The Always Up-to-Date Power User’s Guide to Firefox
Now that
Firefox is on a rapid release cycle,
we're getting a new version of Firefox every three months—and each
time, it becomes more tricked out than ever with new customization
options, shortcuts, and convenient features hidden away in its menus.
Today, we're covering it all—from longtime shortcuts to hidden features
from the latest version of Firefox. Even if you're already a Firefox
fanboy, there's bound to be something in here you haven't noticed
before.
Title image remixed from an original by Lok Yek Mang (Shutterstock).
The problem with such frequent, incremental updates (that, by
default, happen automatically without you realizing it), is that it's
hard to keep up with all the new features that pop up in Firefox every
few months. So, just like our
other always up-to-date guides,
we've created this power user's guide to Firefox, featuring all of our
favorite advanced features, and which we'll keep updated every time a
new version of Firefox comes out.
Interface Tips and Tricks
Whether or not you think Firefox is the prettiest browser on the
block, it's without a doubt the most configurable. Here are some great
tricks to customizing and navigating Firefox's UI.
Customize the Toolbar:
Between the separate search box, add-on buttons, and other additions,
your Firefox toolbar and add-on bar can get cluttered quickly. To add or
remove any items, just right-click anywhere on the toolbar (except on
the bookmarks bar). From there, you can show and hide the menu bar
(which contains things like File, Edit, Tools, and so on), the
navigation bar, the bookmarks bar, and the add-on bar. You can also put
Firefox's tabs back on the bottom of the toolbar, like it was in the old
days.
Those are just basic tweaks, however. For more advanced
customization, right-click anywhere on the toolbar and click Customize.
From there you can move around the back, forward, and reload buttons,
move the bookmarks toolbar, add and remove add-on buttons, or even add
buttons to other functions like full screen, history, and more. Note
that you can also move these buttons to the add-on bar at the bottom of
the window, if you'd like quick access to them but don't want them
wasting space in your toolbar. You can also choose to use smaller icons
if you're starved for screen real estate.
Separate Tabs Into Groups:
Your tab bar quickly grows unwieldy once you open more than a few tabs.
If your tab bar is overflowing, you can hit the Tab Groups button in
the upper-right hand corner of Firefox's window. This will bring you to a
new screen where you can drag tabs into separate groups and name those
groups. Whether you're organizing them by topic or just saving some tabs
for later, it's a great way to free up room in your tab bar without
closing tabs you still need.
Pin Tabs You Always Keep Open:
Gmail, Grooveshark, and other tabs you keep open all the time can waste
a ton of space in your tab bar. You can condense them by right-clicking
on them and clicking "Pin as App Tab". This will move the tab to the
left end of your tab bar and resize it to just the favicon, so you can
have quick access to it without it taking up a ton of space. These
pinned tabs will show up in all your tab groups, too, whether you
manually put them there or not. To unpin a tab, just right click on it
and hit "Unpin Tab".
Decorate Your Browser with Themes: If you'd like to give your Firefox window a little more zazz, you can check out Mozilla's
extensive Personas library, which will let you preview and install different themes for Firefox.
Tweak Every Pixel of Firefox's Window with CSS: Whether you want to
save a bit of vertical space or
give Firefox a more transparent look, you can do so with a bit of advanced CSS editing. You can
add code to Firefox's userChrome.css file or, if you want something easier, use an extension like Stylish to install any UI tweaks you want (see the
add-ons section for more information about Stylish).
The Most Time-Saving Shortcuts
Navigating Firefox via its many menus can be slow and cumbersome, but fret not: Firefox has a
ton of built-in shortcuts for both your mouse and keyboard. Rather than overwhelm you with the
full list, but here are some of the shortcuts we find most useful.
Note: If you're a Mac user, just substitute the "Control" key for
the "Command" key (and know that the "Alt" and "Option" keys are the
same) when performing these shortcuts, unless a specific alternative is
noted.
Navigate Back and Forward: Unless you have
specialized back and forward buttons on your mouse,
you probably click on the back and forward buttons in Firefox's window
to navigate between pages. If you're more of a keyboard maestro, though,
you can press Alt+Left Arrow or Alt+Right Arrow to move back and
forward, respectively. Alternatively, you can hit Backspace to move back
and Shift+Backspace to move forward.
Reload and Stop a Page: Whether you're trying to access a web
site that's down or meticulously following a live blog, you can quickly
refresh the page by pressing either Ctrl+R or F5 on your keyboard. If
you're having trouble with a specific page and reloading doesn't help,
you can try pressing Ctrl+Shift+R or Ctrl+F5 to do a "hard" refresh,
where your browser ignores the cache when it reloads the entire
page—handy when you need to fix formatting or other problems often
caused by bum files in your cache.
Jump to the Top and Bottom of a Page: If you finish reading a
page and want to jump back up to the top without scrolling your wheel
endlessly, just hit the Home button on your keyboard. Similarly, you can
hit End to jump to the bottom of a page as well. If you don't want to
jump all the way to the top or bottom, you can also use Spacebar and
Shift+Spacebar to page down and up, respectively.
Find Text on a Page:
As with many other programs, you can search for text within a page by
hitting Ctrl+F on your keyboard, typing in the phrase you want to find,
and hitting Enter.
Open a New Tab or Window: To quickly open a new tab, just hit
Ctrl+T on your keyboard. It'll open a new blank tab and you can just
start typing the URL you want to visit and hit enter. Alternatively, to
open an entire new window, just hit Ctrl+N instead.
Close a Tab or Window: To close the current tab, press Ctrl+W
or Ctrl+F4. To close an entire window (all tabs in tow), press
Ctrl+Shift+W or Ctrl+Shift+F4.
Undo Closing a Tab or Window:
Say you've closed a tab or window and realize you actually need it
back. You can undo that action with Ctrl+Shift+T, which opens your last
closed tab, or Ctrl+Shift+N, which opens your last closed window (again,
all of its original tabs in tow). You can keep hitting this shortcut to
bring back even older tabs, too.
Open a Link in a New Tab:
As you browse the web, you may find a link you want to open without
leaving the page you're on. In that case, you can hold Ctrl and click
the link to open it in a new tab. You can also click the link using your
middle mouse button, if your mouse has one.
Open the Tab Groups Window: If you like the new Tab Groups
feature described above, you can jump straight to the Tab Groups window
by pressing Ctrl+Shift+E.
Bookmark the Current Page: Instead of clicking the Star icon
in the navigation bar to bookmark a page, you can just press Ctrl+D to
bookmark the current page. This will bring up the bookmark dropdown
where you give it a name and assign it a folder. If you want to bookmark
all your currently open tabs, you can hti Ctrl+Shift+D instead.
Complete a URL with .com, .net or .org: As you type URLs in the navigation bar, you can save yourself a bit of time by appending
.com to the end of the address with Ctrl+Enter. This will add
.com and go straight to the page. You can similarly append
.net with Shift+Enter and
.org with Ctrl+Shift+Enter.
Jump to the Address Bar or Search Box:
If you're on a page and want to head somewhere new, you don't need to
click on the address bar to type in a new URL. Just press Ctrl+L on your
keyboard, and Firefox will focus (and select) the address bar, so you
can just start typing. Ctrl+K will select the search bar, if you use
that instead.
These are our favorite mouse and keyboard shortcuts, but if you want to see the full list, check out
Mozilla's Keyboard and
Mouse Shortcut pages. Also be sure to check out our
feature on going mouseless in Firefox, if you're really serious about making the best of keyboard shortcuts.
Customize Firefox's Settings
Firefox is the most customizable browser out there. Most of this
customization takes place in its preferences, so head on over to Tools
> Options (or Firefox > Preferences on a Mac) to get at the really
good stuff. Here are some of our favorite must-tweak options.
Session and Tab Management
Under the General and Tabs panes, you'll find some handy settings for
managing what Firefox loads when it starts, and how it manages multiple
tabs. Settings to check out include:
Load Tabs when Firefox Starts:
By default, Firefox will load your home page when you start it up. If
you'd prefer it show a blank page, or all the tabs you had open when you
last closed it, you can go to the General tab and choose "Show My
Windows and Tabs from Last Time" next to "When Firefox Starts". You can
also change your home page from the text box below it.
Don't Load Tabs Until Selected: Under the Startup section of
the general tab, you'll see a checkbox with this label. This is useful
if you choose the "Show My Windows and Tabs from Last Time" option, as
described above. It essentially helps Firefox avoid crashes and
slowdowns by loading tabs one at a time, as you select them—not all at
once when you first start up the browser. That means you'll have to wait
for each individual tab to load when you click on it, but you won't
have to wait for them
all to load when you first start the browser up (nor will it be as slow as molasses when you first start it up).
Choose How Firefox Handles New Tabs: Under the Tabs pane of
Firefox's options, you'll find a number of checkboxes that configure how
you open and close new tabs. For example, you can open all new windows
in a new tab, have Firefox warn you when closing multiple tabs, focus
all links opened in a new tab, and even show tab previews in the Windows
taskbar.
Choose How Firefox Handles Certain File Types
Firefox
can handle certain links internally, like links to email addresses, PDF
files, or other media. To edit how it handles these, just head to the
Applications panel of Firefox's options. You'll see a list of the
content types its recognized before. So, for example, to tell all
mailto:
links to use Gmail, find "mailto" on the left side of the list and
click the dropdown under the "Action" column. Choose "Use Gmail" from
the list to direct all mailto links in Firefox to Gmail (note that this
won't work for mailto links in other applications, like a Twitter
client—just links in Firefox). Similarly, you can tell Firefox to open
up MP3s using a QuickTime plugin, JPG files with the GIMP, and so on.
If you don't see a file type in the list, it's probably because you
haven't encountered a direct link to one on the net yet. You can't add
content types manually, but any content type you want to add should pop
up in that list the first time you come upon it in your browsing.
Sync Bookmarks, Passwords, and More with Firefox Sync
If
you use Firefox on your other computers and mobile devices, you can
sync your bookmarks, saved passwords (which you can access from the
Security panel in Firefox's options), preferences, history, and open
tabs to those devices with Firefox Sync. To set it up, just head to the
Sync tab of Firefox's preferences and click "Set Up Firefox Sync". If
you haven't created an account, do so. Then, on your other computers,
head back to that same area of Firefox's preferences and it will give
you three 4-digit codes. Head back to your original computer and hit
"Pair a Device" from the Firefox Sync window, and type in your codes.
Firefox will now sync whatever you want back and forth between those
machines.
Note that I only use Firefox Sync to sync my preferences. For passwords,
we recommend using the more feature-filled LastPass, and for bookmarks, history, and tabs, we recommend
Xmarks.
Both are also advantageous because they work with other browsers like
Chrome, but if you only ever use Firefox you can do it straight from
Firefox Sync.
Advanced Options
Lastly, there are a few miscellaneous features littered around
Firefox's preferences we definitely recommend checking out. They
include:
Do Not Track: Many web sites track your behavior on their
site, usually for advertising or other purposes. If you'd rather keep
your behavior hidden, you can head to Options > Privacy and check the
"Tell Websites I do Not Want to Be Tracked" box. It won't stop every
site from tracking you—since Firefox can't require that—but any sites
that have given you the option to avoid tracking should honor your
request if you check this box.
Automatic Updates: Firefox now updates automatically whenever a
new version is out. If you'd rather not do this, for whatever reason,
head to the Update tab of the Advanced panel and choose one of the other
options ("Check for updates, but let me choose" or "Never check for
updates"). You can also tell Firefox to warn you if it will disable any
of your add-ons, though we recommend checking out the Add-On
Compatibility Checker to fix this problem instead (see the "Using
Add-Ons" section below for more information).
Smooth Out Firefox's UI:
If you head to Advanced > General in Firefox's options, you can turn
on a few settings that should smooth out Firefox a bit—most notably
Smooth Scrolling and Hardware Acceleration, both available under the
Browsing section of this pane. Hardware acceleration should be on by
default, giving graphics-intense web sites a bit of a speed boost.
However, some users find it makes their fonts blurry and difficult to
see, so if you'd like to turn it off, you can do so here.
Enhance Firefox's Functionality with Add-Ons
One of Firefox's greatest features has always been its extensibility. Mozilla has a
massive add-on library that, with a few clicks of your mouse, can add tons of new features to Firefox. We've
already shared tenof our must-install extensions, but here are a few more that we think everyone should check out.
Make Old Extensions Compatible with New Versions of Firefox:
Whether an extension has been abandoned or whether it just hasn't been
updated to include compatibility for the newest version of Firefox—since
it updates so often now—you can try to make those extensions compatible
with Firefox's Add-On Compatibility Reporter. Not only will it disable
version checking for all your add-ons, but it will also let you report
an extension's incompatibility to the developer with one click, making
it especially handy for those using the development channels of Firefox.
Download the Add-On Compatibility Reporter
Pin Your Favorite Sites to Your New Tab/Window Page:
When you make a new tab, Firefox just gives you a blank page. If you'd
rather see a page with a list of your favorite sites on it for quick
access, you can install something like Fast Dial, which lets you
customize your own new tab page with a cool background, thumbnails for
your favorite sites, and more.
Download Fast Dial
Send Web Pages to Your Phone: If you've got an Android phone and want to easily transfer a page from your desktop to your phone, you can use the
Fox to Phone extension in combination with the
Chrome to Phone app for Android. Alternatively, you could use Firefox Sync to sync open tabs to
Firefox Mobile, or use something like
Xmarks Premium
to sync it to any mobile device you want. If you have an iOS device,
you can use the similar Site to Phone to send web pages to your phone.
Download Fox to Phone and
Site to Phone
Save Form Text in Case of Crashes or Accidental Tab Closures:
Have you ever spent a painstaking hour filling out a form on a page,
only to accidentally close that tab or have Firefox crash on you? The
Lazarus extension solves this problem by automatically saving your work
as you go, so you can recover it in case of an accident. Install it now,
or you'll be sorry the next time it happens to you.
Download Lazarus Form Recovery
Make Pages Easier to Read:
Most web pages have complex designs, advertisements, or other things
that make it difficult to read the content you went there for. The
Readability extension solves this problem by stripping the page of all
ads and other formatting so you can get straight to the good stuff.
Download Readability
In addition to traditional add-ons, you also have the option to
install userscripts and userstyles to Firefox. Userscripts and
userstyles both change, add, or alter functionality on a given site,
though userstyles can also change the UI of Firefox's window. We've
talked about them before, so we won't go into too much detail here—just know that if you want to install userscripts, you'll need the
Greasemonkey extension, and to install userstyles, you'll want the
Stylish extension. You can find good userscripts at
userscripts.org and cool userstyles at
userstyles.org.
Master Firefox's Other Features
Firefox has a few other features that are a bit less advertised than
others, but can seriously power up your browser. Here are a few of our
favorites.
Access Bookmarks and Search Engines with a Keyword:
Clicking on bookmarks is slow, and if you want to search an engine
other than Firefox's default, it takes a lot of typing. Firefox has a
great feature called keyword bookmarks that lets you access sites and
refine Google searches with just a few keystrokes in your address bar.
To give a bookmark a keyword, just enter your Bookmarks Library,
click on a bookmark, and press the "More" button at the bottom of the
window. You should see a box labeled "Keyword". Type in a letter or two
(for example, I use the keyword "l" for Lifehacker), then exit the
bookmarks library. By typing in that keyword and hitting Enter in the
address bar, you can head to that site quickly, without having to type
out the whole URL or wait for autocomplete to get it right.
If you want to perform custom searches with a keyword, just create a
new bookmark with the URL of the type of search you want to perform. To
get this URL, make a search on your favorite engine—say, Yahoo—and copy
the resulting URL in your menu bar. It should look something like this:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=crmas&p=lifehacker
If you look at the URL you can see I searched for the term
"lifehacker". You can replace that word with any modifiers you want and
the
%s value to symbolize search terms:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=crmas&p=%s
Now, add that link as a new bookmark in Firefox, with the keyword "y" (or whatever you want). Now, when you type something like
y lifehacker firefox tweaks
in Firefox's address bar, Firefox will understand you want to search
for "lifehacker firefox tweaks" on Yahoo instead of your default engine.
You can also use this trick to
search specific sites via Google, which can be very helpful.
about:config:
For every option that isn't in Firefox's options menu, there exists an
about:config entry. About:config is almost like the Windows Registry,
but for Firefox—you can tweak nearly any setting in existence as long as
you know where it is. Whether you want to
stop Firefox from greying out text in the address bar,
make spellcheck more recognizable, or even
enable hidden tab management features,
there are bound to be a few about:config options that suit you. If you
want to see what different about:config options do, you can check out
the
MozillaZine Wiki page
for some descriptions, and keep an eye out here at Lifehacker—whenever
we find a cool about:config tweak, we'll usually post it.
Development Channels:
Lastly, if you're a power user, you're probably itching to get the
latest Firefox features as soon as possible. With Firefox's new
development channels, you can. Instead of using the public release of
Firefox, you can try out the beta or Aurora channels, which are
up-and-coming versions of Firefox still being tested. They're often
quite stable, though, and give you a chance to try out Firefox's newest
features before they're released to the rest of the world. For more
information, check out our
rundown of each channel, and head to
Firefox's Future Versions page to try one out.
As long as this guide may be, there's still plenty more you can do
with Firefox. If you've got any favorite tips or tricks you'd like to
share, post them in the comments below.
