Firefox, everyone’s favorite open source browser, is popular mainly because of its out-of-the-box features. It has a spell checker, which verifies the spelling of context, it has tabbed browsing — a kind of Graphical User Interface or GUI — that can accommodate multiple documents in a single window and it also has a live bookmarking feature wherein RSS and other web feeds are treated as bookmark lists.
Even with all these great features, users of the open source browser can still maximize their use with shortcut keys and tips that they are unaware of.
Learn of Mouse Shortcuts
There are only two ways to maneuver in the Firefox browser: that is by using the mouse or by using the keyboard. Here are mouse shortcuts that you can do:
1. Shift + Scroll Down With Mouse - pressing the Shift key while scrolling down with your mouse will show the previous page.
2. Shift + Scroll Up With Mouse - pressing the Shift key while scrolling up with your mouse will show the next page.
3. CTRL + Scroll Up With Mouse - pressing the CTRL key while scrolling up with your mouse will decrease the size of text.
4. CTRL + Scroll Down With Mouse - pressing the CTRL key while scrolling down with your mouse will increase the text size.
5. Middle Click on a Tab - this action closes the tab.
6. Middle Click on a Link - this action opens the link in a new tab.
The rest of the tricks using the mouse reside on the Graphical User Interface or GUI of the Firefox browser. All you need to do is to spend about 45 minutes in one day to get to know your way in the Firefox browser using the mouse. The rest of the tricks will focus on the keyboard key combinations as well as deeper options in tweaking the browser.
Learn of the Incremental Find Feature
Its incremental find feature,/i> is non-modal and does not use a separate pop-up window. This feature automatically finds the keyword as it is being typed. This is called Find As You Type or FAYT. It will highlight the found keyword in the context and its other occurrences can be searched as necessary. Below are some of the keyboard shortcuts:
1. CTRL + F combination key - Invoke this feature with the usual CTRL + F shortcut combination for find function. Pressing the F3 function key will also invoke this feature of Firefox. The computer uses Function or Fn keys to perform special actions. Except for F2, F4, F8 and F9 function keys, there are a number of Function keys that can be used with the Mozilla Firefox browser.
2. The keyboard shortcut “/” will invoke the quick search function.
3. ALT + N combination key - the combination of these keys will let you scan the whole browser page for other search results of the keyword. Another combination key with similar action is CTRL + G, though the latter is prefered because of the letter N for “Next.”
Learn How to Navigate with Ease Within a WebPage
The popularity of a browser depends on this: easy and fast navigation. Users do not want a browser that is not friendly or that they may find hard to navigate into. Use of Mozilla Firefox browser have no idea that they can quickly go their way through the webpages by using keyboard shortcuts, taking them to specific places in the webpage. The following are easy shortcuts for easy ergonomics within the Firefox browser:
1. Page Up key - this key will take users towards the top of the webpage in increments.
2. Page Down key - this key will take users towards the bottom of the webpage in increments.
3. Up and Down directional arrow keys - these keys will take users either towards the top or bottom of the webpage in smaller increments as compared to the Page Up and Page Down keys.
4. Home key - this key will take users to the top of the webpage.
5. End key - this key will take users to the bottom of the webpage.
6. Shift Spacebar combination key - pressing both the Shift and Spacebar keys will have an action similar to the Page Up key.
7. Spacebar key - this key has an action similar to the Page Down key.
8. CTRL + K combination key - pressing both the Ctrl and K keys will bring you to the search box. Another CTRL combination keys is CTRL + E.
9. CTRL + L combination key - pressing both the Ctrl and L keys will bring you to the address bar. Pressing the F6 key will also do the same action.
10. ALT + Home combination key - pressing both the Alt and Home keys will open the homepage of Mozilla Firefox.
Learn Easy Tab Navigation
Knowing your way on the Firefox browser without the need for a mouse is an advantage especially since shortcut keys are way much faster than mose when browsing. Navigating around a webpage has been already listed above. Now, here are shortcut keys for easy navigating between tabs:
1. CTRL + T combination key - pressing both the Ctrl and T keys will give you a new tab.
2. CTRL + W combination key - pressing both the Ctrl and W keys will close a highlighted tab.
3. CTRL + Tab combination key - pressing both the Ctrl and Tab keys will highlight the next tab to the right and so on. Another CTRL combination key is CTRL + Page Up.
4. CTRL + Shift + Tab combination key - pressing both the Ctrl, Shift and Tab keys at the same time will highlight the next tab to the left and so on. Another CTRL combination key is CTRL + Page Down.
5. CTRL + number combination key - pressing both the Ctrl and a number key will highlight the corresponding tab. Note that you can only use this combination keys with 9 open tabs corresponding to the number keys from 1 to 9.
6. F5 key - this function key refreshes the current tab of the Mozilla Firefox. A similar effect can be done with CTRL + R.
A nice trick is the CTRL + Shift + T combination key. This will bring back the tab that you accidentally closed.
Learn How to Manage Webpage Contents with Ease
Below are 6 shortcut keys that you can use to manage webpage contents in Firefox:
1. CTRL + S combination key - you may want to save a particular webpage not only as html, but in a text format, too. On the other hand, using the combination keys of CTRL + A will select the whole text of the webpage.
2. The Print Screen key is helpful if you want to capture the entire webpage screen. To further enlarge the screen use the F11 key which will expand the Mozilla Firefox browser to full screen leaving only the tabs and icons. This will make your Print Screen look much better.
3. CTRL + O combination key - pressing both the Ctrl and O keys will let you easily open a saved file from the directory.
4. CTRL + P combination key - pressing both the Ctrl and P keys will let you print a current or saved page.
5. F7 key - pressing this key will activate or deactivate the caret browsing feature of Firefox. This feature allows users to select a text with the keyboard. The function key invokes a pop-up window for the user to turn on or off the feature. When the caret browsing feature is turned on, a cursor will appear on the webpage and the page can now be navigated using the arrow keys.
6. You can also increase or decrease the font size with the CTRL + = and CTRL + - combination keys.
Learn Easy Management of Private Data
1. CTRL + H combination key - you may at one point forgot to list a particular website that you have visited. No worries, you can go to the History page by this combination key and all accessed sites will be shown at the sidebar.
2. ALT + Left Arrow combination key - if the open tab has a history, you can browse forward through them with this combination key.
3. ALT + Right Arrow combination key - if the open tab has a history, you can browse backward through them with this combination key.
4. CTRL + Shift + Delete combination key - A customizable way to clear specific items is with the Clear Private Data option wherein you can choose which item to delete. The shortcut for this action is the combination key. This action can delete all cookies and caches, browsing and download history, saved form and search history as well as saved passwords and authenticated sessions.
5. The Firefox browser also lists down the URLs visited as you type on the address bar. As it shows the list, search for the specific URL that you want to delete and simply press delete to erase the URL.
Learn Easy Management of Bookmarks
Firefox made bookmarks easily accessible by placing them in the toolbar. However, so as to managing them with ease as they increase in number, you need to know the following:
1. You can make the bookmark page appear at the sidebar by either pressing the CTRL + B or the CTRL + I combination keys.
2. CTRL + D combination keys - pressing both these keys will add the current page as one of your bookmarks.
3. You can assign a keyword for your favorite bookmark such that you will have an option to put the assigned keyword at the address bar and it will directly go to the bookmark. Right-click on the bookmark then indicate a keyword at the keyword field.
How To Invoke The Integrated Engines
1. CTRL + J combination key - Firefox has a centralized downloading engine that can be easily invoked by this combination key. This is very useful when you want to verify your downloaded items because the download engine appears only when you are downloading.
2. CTRL + N combination key - it also has a search feature that uses the Google engine. If ever the required tabs in the current Firefox browser will reach more than 9, then it is much better to use the combination key. This will open a new Mozilla Firefox page with the Google search engine.
Learn of the Auto-Complete Feature
Firefox also has an auto-complete feature for its address bar. Type the name of the website without the usual “www” and “.com” or other suffixes then use a combination key and the browser will automatically set the address to the required URL:
1. CTRL + Enter combination key - pressing both these keys will set the address to “.com”
2. Shift + Enter combination key - pressing both these keys will set the address to “.net”
3. CTRL + Shift + Enter combination key - pressing both these keys will set the address to “.org”
4. Shift + Delete combination key - if you want to delete an auto-complete entry, you can do it by highlighting the entry from the form then pressing this combination key.
Customizing Firefox
About:Config Page
What Firefox users love in this open browser is the freedom to customize it. The following are user options for modifying some of the important features of the Firefox browser by typing “about:config” at the address bar. There are other possible ways to tweak Firefox from its “about:config” [http://mozillazine.org/misc/about:config/] but below tips are the most popular:
1. Speed-Up Your Browser by Pipelining.
a. In the filter field, enter “network.http” in the filter field and modify the following options:
b. “network.http.pipelining” must be set to true.
c. “network.http.proxy.pipelining” must be set to true.
d. “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests’ must be set to the required number of requests. The maximum recommended request is 8.
e. Right-click anywhere then select “New” then “Integer.” Name the Integer “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set the value to zero.
2. Manage the RAM Usage of Firefox.
a. In the filter field, enter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”
b. Input the required memory. From the standard 50000, you can set it to 15000 or more.
c. By creating a New Boolean type, you can further reduce the memory usage of Firefox when it is minimized.
d. Name the Boolean as “config.trim_on_minimize” and set its value to true.
e. Restart the Firefox browser.
3. Having Problems With The Tab Exit Button
a. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons” from the following:
i. 0 - an active tab will display an exit button.
ii. 1 - all tabs will display the exit button.
iii. 2 - no exit buttons will be displayed.
iv. 3 - a single exit button is displayed at the end of the tab bar.
UserChrome.css
The appearance of the Firefox browser can be modified with simple codes that will be integrated to the Firefox application by creating a .css file called “userChrome.css.” By following the tutorial at [http://www.supernova00.biz/userchrome.html] you can hide menus, separator bars between toolbars and more.
Make Firefox Colorful With Add-ons and Extensions
The creators of the Firefox created an environment in the browser that allows developers to use built-in tools, extensions and add-ons. Some of the popular add-ons and extensions are the following:
1. Stumbleupon - you can surf the web with this extension. You will discover great videos, websites, photos and more.
2. Google notebook - you can bookmark any website while you surf by simply pasting them in the notebook.
3. All-in-one Sidebar - This add-on is inspired by Opera that lets you manage all activities in the sidebar such as downloads, websites and more.
4. Fasterfox - the performance and network tweak for the Firefox browser.
5. Adblock Plus - gets rid of those annoying advertisements when loading a webpage.
6. Firefox Companion for e-Bay - e-Bay trading is so easy with this e-Bay add-on from Firefox.
7. Pronto Shopping Messenger - who says you can not compare prices online? This add-on does that exactly with over 60,000 merchants and 63 million products.
8. Clipmarks - you can clip or capture anything on a webpage with this add-on.
9. BlogRovr - the add-on that reads blogs for you by fetching posts from your favorite blogs with summaries.
10. Scribefire - easy posting on your blog with this cool add-on.
You can find more add-ons and extensions from the Mozilla home page by pressing the ALT + Home combination keys. Now you have a comprehensive knowledge of the shortcuts and tips available from the Firefox browser. If you have further questions, press F1 key; this function key will display the Mozilla Firefox help window. Users can easily find answers to any of their questions via the search menu.
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