TechnocratTechnocrat’s Random Thoughts

Here are a few cool tips/tricks that I have found to be really useful with Firefox 3.5 (many of these work in v3 and v2).

1) Duplicating a tab

Click on any tab and drag it down you will see a transparent mini window of the current page.  Hold CTRL and drag it back to the tool bar.

2) Keyboard/Mouse shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts

• Spacebar (page down)
• CTRL + T (new tab)
• CTRL+TAB (move between tabs left -> right)
• CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (move between tabs right <- left)
• CTRL+K (takes you to the search bar)
• CTRL+L (takes you to the address bar)
• CTRL+SHIFT+T (undo closed tab)
• / or CTRL+F (brings up find on page)
• ‘ (will bring up find but only search for links that match on the page)
• CTRL+N (new window)
• CTRL+# (that is a number not the # sign will take you the corresponding tab number they are numbered from left to right)
• ALT+ENTER from the addressbar (opens the page in a new tab)

Mouse shortcuts

(For these middle click can also mean wheel click depending on your mouse.  If you do not have one of these CTRL+LEFT CLICK will do the same)

• Middle click on any address history to open in a new tab
• Middle click on a bookmark folder to open all those bookmarks in new tabs
• Middle click on the back (or forward) button to open that page in a new tab
• Middle click on the home button to open it in a new tab
• Middle click on a link opens it in a new tab
• SHIFT+WHEEL SCROLL DOWN (goes back SCROLL UP goes forward)
• CTRL+LEFT CLICK (will select only a particular area.  This is hard to explain until you try it.  The best example is you want to highlight only something in one cell of a table.)

3) Auto-complete domain

When typing an address in the address bar you don’t need to type out the entire “http://www.techn0crat.com”.  All you need to do is type “techn0crat” then hit CTRL+ENTER and it will auto-complete the “http://www.” and the “.com” for you.

• CTRL+ENTER (.com)
• CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER (.org)
• SHIFT+ENTER (.net)

4) Word drag

You can highlight anything in FF and drag it some where else inside FF.  So for example you see some text you want to search for more information on.  Simply highlight it and then drag it to the search bar.

5) Tags to bookmarks

You may have noticed that with v3 of FF that when you start typing the address bar the smart search tries to help you find the address you are looking for.  Well you can add tags to your bookmarks to help the smart search find the correct bookmark for you.  Simply right click on any bookmark and click properties.  There you will see an area for tags.  Just add the keywords with commas.