The Best Computer Tips and Tricks: Firefox 2

Redirect Search Results

You can control where you see your search results. Type about:config into your location bar and find "browser.search.openintab", then double click to make it "true." Now when you use the search bar, your results will pop up in a separate tab instead of taking you away from your current page.

Disable Window Resizing

Web pages that resize windows drive some people up the wall. To fix that, go to Tools > Options, and open the Content tab. Click on the Advanced button next to "Enable JavaScript," then deselect the check box that allows scripts to "Move or resize existing windows."

Choose a Tab

As with IE, Ctrl+Tab will let you cycle through open tabs in Firefox. But if you want to go to a specific tab without using the mouse, use the Ctrl key and the number of the tab's position—Ctrl+1, for example, will open the first tab, Ctrl+2 the second, and so on.

Browse Without a Mouse

Tired of using the mouse? Ctrl+L will move you to Firefox's location bar, while Ctrl+K will move you to the search bar. (When you're there, hold Ctrl and use the up or down arrow keys to toggle the default search engine.)

Open multiple sites at startup

If you want to open multiple Web sites when you start Firefox, go to Tools > Options. Under the Startup section on the Main tab, you'll see the Home Page field. Enter the sites you want to open in this manner:
www.computershopper.com | www.collegebuyingguide.com.

Mousing Around

Your mouse gives you more browsing control than you might think. If you have a scroll wheel button, clicking it on a hyperlink will open it up in a new tab, while clicking it on a tab will close it. If you hold down the Shift key while scrolling, you can move backward or forward through your browsing history.

Quickly Cross-reference

Ever found something in an online article you instantly wanted more information about? Search for that information easily by highlighting the text, dragging it to the search bar, and pressing Enter. Firefox will search for that text automatically.

Delete Inaccurate URLs

If you've ever mistyped a Web site's address and then seen your mistake pop up whenever you retype the site's name, just highlight the site in the history and press Shift+Delete to get rid of it for good.

Stay Stealthy

If you don't want sites to know where you're coming from, type about:config into the location bar and then find the network.http.sendRefererHeader record. Double click on it, and change the "2" value to "0" to prevent Web sites from seeing your referrer information.

Get More Viewing Space

Want to maximize the Web-site view in your browser window? Then make your icons smaller. Just go to View > Toolbars > Customize and check the box next to "Use Small Icons."

Quick URL Fill-in

If you type a site's address without the usual ".com" or "www" and press Ctrl+Enter, Firefox will fill in the rest of the URL for you.

Give Your Bookmarks Keywords

To assign a keyword to a bookmark, simply right-click on it and select Properties. Write a word in the keyword field, and now when you type the word into the location bar, you'll automatically go to that site.

Curb Firefox's RAM Appetite

Firefox was once famous for how light it was on system resources. With each new update, however, it seems be become a bigger and bigger memory hog. Rein Firefox in a little by limiting the amount of memory it uses. Type about:config in the address bar and locate "browser.cache.disk.capacity." Normally, it's set to "50000," but you can lower that number if you find Firefox is using too much system memory.

Cleaner Google File Searches

Searching for multimedia files on Google can result in a lot of spammy results. An effective—if clunky—way to minimize getting such results is to type intitle:"index.of"(xxx|yyy)zzzz -html -htm -php into the search bar, where "xxx|yyy" are the types of files you want to find (such as "mp3|avi") and "zzzz" being the name of the files you want to find.