Firefox Tips You Probably Knew Already

Firefox is without a doubt one of the best browsers on the market. The customisability options are unmatched, the security is tight, and its blazingly fast too (but not the fastest) . Here are just a few tips to increase your productivity.

1. Ctrl (CMD) + Shift + F5 – Open previously closed tabs.

This is such a handy shortcut its ridiculous. It re-opens tabs you’ve closed. This is especially useful if you thought you were finished on a page, and you need  to open it again, or if you closed it by accident. I can’t count the number of hours this simple, yet undeniably useful shortcut has saved me.

2. Less tabs, less memory

Again, pretty straight forward. If you need that extra juice for rendering, or you need to open up several Word documents, close a few tabs. It’s simple, if you don’t need them open, close them.

3. Do you really need all those Add-ons?

The only addon’s I have are Firebug, Web Developer Toolbar, Twitterfox, Stumbleupon, and  no more. That’s all I need. I don’t need widget that displays the weather in 400 different countries or a addon that connects me to ICQ, MSN, Skype and Yahoo all at the same time.

4. Learn the shortcuts

Ties in with number one, but this is vital if you want to browse with pace. Some of my favourites* are Ctrl + T (Opens a new tab), Ctrl + K (Goes straight to search), and Ctrl + Tab (Toggles between open tabs). You can find a full list here

5. Keywords

This is such a cool little feature, but it’s one of the most unnoticed. When you bookmark something, Firefox gives you the option of letting you assign a keyword to a Bookmark item. Then when you need to access that bookmark in a hurry, all you have to do is type that short word or phrase into the toolbar, press enter, and voila, your bookmark is open! Some of my keywords are ml – mail, rd – reader, and dg for digg.com.

These are just some of the basics. Firefox is such an open browser, there is very little you can’t do in it. Just keep messing around with it, and you’ll be on your way to browsing heaven in no time.

*How nerdy is that? I have favourite shortcuts. Ha!