Simple Firefox Tips and Tricks

Firefox is one of the most popular browsers in the world, and is used by millions of people. It is second only to Internet Explorer in its user-share.  This article includes some Tips and Tricks that can make using Firefox an even more pleasant experience.


Drag and drop
There are many things that you can drag and drop in Firefox.

• Drag the favicon of any site to your home icon to set it as the home page.
• Drag a hyperlink (or image) to the new tab icon to open the link in a new tab.
• Drag a download link (or image file) to the download icon to instantly download the file.
• Drag a highlighted word to the search bar (beside the address bar) will bring you to the Google search result page for that word. If you drag the highlighted word to the address bar (and press enter), Firefox will perform a Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” search

Keyboard shortcut
Other than the usual shortcut keys such Ctrl + T:open new tab, Ctrl + N: open new window etc, here are some not-so-well-known, but useful, shortcut keys:

• Ctrl + Enter: Insert www and .com to the address bar. If you enter “about” in the address bar and press Ctrl + Enter, the browser will load the “www.about.com” page
• Ctrl + +/- : Increase/decrease the font size
• Spacebar: Page down, same function as pressing “Pg Dn” (This is one great shortcut key that I didn’t know till now…think I should just bang my head to the wall)
• Shift + Spacebar: Page up, same function as pressing “Pg Up”
• Alt + Enter: Duplicate the current tab

Mouse shortcut

• Ctrl + scroll up/down: Increase/decrease the font size (same as the Ctrl ++/-)
• Click a hyperlink with the middle button (or scrollwheel) opens the link in a new tab
• Shift + scroll up/down: Navigate between the next and previous page

Bookmark keyword search
If you set a keyword for your bookmark, you can easily open the bookmark simply by typing the keyword in the address bar.

To set keywords for your bookmark, right click the bookmark and select properties. You should see a ‘keyword‘ field where you can enter your keyword.

about:config
There are tons of configuration that you can edit to tweak the browser performance. Type about:config in the address bar to show the configuration. More information on how to modify the value.

Restoring Toolbar configuration after Firefox crashes
If your Firefox crashes and you find that all your toolbars setting are jumbled up or not displayed properly (especially the web developer toolbar), just go to View-> Toolbars -> Customize. Select “Restore Default Set”. Everything will be restored to the default state.