The best thing about Firefox is it’s unlimited methods to get things done. Add-ons are the most interesting part about Firefox and they help us a lot. Fortunately, there are some tips that can be done without any tools/add-ons. Take this Firefox thingie to another level. Enjoy :) .

(1) Bookmarking Quickie

Bookmarking blog posts is a daily routine for me. Whenever I stumble or digg a good article or tool, the first thing that come to my mind is to bookmark it to somewhere I can access it really fast in an ordered manner. Instead of adding it in your desktop creating an instant shortcut link to the site. Next time you need to visit the site, click on the shortcut and Firefox will open the link in a new tab. You can also drag it to an specific area on the Toolbar instead of creating a desktop shortcut.

Bookmarking Quickie

(2) Keyboard Shortcut Quickie

If you are a Pro in keyboard shortcuts, but have trouble with Page Up / Down and Home End keys, just hit F7 to get them working again. The keys become disabled if the Accessibility feature was enabled either in Tools> Optons > Advanced tab and selecting Always use the cursor keys to navigate within pages or you press F7 and answered yes to the following for Caret Browsing:

Keyboard Shortcut Quickies : Caret Browsing
When the box is checked- Do not show me this dialog box again, pressing F7 toggles the feature on or off, but does not display the dialog box if the keys become disabled again without warning. To get the warning back:

* Type about:config in the Address Bar
* In the Filter bar, type accessibility.warn_on_browsewithcaret and double click on it to set the Value to True.

(3) Firefox Search Quickie

If you have used Firefox search box on the Navigation toolbar, search results will open in the active tab. Using Alt + Enter will open the search results in a new tab. You can make this the default action by having the searches open in a new tab all the time with the following change:

Firefox Search Quickie

* Type about:config in the Address Bar
* In the Filter bar, type browser.search.openintab and double click on it to set the Value to True.

(4) Show My Home Page Quickie

They are options to what sites you want opened when Firefox opens up. By setting the startup preference in Tools > Options under the Main tab, I like to have several sites open, by selecting show my home page (next to when Firefox opens) and adding URL’s in the Home Page area.

But after a while, I find new sites here and there and end up needing to add or remove URL’s. Instead of frequently modifying the URL’s in the home page area, you can have Firefox open all sites located in a bookmark folder. Just select use bookmark and choose a folder. You can easily add and remove sites to the folder, then just refresh the sites by clicking on Use Bookmark and re-select the folder (works also on version 1.5).

Show My Home Page Quickie

(5) Tabbed Browsing Quickie

This procedure keeps things organized and desktop do not seem overwhelmingly crowded. But sometimes when you have many tabs open, it’s hard to find the active tab. An easy fix to this is to make all inactive tabs almost visible all you need to add some CSS codes.

Make sure the userChrome.css file exist in your profile directory at the following locations:

On Windows Vista: C:\users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome
On Windows XP/2000: C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome
On Linux (typicaly) ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/

If you cannot see it, just create a text file and name it userChrome.css. Then copy the following code into userChrome.css and save it.

/* Make inactive tabs almost visible */
#content tab:not([selected="true"]) {
-moz-opacity: 0.5 !important; }

Result shown below.. :)

Tabbed Browsing Quickie

Close and re-open Firefox and you will now be able to easily find the active tab. VOILA.. :)

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