20 Amazing Firefox Shortcuts to Save You Time and Money
You already spend enough time online, don’t you? Whether working on your site’s SEO, writing articles or blog posts, or the hundred other things on your list, time is of the essence.
Any real time saving tips should be pretty valuable. After all, isn’t a penny saved a penny earned?
So here are 20 amazing Firefox shortcuts to save you time and money. (If you don’t have Firefox installed, it’s free. I would appreciate if you follow the link in my footer.)
Got browsing tips of your own? Be sure to share them in the comments (and remember, now SEONoobs is using Lucia’s Link Love for “dofollow” and CommentLuv for automatic backlinks to your blog).
1. Search Sites With Keywords
Go to any site with a search field, right click search box and select “Add a Keyword for this Search”. The add bookmark box will open. Give it a name and short keyword (you might use “bay” for eBay as both the name and the keyword). Now, if you want to search for CDs on eBay you can now do so by typing “bay CDs” into the Firefox address bar.
2. Assign Keywords to Bookmarks
To speed up locating a bookmark, go to bookmarks/organize bookmarks, right click the link you want and select properties. Enter a short text string in the keyword field (For example, enter ‘coffee’ for your bookmark to this blog) and click “OK”. Then, to access the site simply type the text string (for example, ‘heath’) into the address bar and hit enter.
3. Navigate Tabs
Press “CTRL+TAB” to jump from tab to tab (left to right), or “CTRL+SHIFT+TAB” (right to left). When you get to the last tab it will jump back to the first. Alternatively, you can press “CTRL” and a number that corresponds with the tab you want. So, “CTRL+3? will take you directly to the third tab.
4. Type Quicker URLs
Type the name (not the address) of a site you want to visit in the address bar and press “CTRL+ENTER”. This will add http://www. before the text and .com after it to automatically load that site. “SHIFT+ENTER” adds http://www. and .net, or “CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER” http://www. and .org. If you hold down ALT at the same time it will load the site in a new tab.
5. Quick Word Search
To search for any word or phrase you have found on a website, select and drag the text into the Firefox address bar. Alternatively, you can highlight the phrase and right-click it, and select search web for. If you set the search bar for Amazon or eBay you can use this method to quickly look up products. Add uk-specific sites to the search bar here.
6. Drop-Down Bookmarks
You can bookmark multiple open tabs in a single folder by going to “Bookmarks”, then “Bookmark All Tabs”. If you save this folder to the bookmarks toolbar, then hovering over the link will display all the Bookmarks in a drop down list (You can do the same with a folder created from existing bookmarks).
7. Delete Addresses
Click on the down arrow in the address bar and you will see a list of recently accessed sites. To remove a particular site from the list, highlight it then press “SHIFT+DELETE”.
8. Get Instant Downloads
Right-click the navigation toolbar (above the address bar) and select customize. This will bring up a box containing icons. Drag and drop the downloads icon to the toolbar. Now, whenever you want to download something from a web page simply highlight the link and drag it to this button and start your download.
9. Launch Multiple Homepages
Firefox can be set to open multiple pages (in individual tabs) when it starts up, or if you click the home icon. Load all the pages you want the browser to open, then go to tools/options and select use current pages.
10. Caret Browsing
Press “F7? to toggle caret browsing on or off to give your mouse a rest. This places a cursor where you click, letting you select text from a website using your keyboard.
11. Save Audio and Video Clips
If you want to save a picture, a video, or an audio, clip but it’s protected, right-click the page you are viewing and select “View Page Info”. Click the “Media” tab, then find and highlight the file you want. Click “Save As”.
12. Quick Google Search
If Google is your default search engine, and you type a search query directly into the Firefox address bar and press enter, Firefox will perform an “I’m feeling lucky” search and take you straight to the first page found by Google.
13. Viewing Images
You can view any image or picture from a website in its own browser by right-clicking it and selecting “View Image”. Hold down “SHIFT” when you do this and the graphic will open in a new window. Hold down “CTRL” (or click the mouse wheel) and it will open in a new tab.
14. Speed Up Firefox
There are various ways to tweak a program to make it faster, but the easiest way is to use a program to do everything for you. Tweak your Firefox installation with FireTune or Fasterfox.
15. Make a Live Bookmark
Firefox utilizes RSS feeds to create live bookmarks which change dynamically and show the latest links and stories. You can create a live bookmark from any site with an RSS feed by clicking the orange icon that appears in its address bar.
16. Stop Animation
Some websites use animated GIF images. To stop a GIF file from moving, simply press “ESC”.
17. Open New Tabs
There are many ways to open a new tab. You can go to File/New Tab, press CTRL+T, click a link while holding down CTRL, or right-click a link and select “Open Link in New Tab”. You could also just drag a link straight to the tab bar
18. Close Tabs
You can close any tab by clicking on it with the mouse wheel. CTRL+F4 or CTRL+W will do the same thing, take your pick.
19. Customize Firefox
Type “about:config” in the address bar and hit “ENTER” to bring up Firefox’s internal configuration options. These be tweaked to change how the browser behaves. Find out more at mozillaZine.
20. Find Words and Links
Pressing the “/” key brings up the “Quick Find” box in Firefox (at the bottom left of the page). Enter a word or words into this box and it will search as you type. But if you press ” ‘ ” instead, it will open up the Quick Find box, but only search for keywords in links.
Very well written, Terry. I always enjoy the...
35 comments
Thanks Terry for the great tips. It is wonderful when someone takes the time to pass on this information as Firefox is new to a lot of people, including myself.
I am sorry I have none to return just now and the only thing I do is to make sure that I have Only2clicks with wll my sites there, as one of the tabs, that saves me a lot of time. A suggestion from Jack.
AnneMarie
Hello AnneMarie, and welcome! Good tip about the Only2Clicks start page, what Jack Humphrey calls “a ’speed dial’ for your most visited sites”.
More great tips. Thanks Terry. I like the tip about assigning keywords to bookmarks.
I also use the “read it later” add on quite a bit.
Mark McCullagh’s last blog post..Why Are Internet Marketers Blogging?
Ack! Oh my gosh, I love this. Thanks so, so much Terry. I’ve starred it in my Google reader, and will be adding it to my site’s carousel next week!
Ayomide’s last blog post..Carousel for Feb.22
nice tips man. i know that “CTRL+R” will refresh a page. and “CTRL+D” adds a page to your bookmarks.
[...] 20 Amazing Firefox Shortcuts to Save You Time and Money — Some tips I didn’t know, many which I did… And I’m not sure how knowing that I can press Esc to stop animated images will save me time or money. I guess that it could save my sanity on some sites, which is sanity I can then use to save time and money elsewhere, but that’s a stretch. [...]
@Mark: Thanks for sharing about the read it later addon. A “staging area for bookmarks” is something I could use and I installed it right away.
@Ayomide: Glad you like it, and thanks for the carousel ride. I’ll be watching to see what other great finds you list.
@Luke: Thanks for adding to the list with your two tips. I didn’t know about the CTRL+R trick.
Umm, quite interesting. Especially instant download stuff - i should give it a try.
Thanks, Misha
Tools - Options - Advanced - General - “Search for text when I start typing”. This is a great feature that should have been mentioned.
Just thought you should know that in addition to middle clicking a tab to close it, you can middle click a link to open it in a new tab. I find this much easier than using ctrl.
I tried the [ESC]-to-stop-GIFs thing and it didn’t work. I use the Webdeveloper Toolbar’s Images->Disable->Animations, which sets image.animation_mode to ‘none’ in about:config.
@Tim McCormack: You can test the [ESC] on this page. The animated “Teaching Sells” banner in the sidebar stopped when I tried. I wonder if some plugin could interfere with the function?
@Ryan: Thanks for adding to the list. Great option and much quicker than using the CTRL+F
@Total Cool: I guess I don’t have a middle button
Most of the tips are quite basic for someone like me who uses only Firefox. A good list nevertheless.
Some more :
Ctrl+E to shift focus to the search box
Ctrl + G/Ctrl + Shift + G to sift ahead or back through search matches on a page.
Double-clicking on the tab bar also opens up a new tab.
Thanks,
Prakash.
One more:
Ctrl + Up/Down Arrows to scroll through the various search engines.
Cheers,
Prakash.
Hey Prakash,
Thanks for sharing the tips! I love the one about [CTRL+E] taking you to the search box.
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I love the Firefox browser…it rocks! Really nice article here on how to tweak Firefox for optimal performance…kudos!!!
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CTRL+SHIFT + T to restore tabs you close previously
CRTL+J to load Download window.
ALT+D to access to url field and TAb to go to search
Take care
Afrique du Sud’s last blog post..test
[...] 20 Amazing Firefox Shortcuts to Save You Time and Money | SEONoobs (tags: firefox tips) [...]
I know some of the Shorcuts on Firefox like the CTRL+TAB and CTRL+SHIFT+TAB and you added more of shorcuts that will definitely make us save time…
mojics’s last blog post..My SeoContest2008 entry Update 2-5-2008
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I didn’t know some of those shortcuts, great to know that. Don’t have that hassle when my mouse started to act like dumb
SEOContest2008’s last blog post..A little progress
As confusing as it is, on #3 on Linux, it is Alt instead of Ctrl to go a tab number (e.g. Alt+3 for tab 3). Most of Firefox’s other keyboard shorcuts are the same
Jake’s last blog post..Software Tracker for Linux
@Terry: I missed this before.
On most OS’s, you can click the left and right buttons at the same time to emulate a middle click. I do this all the time on my laptop.
Jake’s last blog post..Software Tracker for Linux
Thanks for sharing with us this information. Very helpful. Especially, assigning your keywords to bookmarks comes in handy!
eMarketing Chat’s last blog post..How to monetize your blog
In Firefox 3 Beta 4, many of the add-ons, including that got listed here, have not been updated, thus these are not compatible with the latest release of Firefox. We have to wait when the developer of each Firefox plug-in would update his creation.
Search for Best Webhost’s last blog post..How to Become Billionaire Like Facebook Founder
[...] 20 Amazing Firefox Shortcuts to Save You Time and Money [...]
[...] 20 Amazing Firefox Shortcuts to Save You Time and Money [...]
Thanks for the great list, and I picked up a couple of new ones!
Have you ever inadvertently closed a tab? SHIFT + CTRL + t will reopen the last tab you closed.
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