and BAM there it is.
Great Post, I have started using Firefox a few weeks ago and everyday I become more sure that Firefox is better than IE (which i have been using for years).
Thanks,
Lara,
Great tips, Fred. Another one is middle clicking on a tab to duplicate it. That’s useful when you need to submit stuff to social media, sometimes.
To open a new tab, you can just click Ctrl+T which is way faster than the method you mentioned. By the way, I also didn’t know that firefox bookmarks could be tagged, thanks for the tip there.
My 0.02
Select a piece of content outputted client sided then click “View selection source” to get the actual -rendered- source. “View source” shows the JS call but not its output.
Check your profile directory for prefs-n.js files (n being any integer up to 9999). If you’ve more than a handful, then rename the last one to prefs-1.js and delete all the others (but don’t delete the mother of all preferences: prefs.js!!!) with numbers in the file name. That will speed up everything. BTW, after creating prefs-9999.js FF stops working and can’t be restarted until you clean-up.
For number 1 an even easier way is Ctrl + T. This will open a new tab for you.
@Donna - I am glad that you liked that tip. Being able to open a new tab by double clicking is great!!
@Thomas, Mark and Lara - I am glad that you liked the tips.
@Maki - Thanks for the tips about clicking on the middle of a tab. That is very useful!!
@James- You are right about the wonderful addons that are available for firefox. I am going to do another post listing my favorite addons.
Nice list of Firefox tips!
Another handy feature I use often is CTRL F. If you’re looking for a certain term on a page, CTRL F will allow you to search the web page for it. Nifty little trick that I use often.
bookmark tip: make 26 files in bookmarks start with z go to a then when u bookmark things put in in the letter it goes with very handy way to orginize bookmarks
Do you know that clicking on a link with your middle button (the scroll button) will open it in a new tab? You can use ctrl+t to open a new tab as well.
how bout using keyboard shortcuts man?
#1 - CTRL+T = instant new tab (OMG!!! thats amazing)
#etc - just check it out in the menus……..
i think if you lot took a minute to glance at firefox’ menus you’de be amazed at the amount of “discoveries” you’d make.
That list is so lame!
I found a great way to speed up firefox. Here is a clip from another website. I think this is an appropriate fix if you are not happy with the speed of your browser.
clipped from: tech-buzz.net
You might have noticed that Firefox performs poorly when you surf for a long time or open lots of tabs at once. Many wrongly believe that this is due to some memory leak caused by extensions (even, I used to believe this). This is actually caused because Firefox stores 50 most recently visited websites in a memory session inorder to speed up the pageload of the previously visited site.
Average web surfer tend to visit only 3 – 5 websites out of the previously visited websites, so you can reduce the resource hog by changing the memory threshold to 5 (or anything below 50). This can be done by typing ‘about:config’ in your Firefox address bar and search for ‘browser.sessionhistory.max_entries’ (without quotes), right click on that entry and choose modify. Now set the value for 5 (or anything lower than 50).
I first read this trick on Ghack and then I tried it myself. It made my Firefox work smoothly for longer.
It has made some difference for me.
Old, most of ‘em. I use the ctrl+t key to open up a new tab, or just middle-mouse click on links to open them in a new tab - much easier, I think.
As for the backspace key, that’s been in other browsers (netscape from ten years ago, internet exploder, etc) for as long as I can remember.
Also, Opera has loads more convenient features - the mouse gestures, for example? Opera got that first. Tabbed browsing? Opera. In terms of features and speed (speed in javascript execution, css / html parsing, etc), Opera’s way ahead of Firefox.
CTRL+SHIFT+T -> Re-opens last closed tab
about:config -> Type in address bar, press ENTER ! Dont tamper without knowledge!
Check my post on password revealing and leave a comment
forgot to add that I store my bookmarks in a folder and when I middle-click the folder, all tabs open
“Live bookmarks” cannot be dragged into a folder, but secretively can be copied and pasted into the folder!
Another cool tip that will come in handy for developers and those that are curious…..
If you are viewing the source code of a page, press ctrl + r when you’re looking at the source code window. This will reload just the source code.
A handy shortcut instead of going to View -> Page Source if you’re editing a page and you want to see your changes in the code.
Great Article Fred! I’ve been using these tips and tricks for quite a while now, and that only part of the reason Firefox is one of my favourite browsers
— Dev
Nice list. I’ve used Scribe Free a little bit and it’s a pretty nice add on.
You can also use [CTRL] + T for that and you don’t have to use your mouse at all
I didn’t know hitting BACKSPACE will go back one page! Cool
Stumbled!
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Honestly, this list seems pretty basic, to me. #10 was new, though, and it pretty cool. Essentially having “multiple home pages” is a neat idea.
Maki, where did you get this idea? When I middle click a tab, it closes the tab. It this something that you have to change in your preferences?
Those were some awesomely handy tips, especially the one about memory. I have my Firefox window open all day and it can build up some serious memory issues. I hope it helps to allow me to restart it less frequently.
Another couple of good tips for keyboard shortcuts would be CTRL+L which allows you to quickly set focus to your address bar (think of it as CTRL+Location).
Also, I use CTRL+K to quickly get to the search box so I can quickly search Google (think of it as CTRL+Keyword).
I also stopped using CTRL+R recently in place of just hitting F5 to refresh the page. Also if you are in the web design world you will find that you can refresh the page with a cleared cache (for the page you are on) by using CTRL+F5. Both of these refresh methods work for IE, Safari and Opera also.
Hey,
My favourite shortcut is ctrl + l - it jumps to the adress bar, so you do not need to use the mouse.
My favourites are here
* Type the domain name into the address bar + ctr + ent - no need to type http://www. or .com – e.g. ‘semconsultancy’ + ctr + ent and you’re away
* ctr + j – opens downloader inspector
* ctr + t – opens a new tab
* ctr + tab (ctr + shift +tab) – toggle between browser tabs
* ctrl + l – jumps to address bar (F.F. and Opera only)
* / - find – same as ctr + f (F.F. and Opera only)
All good and in the worl of the fox!
Joe
I also like CTRL + W to close a tab.
If you also want to read newsfeeds in firefox I recommend sage which is very handy.
Thank you for submitting such great tips. This is becoming quite a useful list.
I just right-click to open a new tab. But I did not know I could just click the empty space. That’s a good tip.
Of course, I’m a little slow when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, so…
@Donald #15:
I was just having some issues with my FF tonight and this tip is Heaven sent! Thank you for that.
Excellent tips!
Open new tab: There’s a button you can add to the toolbar. Right-click the toolbar, click Customize. Drag the New Tab icon up to the toolbar and drop it there
To find text within a page without having to press CTRL + F, go to Tools > Options > Advanced. Check the box ‘Search for text when i start typing’. When you’re viewing a page, just start typing the search string and it’ll come up.
One thing I can’t live without is Foxmarks. Go to Tools > Add-ons and search for Foxmarks. It lets you synchronize all your bookmarks on their server, so you’ll have access to the same data on any computer you install it on. I was always out of sync before I learned about this handy tool!
Again, thanks for this great tip review!
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Many of these I already knew. But some are new. For instance, the Backspace functions is really useful.
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