Miscellaneous Firefox Tips

WhyBeNormal · Post by **WhyBeNormal** » February 11th, 2005, 11:01 pm

Tip: Instead of clicking the Back or Forward buttons, hold down the Shift key and turn the scroll wheel to back or forward.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » February 25th, 2005, 9:47 am

Some good tips here, but this is one of my favorite features of FF:

Tip: you can give "keywords" to your bookmarks by right-clicking the bookmark and then Properties. If you put a string in the keyword field now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark. For example, if I have a bookmark for the firefox website, I might give it the keyword "ff". Now, when I type "ff<Enter>" in the address bar, it goes to the firefox site. I find it is often faster than going through your bookmarks to find it.

bytemaster · Post by **bytemaster** » March 6th, 2005, 2:47 am

<b>Restore Text Size</b>

If you have been playing arround with resizing text, you may have gotten frustraited about getting back to normal. Simple. Hit <b>Ctrl-0</b> and all of your fonts will be back to the normal size.

(If you want to resize text, hold ctrl and use your scroll wheel, or ctrl and + or -)

Riddick51 · Post by **Riddick51** » March 7th, 2005, 12:43 am

URL Background info by Geek canon at The Extensions Mirror.
It's absolutely sick.

Before the configuration files are presented, you should know how to find your profile folder, which is where Firefox saves all your settings on your hard drive. You may have to view hidden files. It would be easier to install the ChromeEdit extension, if you haven't already. Otherwise, Open My Computer, double-click C:, then Tools, Folder Options, View, click the Show hidden files and folders radio button, and finally click [OK].

On Windows XP/2000, the path is usually %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\, where xxxxxxxx is a random string of 8 characters. Just browse to C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ and the rest should be obvious.
On Windows 95/98/Me, the path is usually C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
On Linux, the path is usually ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/
On Mac OS X, the path is usually ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/

%AppData% is a shorthand for the "C:\...\Application Data\..." path on Windows 2000/XP. To use it, click Start > Run..., enter %AppData% and press Enter. You will be taken to the "real" folder, which is normally C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data.

Here's what you put in userChrome.css:

Code: Select all

/* ============= UI Appearance Tweaks ================ */

/* URL bar background image for high security site */
#urlbar[level="high"] > .autocomplete-textbox-container {
  background-image: url('high.png') !important;
  background-color: none !important;
  font-weight: 600 !important;
}

/* URL bar background image for low security site */
#urlbar[level="low"] > .autocomplete-textbox-container {
  background-image: url('low.png') !important;
  background-color: none !important;
  font-weight: 600 !important;
}

/* URL bar background image for broken secure site */
#urlbar[level="broken"] > .autocomplete-textbox-container {
  background-image: url('broken.png') !important;
  background-color: none !important;
  font-weight: 600 !important;
}

You need to download three files from here.

high.png
low.png
broken.png

Put those files in the same directory with userChrome.css.

Restart Firefox.

Visit Citibank. Look at the background of your URL window. It should be tinted yellow, with faded "SECURE" in the background.

Scarf Face · Post by **Scarf Face** » March 7th, 2005, 11:53 am

Shift-middle-clicking a link will open the link in a new tab, but will keep the focus of the current tab.

aldiboronti · Post by **aldiboronti** » March 10th, 2005, 11:17 pm

If you want to resize the searchbox there's a great extension which makes the job really easy.

http://dragtotab.mozdev.org/resizesearchbox/

corntoegoblin · Post by **corntoegoblin** » March 13th, 2005, 8:50 pm

tip: holding Ctrl+MouseWheel-up or down changes the font size on a page

tip: pressing F11 makes firefox go into a fullscreen mode, goes the same for IE which is the devil in software form

Guest · Post by **Guest** » March 14th, 2005, 2:07 pm

Tip: Read the previous posts in this thread, then you won't repeat tips that have already appeared 8000 times.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » March 14th, 2005, 7:22 pm

Tip: Ctrl+B opens bookmarks in sidebar

(don't know if already posted dont really care either)

Riddick51 · Post by **Riddick51** » March 19th, 2005, 2:19 pm

These are a few enhancements I made to the mousewheel.with[alt/ctrl/shift]key parameters. The changes, in my opinion, result in a more intuitive use of the parameters. Here is a summary of the effects of the changes:

holding down the left side [ctrl] key (with your thumb) while rolling the mousewheel results in scrolling the page up/down by eight lines (for each mousewheel detent). You may change the value given here of eight to your desired scroll line count.
holding down the left [shift] key (with your thumb) while rolling the mousewheel results in scrolling one entire page at a time for each click detent of rolling the mousewheel. Note: this may actually be the default setting, so maybe this part is nothing new.
holding down the left [alt] key results in the font size to be increased/decreased with each incremental roll of the mousewheel up/down. this moves the font change toward the center of the keyboard.

get into about:config and search by typing in "mousewheel.with" without the quotes. now you are positioned at the variables to be modified. modify the following variables to have the value indicated. note: you may want to jot down your original values for these parameters, in case you find the modifications unsuitable.

mousewheel.withaltkey.numlines=3
mousewheel.withaltkey.sysnumlines=0
mousewheel.withaltkey.action=true

mousewheel.withctrlkey.numlines=0
mousewheel.withctrlkey.sysnumlines=8
mousewheel.withctrlkey.action=false

mousewheel.withshiftkey.numlines=1
mousewheel.withshiftkey.sysnumlines=0
mousewheel.withshiftkey.action=false

_xocet · Post by **_xocet** » March 26th, 2005, 6:21 am

Tip: If Firefox is not the default browser and you can't make it so for whatever reason, simply add a Firefox shortcut in your SendTo folder (userprofile\sendto\). Now you can right-click HTML pages or images (or whatever) to have them open in Firefox.

WhyBeNormal · Post by **WhyBeNormal** » March 26th, 2005, 1:51 pm

You can drag a word up to the search bar and it will instantly to a search for that word in a new tab. Highlight a word and drag it up to the search bar (just as if you were dragging a link to the tab bar) and it will do a search for that word using whatever search engine you currently have selected.

Old RPGM35 · Post by **Old RPGM35** » March 26th, 2005, 2:29 pm

WhyBeNormal wrote:You can drag a word up to the search bar and it will instantly to a search for that word in a new tab. Highlight a word and drag it up to the search bar (just as if you were dragging a link to the tab bar) and it will do a search for that word using whatever search engine you currently have selected.

the same can be done by selecting the word, rightclicking, and selecting "Search web for [insert selected text here]"

angelsong · Post by **angelsong** » March 28th, 2005, 12:20 pm

This tip will make it easier to click and drag items in Firefox, as in when you are customizing your toolbars:

Go to Start>Control Panel>Mouse>\buttons tab and tick the Turn ClickLock on checkbox. You can set it to your preference under the Advanced button.

With this enabled, you can click on an item such as an icon, hold briefly, then drag the icon to your desired location on the toolbar without having to hold down the mouse button.

yucehan · Post by **yucehan** » March 30th, 2005, 10:02 am

Tip:you can go any tab you want by pressing Alt-n
Ex: alt-3 (will go to 3rd tab)

Miscellaneous Firefox Tips

Intermediate level enhancement

If you have Windows XP...