# Mozilla Firefox Tips

## Gherald2

This is intended to be a thread for miscellaneous firefox tips and tricks.

I'll start us off with a basic one about about Bookmark Toolbar subfolders.

If you're like me, you hate how inconvenient the traditional Bookmarks menu is.  Who wants to have to reach for the top of their screen and navigate through annoying submenus all the time?

The sidebar that can be called up with Ctrl+B isn't much better, since it wastes valuable horizontal real estate.  It's certainly a good solution for long-term link storage, but not the sites you visit day to day.

Fortunately we have the wonderful bookmark toolbar, but doesn't yours get a bit cluttered after awhile?

Mine sure was, until I discovered subfolders can be on the toolbar, too!

Simply right click the Bookmarks Toolbar and select New Folder.  Let's make one for the Gentoo Forums -- you want the name to be short, so do something like "Genforum."

Now open a tab with the Gentoo Forums Index, and press Ctrl+D to bookmark it.  Change the name to simply "Index" and use the drop down box to choose the folder you just created.

Here are some other ideas for this folder:

"Search" (advanced search form)

https://forums.gentoo.org/search.php

"My Posts"

https://forums.gentoo.org/search.php?search_id=egosearch

"Unanswered Posts"

https://forums.gentoo.org/search.php?search_id=unanswered

"New Posts"  (since your last visit)

https://forums.gentoo.org/search.php?search_id=newposts

"Last 24 hours"

https://forums.gentoo.org/search.php?search_id=last

And also add some additional links to your favorite forum sections.

I decided to make a seperate "Gentoo" subfolder for all the non-forum stuff.  A few to get you started:

www.gentoo.org  (d'oh!)

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml#doc_chap8  (nice overview, skips over all the blurbs you only need to read once)

www.gentoo-wiki.com

www.gentoo-portage.com

http://packages.gentoo.org

http://reviewed.homelinux.org/gentoo/

http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/rute.html.gz

Now go make a new folder for all the sites you visit frequently!

Once you're done creating everything, the Bookmarks --> Manage Bookmarks utility will let you move things around so they are in logical order...

As you can see this was a pretty basic tip (worthy of most windows users!) but I trust some of you will find it helpful.

Now all ye mozilla gurus who are shaking yer heads ever-so-sliaghtly, post some more technical tips!

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## gpmartinson

Here's another couple of ideas[stolen wholecloth from a recent post somewhere]:

1. Choose Bookmarks-->Manage Bookmarks

2. Choose New Bookmark

3. Name it "Gentoo Forum Search" 

4. Location: https://forums.gentoo.org/search.php?search_keywords=%s

5. Keyword: gentoo

6. Description: "type gentoo and whatever you are searching for in the url field and voila!"

Repeat for 

1. Name: Portage Search

2. Location: http://www.gentoo-portage.com/search-result.php?search=%s

3. Keyword: portage

4. Description "Type portage whatever and find it in the portage tree!" 

-----------------------------------

Now try it : Go to the URL field at the top and type: gentoo Firefox tips...or portage audio

Gotta Love Firefox!

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## Gherald2

Tight!  another would be:

Name: Gentoo Bug Search

Location: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=%s

Keyword: genbug

Description: type genbug <bugid>

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## thrasher6670

I posted a little howto on the wiki for adding a search to that little search slot to the rigt of your address bar here: http://gentoo-wiki.com/Search_Bar_Plugin .

enjoy

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## silentbob

The keyboard shortcuts are always handy to know: http://texturizer.net/firefox/keyboard.html

I particularly like:

```
Delete Individual Form Auto-Complete Entry  Shift+Del
```

Ain't firefox brilliant  :Wink: 

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## Insanity5902

tweak factor has taken a 17 page thread and written an article about all the tweaks

http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks/firefoxtweak/

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## Gherald2

 *tweakfactor wrote:*   

> One of my favorites things is that flash is not installed by default. This means no annoying flash ads that dance across the screen. It can be installed later on of course but I keep Firefox free of it and use IE to view Flash pages when needed.

 

Er, IE doesn't come with flash either.

But that's also a ridiculous statement because, while I'm no fan of flash, not having it installed is very annoying when you go to a site like anandtech.com which has about 4 flash animations per page and you have to click through several dialog boxes to tell firefox to not to take you to the macromedia site to download the plugin, since you're much better off emerging it if you really want it.  And supposing you don't want it, those dialog boxes will keep appearing every time you visit a flash site... nasty default behavior.

The best way to block flash is to use privoxy (emerge privoxy).

EDIT: it appears the flashblock plugin described below is even better... but you should still consider using privoxy for many other reasons : )

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## Stolz

Another Tip:

If you double click the 'Bookmarks Toolbar' a new tab will be opnened

and...

There is a extension to enable mouse gestures. You can assign mouse movements to Firefox actions (reload, Go Back, Colse tab,...) more info: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marc.boullet/ext/extensions-en.html

and one more...

You can tweak lots of options writing in the location bar 'about:config' (without quotes) 

Hope it helps

Stolz

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## Wi1d

 *Quote:*   

> Now try it : Go to the URL field at the top and type: gentoo Firefox tips...or portage audio
> 
> Gotta Love Firefox!

 

That's got to be one of the coolest tips I've seen in a long time.   :Very Happy: 

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## dkaplowitz

One tip I like that I don't see mentioned is for people like me who like to visit a number of sites for news and stuff without having to use "bookmarks".

If you go into your firefox preferences (this works on Mozilla too) and enter all your favorite sites in the "home page" field separated by the "|" symbol, they will _all_ load in their own individual tabs when you open your browser, thus:

```
http://slashdot.org|http://forums.gentoo.org|http://forums.bsdnexus.com|http://freshnews.org
```

 ....etc. etc. can all be your "home page". I've done it with as many as 10 different sites but have not tested what the maximum reasonable amount is..

The only drawback is if you're accustomed to doing an "alt + home" to refresh your home page, it will load all your home pages again in new tabs, regardless of how many tabs are currently open.

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## stahlsau

for people who don´t like to see flash by default: install "Flashblock" from http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

It shows all flash as an empty box, if ya like to see the flash just click at the "play"-symbol in the box. Greatly reduces loading times from slow servers.

Also i´d recommend "Adblock" from http://adblock.mozdev.org/

an improved adblocker for mozilla/firefox.

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## robmiller

I couldn't live without AdBlock, which has already been mentioned, Allow Right Click, and Tabbrowser Extensions. All, as far as I know anyway, available from http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/ (much better than the official extensions site).

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## daff

 *dkaplowitz wrote:*   

> One tip that I like that I don't see mentioned is for people like me who like to visit a number of sites for news and stuff without having to use "bookmarks".
> 
> [...]
> 
> ```
> ...

 

Now THAT'S the really coolest tip I've ever heard for Mozilla/Firefox, and I've been using it for over two years now! Great! Thanks a lot, it rocks  :Smile: 

And luckily I'm not accustomed to the Alt-Home thingy  :Smile: 

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## yngwin

 *robmiller wrote:*   

> I couldn't live without AdBlock, which has already been mentioned, Allow Right Click, and Tabbrowser Extensions. All, as far as I know anyway, available from http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/ (much better than the official extensions site).

 

Even better IMHO is http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic=284

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## gpmartinson

 *Quote:*   

> One tip that I like that I don't see mentioned is for people like me who like to visit a number of sites for news and stuff without having to use "bookmarks".

 

This will make me much more productive! Thanks   :Wink: 

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## pjv

Strange, the "http://slashdot.org|https://forums.gentoo.org|http://forums.bsdnexus.com|http://freshnews.org" thing doesn't work on mozilla-1.7.2-r1 or am I doing something wrong? You just have to set this as your homepage right?

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## gen2fox

Open these pages in tabs, then go to Edit > Preferences, and click Use current group.

This button is only in Mozilla.

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## xiando

It's nice to find Gherald has bookmarked me above  :Smile: 

I put out a nice Firefox and Mozilla 1.x tutorial at LinuxReviews called How to browse the Internet using the Mozilla 1.x and Mozilla Firefox browsers: Learn how you can browse effectively using the keyboard, filter away advertisements, make the fonts look nicer, ensure your privacy is not violated and more. Read on to discover the hidden secrets features of Mozilla 1.6+ and Firefox 9.x.

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## pjp

Set scroll by x lines with mouse wheel in Firefox

Open links in Firefox from Gaim

firefox 0.9 horizontal scrolling

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## libber

I don't think this has been covered so I just found that there are some nice things you can type into the address bar as shortcuts, like "dict foo" will lookup the argument on dictionary.com. Ditto for "wiki" and wikipedia. It is quite helpful

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## naviathan

maybe someone here can help with this.  I use axel to download a lot of programs because I'm on a slow network..  How can make firefox use axel instead of the default download manager?

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## crafteh

Check out the extension I wrote, Forecastfox.

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## Coenobite

Please don't get me wrong, but why not just add further Firefox tips to this thread?

It's much more "unified", is very firefox-centric and has a nice collection already.

It just seems like a good idea to keep these (great!) tips in a single, centralized location.

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## dswissmiss

http://www.squarefree.com/pornzilla/  :Very Happy: 

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