Everybody¡¯s favorite open-source browser,
Firefox, is great right out of the box. And by
adding someof the awesome extensions
available out there, the browser just gets better
andbetter.
But look under the hood, andthere 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.
1) More screen space.
Make your icons small. Go to View ¨C Toolbars
¨C Customizeand 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 thesearch 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
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 ¨C 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+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number tojump 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 youjust don¡¯t want
those URLs toshow 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 thedown-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 createa 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 exampleexplains 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 tipsand screenshots .
11) Add a keyword for a bookmark . Go to your
bookmarks much faster by giving them
keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then
select Properties. Put a shortkeyword in the
keyword field, save it, and now you can type
that keyword in the address bar and it will go
to that bookmark.
12) Speed up Firefox
If you have a broadband connection (and most
of us do), you can use pipelining tospeed up
your page loads. This allows Firefox to load
multiple things on a page at once, instead of
one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for
dialup connections). Here’s how:
Type “about:config” into the address bar and
hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field,
and change the following settings (double-click
on them to change them):
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a
number like 30. This will allow it to make 30
requests at once.
Also, right-click anywhere and select New->
Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay”
and set its value to “0″. This value is the
amount of time the browser waits before it acts
on information it receives.
13) Limit RAM usage
If Firefox takes up too much memory on your
computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is
allowed to us. Again,go to about:config, filter
“browser.cache” and select
“browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000,
but you can lower it, depending on how much
memory you have. Try 15000 if you have
between 512MB and 1GB ram.
14) Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox
is minimized
This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive
when you minimize it, taking up much less
memory. And there is no noticeable difference
in speed when yourestore Firefox, so it’s
definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config,
right-clickanywhere and select New-> Boolean.
Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” andset it to
TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these
settings to take effect.
15) Move or remove theclose tab button
Do you accidentally click on the closebutton of
Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove
them, again through about:config. Edit the
preference for
“browser.tabs.closeButtons”.Here are the
meanings of each value:
0: Display a close button on the active tab only
1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
2:Don’t display any close buttons
3:Display a single close button at the end of the
tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)
Enjoy!
