15 Of The Best Firefox Tricks Ever Works for all Versions (Havent Tested on FF 3)

[Saint_Michael 3]

While searching some stufff about using two different browsers I came upon this little site that last some of the best firefox tricks ever (including the pipeline trick) they even got tricks for lowering ram usage from firefox which is hte best thing ever, because I soak up a lot of RAM from FF with all the extensions I have. They even got tricks I don't think most people here on the forums know about either. For the ones I have tested so far they seem to still work on firefox 2.0.0.4 which is a good thing, but I haven't tested them on FireFox 3 yet. I would recommend the RAM especially for those who are in the 512-1GB RAM range it is very useful.

1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the Use small icons box.
2) Smart keywords. If theres a search you use a lot (lets say IMDB.coms 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 (lets say actor) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefoxs 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 (and my personal favs):

* 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 its 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. Lets 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+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
* Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)

6) Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes youre already using your mouse and its 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. Firefoxs ability to automatically show previous URLs youve visited, as you type, in the address bars drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just dont want those URLs to show up (I wont 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 youve 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, youll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. Its 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. Youll 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 users tool, about.config isnt something to mess with if you dont know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browsers address bar. See Mozillazines about:config tips and 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 short keyword 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 to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, its optimized for dialup connections). Heres 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. Its 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 you restore Firefox, so its definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it config.trim_on_minimize and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.

15) Move or remove the close tab button. Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefoxs 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:Dont display any close buttons
* 3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)

For even more tips and tricks on firefox check this link out

Here is that link

[TypoMage 0]

I thought for sure you were going to say that steal flash animation thing. Well or actual steal any embeded thing from a website. But I would think that that would just be common sense.

[Yuripro84 0]

Nice, I did the pipeline trick and the minimize thing. Since I like to switch between browsing and games, that will come in handy :)Is there any disadvantage to making it store in your HD when minimized? Will it just take longer to restore, or what?

[Dooga 0]

The sad thing is I always always repeat these actions so many times. Does firefox reset it or something? Tired of having to change it every single time I remember to...

[mojoman 0]

Thanks for the sharing this man ! I use firefox a lot and I switch as well between when I am playing games and to check stuff on the internet. Should come in very handy to know

I haven't tested them on FireFox 3 yet

When did they release firefox 3?
Edited June 30, 2007 by mojoman (see edit history)

[csp4.0 1]

wow! very nice! a very noticable change in performance, must be something like this for ie. those pipeline tricks are good, but the speed isn't as fast as i thought it would be, but the ram thing is awesome

[Misanthrope 0]

Infinite blessings for bestowing these precious gifts of knowledge upon your faithful minions, oh incarnation of Pure Evil. I especially like the keyboard shortcuts for scrolling up and down, and I mean to look into lowering RAM usage as well. I like Firefox, but it sure is a memory hog on this lame Dell of mine. Sadly, I am one of the unfortunate few not on broadband, so I can't take advantage of the boosted speed option. Oh, sad days of woe, misery and shame! Still, Firefox rules compared to the competition. All these excellent features makes one wonder why anyone would suffer with Windows Explorer if they didn't have to.

[ZaM0 0]

Excelent list of tricks, I didn't know few of them, now I know my Firefox better Thanks!

[soniat 0]

nice collection tricks.....most of them are tested