This can come in handy for those who want to optimize FireFox! :
Everybody’s
favorite open-source browser, Firefox, is great right out of the box.
And by adding some of the awesome extensions available out there, the
browser just gets better and better.But look under the hood, and there
are a bunch of hidden (and some not-so-secret) tips and tricks available
that will crank Firefox up and pimp your browser. Make it faster,
cooler, more efficient. Get to be a Jedi master with the following cool
Firefox tricks.
1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.
2)
Smart keywords. If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s
people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use.
Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”,
give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember
shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do
an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name
of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any
search box.
3)
Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes
a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be
super fast. Here are some of the most common:
Spacebar
(page down) Shift-Spacebar (page up) Ctrl+F (find) Alt-N (find next)
Ctrl+D (bookmark page) Ctrl+T (new tab) Ctrl+K (go to search box) Ctrl+L
(go to address bar) Ctrl+= (increase text size) Ctrl+- (decrease text
size) Ctrl-W (close tab) F5 (reload) Alt-Home (go to home page)
4)
Auto-complete. This is another keyboard shortcut, but it’s not commonly
known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the
name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”.
Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www”
and the “.com” and take you there - like magic! For .net addresses,
press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.
5)
Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs
that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:
Ctrl+Tab
(rotate forward among tabs) Ctrl+Shift+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)
6)
Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s
easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master
these cool ones:
Middle
click on link (opens in new tab) Shift-scroll down (previous page)
Shift-scroll up (next page) Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size) Middle click on a tab (closes tab)
7)
Delete items from address bar history. Firefox’s ability to
automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the
address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you
just don’t want those URLs to show up (I won’t ask why). Go to the
address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu
will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited with those letters in
them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete,
and press the Delete key to make it disappear.
8)User
chrome. If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want to
create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit
complicated to get into here, but check out this tutorial.
9)
Create a user.js file. Another way to customize Firefox, creating a
user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a
text file named user.js in your profile folder (see this to find out
where the profile folder is) and see this example user.js file that you
can modify. Created by techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of
the things you can do in its comments.
10)
about:config. The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something
to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the
main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s
address bar. See Mozillazine’s about:config tips and screenshots.
