Although Chrome is the fastest growing browser, Mozilla has certainly not been looking in recent years to improve Firefox for computers, both in usability and in functions. We are not talking here about extensions and add-ons but about the features of Firefox that not all users could know.
It is worth making a nice summary of the best internal features and tricks of Firefox, to take advantage of all the potential of the browser, including those less visible, and surf the web faster using the tabs and fast keys.
READ ALSO: Change everything in simplified and customizable Firefox Quantum
1) Card management
Firefox 4 hotkeys (identical to Chrome) make tab management much easier: Ctrl-T opens a new tab, Ctrl-W closes and Ctrl-Shift-T reopens the last closed tab.
On the Mac you can use the Cmd key instead of Ctrl .
As happens in all browsers, clicking with the middle mouse button opens the selected link in a new tab, the same thing is done with Ctrl-click .
You can easily switch between tabs by pressing Ctrl + PG Down to go to the one on the right, Ctrl + PG Up to go to the one on the left.
Pressing the Ctrl + keys [1 to 9] allows you to switch to a specific tab where 1 is the left-hand side.
2) Use the keyboard to move
Pressing Ctrl-L enables the cursor on the address bar, Ctrl-K brings the cursor to the search box, the space bar scrolls through the suggestions.
Holding down the Alt key you can navigate the pages back and forth with the left and right arrows (on Mac, Cmd-arrow works equally).
Ctrl-R reloads the current tab by refreshing the page.
READ ALSO: Quick keys for all browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox and Opera
3) Shortcuts to command online videos
Firefox also has keyboard commands to control the playback of videos and music on Youtube and other supported sites.
The space bar to play / pause, the up arrow and the down arrow for the volume, the left / right arrow to go back and forth, the home to go back to the beginning and the end to go to the end.
4) Start in safe mode
If there is any problem with Firefox, you can restart it in safe mode by clicking Help -> Restart without add-ons .
5) Put Navigaweb.net in your favorites
To insert a bookmark, as happens in Chrome on the current page, simply click on the star icon in the address bar or press CTRL-D .
Ctrl-Shift-B opens the list of favorite sites.
READ ALSO: Cheats with the bookmarks bar in Firefox
6) Find favorite sites faster with labels
This is really useful: in the bookmarks bar, right-click on a favorite and enter something in the Label field.
Once you've given some labels to your favorites when you write one of these tags on the address bar, the sites marked with that label are listed.
7) Put the folders in the Favorites bar
In the Favorites Library, you can organize groups of bookmarks in folders as you do with Windows files.
This function is a classic present in every browser.
8) Zoom in and out quickly
For zooming, there is another trio of useful keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl plus zooms in on the page, Ctrl and minus makes it smaller, and Ctrl and zero restores the view to 100%.
The zoom of a page remains the same for that single web page, in all subsequent visits.
There is also the possibility of increasing only the size of the text while keeping the size of the images intact.
Go to View -> Zoom and select " Zoom text only ".
To make the View menu appear at the top, click on the options button at the top right, then on Customize, on Show hide menu bars (bottom left) and, finally, on Finish customization .
From the Options, go to the contents tab and press on Advanced in the Fonts and colors section to set a minimum of text reduction .
9) Instant search
If you want to search for a word on a web page, just press the " / " key, (slash or Shift-7) and write what you want to search for.
Use the space bar to scroll the page to see all the recurrences of the searched word.
The same thing can be done by pressing Ctrl-F which is the key combination for searching the word in any other browser.
10) Scrolling up and down without mouse
To scroll down a page, just press the space bar.
To go back up, press Shift and bar together.
11) Turn the boards into the application board
One of our best features of Firefox 4 was taken from Google Chrome which, in turn, had taken it from Opera Browser, the first to introduce the App Tab.
When you fix the tab of a web application such as, for example, Gmail or Facebook, it starts flashing in case there are new messages or updates on the page.
For example, you could also add Navigaweb and, if a new article is published, it flashes.
Just right-click on a tab to make it become an application.
12) You can set an opening of multiple web pages when Firefox starts .
Instead of letting Firefox reopen the last sites visited and left open, it is better to set a group of tabs in the browser opening.
Going to Options -> General, you can say: Use home page and then press on Set Bookmark and choose a group of favorite sites or a label.
13) Create groups of cards
Also this function has been taken by Opera browser which, however, implements it much better.
In Firefox 4, if you use the browser with so many tabs open, you can organize them into groups.
Once you have opened a few web pages, you can press the button at the top right, on the same row where the tabs appear.
You will see the Firefox interface change to a collection of thumbnails that you can name.
By default Firefox 4 puts everything in a single group, to create another group, in the thumbnail screen, press outside and hold the right mouse button and draw a square.
You can then arrange the various miniatures in the different groups, giving them a different name.
Unfortunately it is not currently possible to save the groups to access them in the future therefore, at the end of each session, they are reset (unless there is no session recovery.
14) Change the default search engine
If you prefer to search with Bing and not with Google or to add other search engines to other sites, just click on the drop-down menu next to the Google logo in the search box and choose one of the available search engines.
Firefox 4 still remains limited in this function; for more information on managing search engines in the browser, you can read the guide on how to search on any site from the address bar.
15) Search on each website with keywords
If you find yourself searching within the same favorite sites, you can create keywords to invoke the search within them from the search bar, without opening that site.
The trick to create a search keyword, right click on the search box within the site you want to add and choose the " Add a keyword for this search " option.
For example, for Navigaweb.net you can choose the word nav or for Wikipedia wi .
Once added, to search for information on Navigaweb.net, just write on the address bar: nav calendar to find articles that talking about calendars
16) Check the health of Firefox
Firefox collects data on the overall performance of the browser with information about how much time has been spent surfing the internet, how many times it crashed and how long it took to open.
To access this health report, open the menu from the button with 4 lines at the top right, click on the question mark button and then on Firefox Integrity Analysis .
17) Synchronize passwords, logins and favorites
With Firefox 4 you can synchronize your favorites, passwords and even open tabs between various computers.
To configure it, go to Options -> Sync and click Create a new account .
After registering with email and password, Firefox encrypts all settings so that no one else can access them if they don't know the account password.
In another article, the guide to synchronize Firefox on PC and mobile phone (Android) .
18) Automatically enter an address without writing it all down .
Firefox has automatic address completion: writing, for example, navigaweb, in the address bar and pressing Ctrl + Enter to go directly to the navigaweb.net site.
19) Manage the search and browser history
To remove embarrassing sites from your history, when you start writing on the address bar, if something embarrassing appears, just use the arrow keys to move down and then use the Delete key to delete it.
20) In another article, all the tricks and tips to optimize Firefox speed to the maximum.
