Revving the fox
More and more people are making the switch to Firefox. The reasons are clear: it’s a superior and more intuitive Web browser that makes browsing the Internet fun and productive. Here are some power tricks to supercharge your online productivity.
I’ve been using Mozilla Firefox for years. I first made the switch from Internet Explorer because of Firefox’s superb tabbed browsing feature, which allows users to open multiple websites inside the same browser window. It’s a killer feature, and immediately improved my productivity on the Web. When I do a Google search, for example, I simply open the results I want in new tabs. I then quickly flick between those tabs using keyboard shortcuts until I find what I’m looking for.
Many Firefox users will already know that the browser is highly adaptable with third-party extensions. Power users will typically have half a dozen or more of these little programs installed, giving the browser great new functionality. Popular add-ons include tools that improve Firefox’s already excellent tabbed browsing and applications that block banner advertising. But I’ll talk about the add-ons in part two of this column next week. For now, I’d like to reveal some of the nifty tricks and time-savers included in the basic browser (even if you’re a Firefox whiz, I’ll bet you don’t know all of these):
* When you have multiple tabs open, you can flip between them by clicking on them at the top of the browser window. But there’s an easier way: try flipping through your tabs using Ctrl-Tab. Want to do that from right to left instead? Use Ctrl-Shift-Tab. To close a tab, you can always click on the “x” in the tab heading, but it’s much easier to type Ctrl-W. And if you accidentally close a tab, get it back by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T. Need a new tab? No sweat, right-clicking on an existing tab and selecting “New tab” will get the job done, as will selecting “New tab” from the file menu. But it’s much easier to press Ctrl-T. Last tip on tabs: to open a Web link as a new tab, you can right-click on it and select “Open in new tab” from the pop-up menu. But I prefer simply pressing Ctrl and clicking on the link.
* There are other great shortcuts for accessing different parts of the browser window. Ctrl-L will take you to the location bar — the bar at the top where you type in Web addresses. And Ctrl-K will take you to the search bar at the top right. Google is the default search engine — to change it, click on the “G” logo to the left of the search bar to bring up a list of other search engines. You can even add your own. And you don’t have to use the mouse to change search engines: pressing Ctrl and the up and down arrows on your keyboard gets the job done.
* The new Firefox 3, released last month, has big improvements to the location bar. It does a great job of guessing where you want to go when you begin typing in a Web address. But there are other cool location-bar tricks that also work in older versions. Visiting a website that ends in.com, such as google.com? Simply type “google” (without the quote marks) and press Ctrl-Enter, and Firefox will take you to the website. Try Ctrl-Shift-Enter for.org and Shift-Enter for.net address endings.
* Another location bar feature is the ability to go directly to specific Web pages. For example, if you’re interested in reading reviews at the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) about the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning thriller No Country For Old Men, simply type “imdb no country for old men” (without the quotes) in the location bar and press enter. It’ll take you directly to the database’s entry on that movie. Neat.
Know more Firefox tricks? eMail Duncan, give your tips on FMTech or discuss it in the forum thread. Next week, in the second part of this column, I’ll take a look at some of the best extensions for Firefox that will help maximise your Web experience.
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