Chuck The Geek.com

Extremely fast web browsing: Firefox plus shortcuts equal speed

January 31st, 2006 by Chuck Sharp

What is Firefox?

Firefox, if you don’t know, is a free web browser capable of doing almost everything that Internet Explorer does and much much more. If you don’t use it yet, install it now. It’s worth your time to learn, not just because it’s cool and it avoids many security issues that plagues Internet Explorer, but it can be set up to make web browsing a lightning fast experience.

Keys to efficiency

In order to be an efficient shortcut, it must:

• be possible to do without looking at any particular spot on the screen
• be possible to do without clicking the mouse at some particular point on screen.

Basic firefox surfing

So, the first thing to figure out is how to navigate around a page.

To scroll the web page up and down, the scrollbar on the right side of the screen is the most common way to move around. It also takes longer to use that than most of the other ways. Instead, you can:

• Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to go a full screenful at a time.
• Use the up and down arrow keys to move a line at a time.
• Use the space-bar to move down to next screenful.
• Use the scroll wheel on your mouse to easily move up and down.

Often, you need to move back and forth between web pages. The common way to do that is to use the Back button on the toolbar. Here are faster alternatives:

• Press Alt + the left arrow key, or the Backspace key to navigate back to the last page.
• Press Alt + the right arrow key to navigate forward in the browser’s history.
• Right click the mouse and choose the “Back” and “Forward” options.
• Use mouse gestures, which will be looked at below.

Surfing different sites

Let’s introduce tabbed browsing really quick. Firefox let’s you have more than one website open at the same time, under separate tabs. Here are a few things to know about tabs and quick navigation:

• Normally, when you click a link, it brings up the linked web page over top the one you were just looking at. If you want to load up the link in a new tab, Hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the link. You’ll see a new tab created that’s loading the linked-to website. To do this without just the mouse, right click on the link and choose “Open Link in New Tab.”
• You can use Ctrl + T to open a new, empty tab
• To move between tabs, you can either click on them, press, Ctrl + Page Up/Page Down to move to next or previous tab, or press Ctrl + number 1-9 to go to tabs 1-9.
• Use Ctrl + W to close the current tab.

Quick URL typing and cool keyboard tricks

• Type Ctrl + L to move the text cursor to the location bar. You can type a website URL (address) and press enter to go there in the current tab.
• Maybe the best trick in this article: If you type anything other than a web address into the location and press enter, Firefox turns it into a Google search, and then loads the website that’s listed first in the Google search results (this is actually called Google’s I-feel-lucky search). You can type ‘firefox’ to go directly to mozilla.com, ‘olive garden menu’ to go to olivegarden.com’s menu page, ‘department of health’ to go directly to the U.S. Department of Health Human Services website. This works amazingly well, and it has almost eliminated my use of bookmarks.
• This is fantastic: If your hands are on the keyboard and you want to go to link on your screen, don’t grab the mouse! Instead, press the apostrophe/single quote key. Then, start typing the text that’s on the link. As you type, Firefox will select the first link on the current screen that matches what you type. If you need to have it select a link further down the screen, press the F3 key until the link is highlighted. Then, press Enter to go to that link, or Ctrl + Enter to open that link in a new tab. You’ll never have to use your keyboard again!

Searching for text on a page

There are 2 kinds of searches in Firefox: searching for text within the current web page and searching for content on the Internet using a search engine like Google. First, let’s talk about finding a particular word on your current web page.

• While looking at the page, type Ctrl + F, or type the forward slash ‘/’ key. This ought to bring up the search bar at the bottom of the window.
• Type a word, and Firefox will find the next match on the page while you type.
• To search for the next match, press the F3 key.
• When you’re done searching, press the escape ‘Esc’ key to close the search bar.

Searching using Google or other search engines

The text box in the upper right corner of Firefox lets you search Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Dictionary.com, and so many other search engines very quickly. To see what searches are available to you, click on the icon (usually it’s on the ‘G’ Google symbol) next to the text box. Here are some shortcuts and tricks:

• You can select what search engine you want to use by clicking on it. Then, type your search in that box and press enter.
• To get more search engines listed, visit mozilla.org’s add-ons.
• To move your cursor to search bar, press Ctrl + K. To change the search engine, press Ctrl + Up or Ctrl + Down. Type your search and go!

Mouse gestures (no, not that kind of gesture…)

An interesting concept in mouse usage is that of a gesture. A mouse gesture is performed by drawing a shape or pattern with the mouse cursor on the screen. Different gestures result in different actions being done by Firefox. For instance, the gesture to tell Firefox to go back a page is a mouse slide from right to left. To use gestures, you need to get the Mouse Gestures Firefox extension. Once you’ve installed it, restart Firefox and then go to the mouse gestures website to read up on how to do cool gestures. Here’s a tip: hold down the right mouse button when performing a gesture.

Miscellaneous Tricks

• To maximize the screen space you can use for web browsing, press F11 for full-screen mode. Press it again to bring the window back to normal.
• Caret browsing allows you to move a text cursor around the page, select text, copy text, etc, just like an un-modifiable word processing document. To turn this feature on or off, press F7. Then, you can click the mouse on the page to move the cursor, or use the standard text editing shortcuts.
• Press Ctrl + M in Firefox to bring up your default email application with a compose-message window.
• To make the text on the page bigger, press Ctrl + the ‘+’ (plus) key. Ctrl + ‘-’ (minus) makes the text smaller.
• For even more keyboard shortcuts, see Firefox’s Keyboard Shortcuts

Conclusion

I hope this has brought up the breadth and depth of web-browsing efficiency shortcuts.
Definitely give some or all of these a try. The more you can comfortably and quickly use
without effort (and it just takes practice), the quicker you’ll be able to navigate and find
what you’re looking for.

To summarize and illustrate my strategy:

• Use both the keyboard and the mouse as appropriate. They can both be very efficient.
• I use the mouse all the time to scroll with the wheel, click on links (right click or Ctrl click for new tabs), and the back and forward gestures.
• I use the keyboard just as much as the mouse. I often navigate from tab to tab with the Ctrl + Up/Down shortcuts, Ctrl +T and Ctrl + L to open a new site (and I use the I-feel-lucky searches like mad), Ctrl + K to do Google and other web searches, and Ctrl + W to close tabs.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, web browser, efficiency, shortcut, surfing, tabbed browsing, keyboard, Google, mouse, searches, shortcuts, mouse gesture, Caret

Entry Filed under: PC Basics, Productivity, Review