Firefox Tweak Guide
[Page 6] Features, Tips & Tricks
This section covers a range of tips and tricks you can use to take better advantage of the various features in Firefox, along with clear descriptions of the more important features. Beginner users should definitely not skip this section, but even Advanced users who may already be aware of many of these might find some new information they haven't yet seen, particularly those tips which are new for Firefox 3.
Streamlined Firefox Layout
To provide maximum viewable space in Firefox you may wish to use a 'streamlined' Firefox layout - the difference between the default and the streamlined view is shown below:
As you can see, the streamlined view retains all the main functionality of Firefox, but reconfigures the layout to be as minimal as possible. Instructions are provided below:
1. Open only one instance of Firefox, go to the View menu, select Toolbars and untick the 'Bookmarks Toolbar' item.
2. If you have a Sidebar showing, under the View menu select Sidebar and unselect any items.
3. Under the View menu select Toolbars and then select Customize. Alternatively you can right-click on an empty spot on a toolbar and select Customize.
4. In the 'Customize Toolbar' box which appears, select Icons in the Show box (not 'Icons and Text', or Text). If you're running a lower screen resolution also tick the 'Use Small Icons' box.
5. Now remove any icon or element in the Firefox toolbar at the top of the browser which you don’t need. For example, drag and drop the Search box into the 'Customize Toolbar' box to remove it from the Firefox toolbar. You can also remove any unnecessary space fillers, such as the large white space filler at the top right of the Navigation toolbar. You can always re-add these elements at any time if you change your mind later on.
6. Now drag and drop each icon in the bottom Firefox toolbar up to the top toolbar, just to the right of the 'Help' menu item. This includes the large white Address Bar. The aim is to have everything on a single toolbar.
7. Insert any additional icons, separators or blank spaces you need from the selection shown in the 'Customize Toolbar' box into the relevant spots on the top Firefox toolbar. When finished, click the Done button.
8. Finally, go to the View menu, and under Toolbars unselect the 'Navigation Toolbar' as it should now be completely empty anyway.
You should now have a single Firefox toolbar at the top of your browser, complete with all the menu commands, relevant icons and the address box as pictured further above. This gives you much more vertical viewable space. If you need more viewing space, go to the View menu and untick the 'Status Bar' item as it is not vital, and provides a further bit of vertical viewable space. Obviously this layout may not suit everyone, and can be modified to suit your taste. However once you get used to it, it is extremely efficient and provides maximum viewable space in Firefox. Note that you can further customize the layout by looking at the various methods and tips in the Advanced Tweaking section.
Tabbed Browsing
The most famous feature of Firefox is Tabbed Browsing, something which other browsers have eventually adopted. This is a feature which allows users to open up a link as a new tab within their current Firefox window, rather than opening up an entirely new Firefox window. The benefits of this are faster loadup times for pages opened as tabs, less overall system memory usage, less buttons for open instances of Firefox on the Windows Taskbar, the ability to load pages in the background while reading the current page, and the convenience of being able to switch back and forth between pages just by clicking their tab. Below are some tips on how to make better use of this feature:
In fact, if you click your middle mouse button on a range of things in Firefox, they will typically open up in a new tab. For example, click the middle button on the back or forward arrows on the Firefox navigation bar and the previous or next pages you've visited will open in a new tab. Middle-click on an item in your history or your Bookmarks and it will open in a new tab. Middle-click on the Homepage toolbar icon and your home page will open in a new tab.
Once a certain number of tabs are opened, each tab starts to shrink in width and at a certain point no more additional tabs can be shown on the current screen, though they will be opened in the background. New to Firefox 3, arrows will appear at either side of the tab bar, allowing you to scroll more gently through the tab list, rather than jumping from one screen of tabs to the next. There is also a small dropdown button at the far right of the tab bar which can be clicked to show a listing of all open tabs. For more ways of customizing tabs and tabbed browsing see the browser.tabs.-related preferences in the Advanced Tweaking section.
Full Page Zooming
New to Firefox 3, you can now zoom in and out of all elements of a web page, whether text or images, or both. This functionality can be accessed under the View menu, by going to Zoom and selecting 'Zoom In' or 'Zoom Out' to change the zoom level accordingly. If you just want to zoom in or out of the text only (i.e. you only wish to change the text size on a page), then tick the 'Zoom Text Only' item under the View>Zoom option. An easier way to access these functions on any page is to use the Control (CTRL) key in combination with the + (plus), - (minus) and 0 (zero) numerical keys. However the quickest way of all is:
This feature is particularly useful when viewing images, as it lets you zoom in or out of an image within the browser so you can look at relevant details without having to launch a separate image viewing application. Note that you can further customize Zoom in Firefox using the browser.zoom.siteSpecific, zoom.maxPercent, and zoom.minPercent preferences as covered in the Advanced Tweaking section.
Faster Searching
There are several ways you can speed up searching web pages and searching on the Internet using Firefox:
Search for text when I start typing: I recommend that you have the 'Search for text when I start typing' setting ticked (See the Settings section). That way you can initiate a word search on the currently viewed web page simply by starting to type the search string on your keyboard without having to first bring up the search box. The first instance of that word will automatically be highlighted in green on the page. To find more instances of the word(s), keep pressing the F3 key. Note that the last search string you entered in the current session is kept in memory, and simply pressing F3 on any other page initiates the same search again. Pressing ESC closes the search box, but it also closes automatically if you click anywhere else in the Firefox window. For more ways of customising this function, see the accessibility.typeaheadfind.-related preferences in the Advanced Tweaking section.
Keyboard Shortcuts: Another way to quickly open the search box is to use the keyboard shortcuts F3 or CTRL+F. You can quickly close the search box by pressing the ESC key at any time.
Selection Web Search: Highlight a portion of a web page by holding down the cursor over the start of your selection, then left-click and drag the cursor to the end of your selection and release the mouse button. Now right-click on this highlighted selection, and in the context menu select the 'Search Google for...' item. Firefox will automatically launch a web search using the default search plugin Google and provides the results in a new tab/window.
Web Search Box: You can use the dedicated Web Search box in your Firefox toolbar to speed up searching for information on the Internet. If it isn’t already there, to add it in go to View>Toolbars>Customize and in the 'Customize Toolbars' box find the white Search box, and drag and drop it into a suitable position on your Firefox toolbar, then click Done. Next, click on the small icon in the left side of the search box, and select the search engine you wish to use for web searches - Google is the default and recommended engine, although you can use a more specific site such as Answers.com or Ebay.com for example. Now enter the phrase(s) you wish to search for in this Search box and press Enter - the results will be displayed in the current Firefox browser window.
You can download additional plugins for the Web Search box by clicking on the icon next to the Search box, selecting 'Manage Search Engines' and then clicking the Get more search engines link at the bottom. You can also create your own custom search. Since all the search engine coding is saved in your \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\ directory as .xml files, you can create your own .xml file which will allow you to use the Search box to launch a search on any site you wish. Full instructions are here.
Address Bar/Keyword Searches: One of the fastest ways to search is by using keywords within the Firefox URL Address Bar. The Address Bar, also known as the Location Bar, or the "Awesome Bar", is covered in detail in its own section below.
The Awesome Bar
New to Firefox 3, one of the major features which has proven to be very popular in Firefox 3 is the enhancement of the Address Bar, the place you normally see website URL addresses. Rather than simply displaying your location or allowing you to enter web addresses, or even conducting basic URL or web searches, as of Firefox 3 the Address Bar has been revamped to be much more functional, and is now nicknamed the "Awesome Bar".
To start with, you can type in any words or phrases, even partial words, and the Awesome Bar will instantly search your entire browsing History and Bookmarks to display any possible matches in a drop down box beneath the Awesome Bar. More importantly, the matched words/phrases can be in any part of the URL or page description, or any custom tags you've added to bookmarks. The more words you keep typing into the Awesome Bar, the more refined the search results will become.
When viewing the search results in the Awesome Bar, you will see not only the title of the web page, but also the favicon next to it, which makes identification easier, and you'll also see the site/page URL beneath the title as well. Importantly, you will also see at a glance whether it is already part of your bookmarks; it will have a yellow star next to it if it is - see the Bookmarks section on the next page for more details.
Of course all the previous Address Bar functionality is also present. For example if you simply type a word and press Enter in the Awesome Bar without selecting a search result, Firefox will usually attempt to find the closest matching web page for that word using Google's 'I'm Feeling Lucky' search by default and display the result. If you want to add the Search functionality of any web page directly to the Awesome Bar, simply right-click in any search box on a web page and select 'Add a keyword for this search'. If you want to jump quickly to the Address Bar/Awesome Bar at any time, press CTRL+L - this moves the cursor to the address bar and highlights all existing text in there.
Note that you can further customize the way the Address Bar/Awesome Bar behaves by adjusting the keyword.URL, browser.urlbar.maxRichResults, browser.fixup.alternate.enabled and places.frecency.-related preferences covered in the Advanced Tweaking section.
Site Identification Button
New to Firefox 3, and part of the Address Bar/Awesome Bar, though deserving of its own section, is the Site Identification button now shown at the far left of the Awesome Bar. Whenever you visit a particular site, that site's favicon will appear in the usual place at the far left. However now, as part of the increased security measures in Firefox 3, you can actually find out more about the security of the site by clicking the favicon button. There are three colors which can be shown in the background of the favicon, as well as in the box which opens when you click it:
Grey - Indicates that the site has no or insufficient encryption. Most pages on websites will display this color, which is completely normal and fine as long as you're not using them for any sensitive transactions such as online purchases for example.
Blue - Indicates that you are using an encrypted connection to the site, and its identity has been verified as being a legitimate domain name. This should be secure enough for sensitive transactions, but you may need more information (See below).
Green - Indicates that the site is as secure as it can possibly be, both in terms of verified ownership, and also being fully encrypted.
More Information: In all cases, if you have any doubts, click the Identification button, and in the box which opens, click the 'More Information' button. The dialog box which opens shows you a range of information which should help you better understand the level of encryption, the ownership details, and even useful facts such as how often you've visited this site in the past. Of great use however is the ability to also set the permissions for things such as popups, cookies and images on a site-by-site basis here, under the Permissions tab. In short it makes it far easier for you to actually see how secure a site is compared to the previous simple 'padlock' display which simply indicated that a site was using some level of encryption, and nothing more.
The next page continues the Firefox features, tips and tricks.
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