1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars -
Customize and 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 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 (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. 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):
that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:
it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard.
Master these cool ones:
create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit
complicated to get into here.
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 example explains 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 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, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:
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 you restore Firefox, so it’s 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 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:
Customize and 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 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 (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. 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 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 - 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 tabscommonly 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 - like magic! For .net
addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press
Control-Shift-Enter.
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)
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 you
just don’t want those URLs to show 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 the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to
delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.
User chrome. If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want toautomatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the
address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you
just don’t want those URLs to show 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 the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to
delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.
create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit
complicated to get into here.
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 example explains 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 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, 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.
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 you restore Firefox, so it’s 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 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)
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