Mozilla Firefox Configuration Tips and Tricks

Mozilla Firefox Shortcuts

• Ctrl + Tab or Ctrl + PageDown: Cycle through tabs.
• Ctrl + Shift + Tab or Ctrl + PageUp: Cycle through tabs in reverse.
• Ctrl + (1-9): Switch to tab corresponding to number.
• Ctrl + N: New window.
• Ctrl + T: New tab.
• Ctrl + L or Alt + D or F6: Switch focus to location bar.
• Ctrl + Enter: Open location in new tab.
• Shift + Enter: Open location in new window.
• Ctrl + K or Ctrl + E: Switch focus to search bar.
• Ctrl + O: Open a local file.
• Ctrl + W: Close tab, or window if there's only one tab open.
• Ctrl + Shift + W: Close window.
• Ctrl + S: Save page as a local file.
• Ctrl + P: Print page.
• Ctrl + F or F3: Open find toolbar.
• Ctrl + G or F3: Find next...
• Ctrl + Shift + G or Shift + F3: Find previous...
• Ctrl + B or Ctrl + I: Open Bookmarks sidebar.
• Ctrl + H: Open History sidebar.
• Escape: Stop loading page.
• Ctrl + R or F5: Reload current page.
• Ctrl + Shift + R or Ctrl + F5: Reload current page; bypass cache.
• Ctrl + U: View page source.
• Ctrl + D: Bookmark current page.
• Ctrl + NumpadPlus or Ctrl + Equals (+/=): Increase text size.
• Ctrl + NumpadMinus or Ctrl + Minus: Decrease text size.
• Ctrl + Numpad0 or Ctrl + 0: Set text size to default.
• Alt + Left or Backspace: Back.
• Alt + Right or Shift + Backspace: Forward.
• Alt + Home: Open home page.
• Ctrl + M: Open new message in integrated mail client.
• Ctrl + J: Open Downloads dialog.
• F6: Switch to next frame. You must have selected something on the page already, e.g. by use of Tab.
• Shift + F6: Switch to previous frame.
• Apostrophe ('): Find link as you type.
• Slash (/): Find text as you type.

About URLs Tips

Guys! There are a few special URLs, which begin with about:, that you can type into the Location Bar of Firefox.

• about: — The same page as "Help -> About".
• about:about — Lists all these about: URLs (Mozilla Suite only).
• about:blank — A blank page. Useful for setting as your homepage.
• about:buildconfig — Reveals details about your Mozilla build options.
• about:cache — Displays cache statistics.
• about:cache?device=memory — Lists memory cache entries.
• about:cache?device=disk — Lists disk cache entries.
• about:cache-entry — Shows information about a cache entry. Used in about:cache links. Requires parameters.
• about:config — GUI for modifying user preferences (prefs.js).
• about:credits — The list of contributors to the Mozilla projects.
• about:logo — Displays the Mozilla logo (Mozilla Suite only).
• about:license — shows the Mozilla Public License and the Netscape Public License for the piece of software. ( Only in products based on Gecko 1.8 ).
• about:mozilla — The famous Book of Mozilla.
• about:plugins — Lists all your plugins as well as other useful information.

Advanced Tips for Tabbed Browsing

Home Page as tabs : Instead of just one web page as your homepage, you can make your home page several pages. Select your favorite web sites and open them in a set of tabbed windows. Go to Tools -> Options and select 'General'. Under 'Home Page', press the 'Use Current Pages' button. Now when you hit the Home button on the Navigation toolbar, your favorite web sites will load with just one click.

Bookmarking a set of tabs :You can bookmark a set of tabs when selecting 'Bookmark This Page' or Ctrl+D Check the 'Bookmark all tabs in a folder' checkbox to store all the tabs in the current window into a Bookmark Folder.

More shortcuts : While it's easy to select tabs with a mouse, you can also cycle through tabs using the keyboard: use Ctrl+PgUp (or Ctrl+Tab) and Ctrl+PgDn (or Shift+Ctrl+Tab). You can also select the first tab by pressing Ctrl+1, and so on up to the 9th tab with Ctrl+9. If you have a middle mouse button, click it on a tab to close the tab.

Some more Tips about Firefox

We always backup our Favorites in Firefox, so that whenever we reinstall the browser we can safely restore them without ne problem. (If u don't know how to backup favorites? Goto: Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks..., It'll open Bookmarks Manager. Then goto: File -> Export... & save them.)

Now come to the point.
The thing is that whenever we reinstall firefox we have to restore them by applying same process as we do 4 backing up them (use Import instead of Export). And one more thing we HIV to also backup our current bookmarks when we r planning to reinstall the browser.
So the trick is that we can define our custom Bookmark path in firefox , so that we don't need to import or export them.

Type about:config in address bar of browser, right-click & create a new String value, named browser.bookmarks.file and set its value to the path where u have backed up your favorites. Now firefox always update it automatically whenever u add or delete your bookmarks, so no need to continuously take backup.

Second trick is very useful. Many times u have noticed that when u minimize the firefox windows & again restore it, it takes some time to restore. This trick reduces this delay.

Same thing, type about:config in the address bar of firefox, right-click & create a new Boolean value, named config.trim_on_minimize & set its value to false. It'll prevent delays when restoring the window.