The most underrated Firefox feature ?
I have no interesting finding today and besides, I’ve always wanted to do something for the world but I never knew what.
So instead of a futile question, I’ll share with you one of the best discoveries I made since I use internet and Firefox : you can close a tab by clicking the scrolling wheel (while you’re on the tab of course).
Yes.
I know, you all have a close button on each tab, but I don’t, because I prefer the original setting with a button on the right of the tab bar. Except that with the mouse wheel trick, I don’t use that button anymore… I love closing tabs with the mouse wheel. Try it, if you are not unfortunate enough to have just a basic two button mouse. You soon will be addicted too.
I was inspired by a post called “101 post ideas” and especially by the following tip “Introduce a method for a task which is performed by numerous people daily”… It gave me the idea of sharing this in an attempt to be funny maybe.
Have a good week-end.
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November 9th, 2007 at 1:10 am
lol… I too was delighted when I discovered this function!
Try CTRL + W, CTRL + T, and CTRL + TAB for more tab functions.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:54 am
I thought I was the only one using it! I use CTRL + T and also Double clicking on the tab bar to create a new empty tab, but I didn’t know CTRL + W ! This is so cool (don’t try it on this page though).
Thanks !
November 9th, 2007 at 9:46 am
works for IE as well.
November 9th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Wow..these are very cool tricks
November 9th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Thiru, I am surprised you didn’t know about those, since you’re living online…
And thx MK for mentioning IE, it seems to have improved from IE 6.. for info, 70% of visitors of this blog use Firefox..
November 10th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
… they use Firefox because a lot come from SU.
November 10th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Shift+CTRL+T reopens the last tab you closed, if you accidentally closed more than you meant to.
November 10th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
If you are big on using the mouse, I recommend the Mouse Gestures extension. You can create a gesture to close a tab. Along with all the other gestures that it comes default with.
November 10th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Thanks for the tips. I am actually using the mouse a lot.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:45 am
On a mouse w/o a scroll wheel, clicking both mouse buttons at once produces the same effect. Works good on laptops
November 11th, 2007 at 2:39 am
even better is clicking on links with the scroll button opens the link in a new tab
November 11th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Also, control-L to highlight/focus the url bar, control-K for the search bar. Middle click on anything… ANYTHING to open a new tab. It doesn’t matter what it is, most everyone knows links but most don’t know that you can do it for bookmarks, back/forward buttons, and even home. Very handy.
November 11th, 2007 at 8:51 am
you have been stumbled.
all your base are belong to the SU community.
You are on the way to destruction.
You have no chance to survive make your time.
also, firefox (and firefox features, for that matter) ftw.
one moar thing! IE fails.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
These tips are amazing. I will make a new post to list them all. Thanks everyone. SU community rules !
November 11th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I think the most underrated firefox feature is:
Opening a new tab by clicking the mousewheel on links (this opens them in a new tab) - much much faster than right clicking and then selecting “open in new tab”.
Just putting it out there!
November 11th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
you can also CTRL + Click to open a link or practically anything else in a new tab… the same applies for SHIFT + Click which will open things in a new window.
Another time saver is the auto complete of .com, .net, and .org addresses. For example, you can type only “365questions” into the location bar, and hit CTRL + ENTER and it’ll add the “http://www.” before and “.com” after. SHIFT + ENTER auto completes for .net addresses, and CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER completes for .org addresses.
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/keyboard
November 11th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
thx for the link Justin.
November 11th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Oh, wow! This is great! Thanks! :O
November 11th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
just found out left click followed by right click goes forward
right followed by left goes back
find out something new everyday
found out alot here
GO STUMBLE GO
November 12th, 2007 at 12:08 am
This works in most tab-based applications. I love this feature too.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Also, if you click on the empty space in the tab bar with your middle mouse button, it opens up the most recently closed tab. If you accidentally closed a tab, then you can re-open it quickly without having to go to your history.
November 12th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
“# MK Says:
November 9th, 2007 at 9:46 am
works for IE as well.”
Now i wonder where they got that idea
(fine i am a biased opensorce nerd, but still…)
November 12th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Oh ya - Ctrl-W and middle-click-close ftw. Also, in Linux, you can paste urls anywhere in the browser to go to them by middle-clicking if you tweak a little bit:
http://ralree.info/2006/10/24/firefox-2-problems-and-fixes
November 12th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
ya..its addictive.. u tried ctrl+w??
I did
November 12th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
i actually have ctrl+T, ctrl+w, ctrl+Tab, and Esc, all mapped on my buttons around the scroll wheel
November 12th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
as well as Back and Minimize on the side buttons (i dont use forward…ever…who does)
November 13th, 2007 at 2:08 am
What about mouse gestures? Dont even need to reach the tabs to close it.
November 13th, 2007 at 2:26 am
you have again been stumbled and yes we are a huge community
Firefox and Linux Rule
November 13th, 2007 at 5:08 am
pressing the left and right mouse buttons at once acts as a middle click, it does exactly the same thing. you can close tabs and if you left+right click on open space the last closed tab is opened. with the tab-mix plus extension you can also select tabs by hovering over them with your cursor too. all-in-one-sidebar can be set to open the sidebat by nudging the edge- it’s under advanced prefs and if you set it at 0 ms it opens the moment you nudge the edge. spacebar on open space scrolls the page down half a page or so and you can set multiple home pages by separating them with a | symbol.
November 13th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
get tabmixplus. it lets you customize everything about tabbed browsing. i have it set up to close tab on double-click, open new tab double-click on tabbar, dupe tab middle click on tab, reopen closed tab middleclick on tab bar.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122
November 13th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
thanks guys. This post is a now really informative.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
What a mine of information … just in the responses! … but how did you discover that neat thing with the scrolling wheel?
November 14th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Hi Andrew,
yes I am impressed too. Thanks to all of you who dropped a line. This is real user generated content!
Regarding the scrolling wheel thing, I confess I don’t remember where I found it, but definitely read somewhere about it, most probably on a blog… A lot of people are using it, but I am sure a lot more are not, and it’s a cool little feature. I am glad you share my enthusiasm about it.
cheers.
November 16th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
omfg.
i already knew this.
stumbled.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:01 am
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