Do you use Firefox as your main Internet browser? If so, here are some neat tips and tricks to help you use it faster and more efficiently.

Keyboard Shortcuts

It might take you a little while to learn these shortcuts, but once you do, your browsing will be that much quicker. Here are some of the more common shortcuts:

• Spacebar (scroll down on a page)
• Shift+Spacebar (scroll up on a page)
• Ctrl+F (find)
• Ctrl+D (bookmark the page)
• Ctrl+T (open a new tab)
• Ctrl+K (go to the search box)
• Ctrl+L (go to the address bar)
• Ctrl+ (increase text size)
• Ctrl+ (decrease text size)
• Ctrl+W (close tab)
• F5 (reload the page)
• F11 (view in full screen mode)
• Alt+Home (go to your preset home page)
• Home (move to the top of the page)
• End (move to the bottom of the page)

Tab Navigation

If you’re like me, sometimes you have a lot of tabs open at the same time. Instead of using the mouse to select between the different tabs that you have open, use the following keyboard 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)

Here’s another neat trick: if you want to view different pages on the same website but in two different tabs, simply hit Ctrl and drag the tab (in the tab bar) to the right.

Mouse Shortcuts

If you’re already using your mouse and it would be easier for you to use a mouse shortcut instead of switching to the keyboard, here are some quick shortcuts. Note that these shortcuts depend on whether your mouse has a scroll wheel built into it or not.

• Shift+scroll down (go to the previous page in that tab)
• Shift+scroll up (go to the next page in that tab)
• Ctrl+scroll up (decrease text size)
• Ctrl+scroll down (increase text size)

Auto Complete

While not as well known as the shortcuts above, this can be very useful.

Go to the address bar (Ctrl+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.

Thoughts?

I’m curious to hear whether you find these tricks useful or not. Or, maybe you have some of your own that you’d like to share. Either way, good luck as you use Firefox more efficiently!