October 10th, 2006
Six tips for Firefox 2
Here are a few simple tips I've found helpful to improve the tabbed browsing experience in Firefox 2. These have been tested in the RC2 version on Windows.
- Ctrl+W closes the tab you are looking at right now.
- Oops, I didn't mean to close that tab. Ctrl+Shift+T to reopen it.
- Middle-click (click the middle mouse button) on a link to open it in a new tab.
- Middle-click on the tab title to close it.
- Set the browser.tabs.closeButtons preference (*) to "3" to display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (like Firefox 1.5). "2" removes all the close buttons, "1" puts a button on every tab that is big enough (default), and "0" puts one only on the active tab.
- Set browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to "0" to disable tab scrolling until the tabs get really small.
(*) Note: These preferences are normally hidden. To change them, go to the special address "about:config" and start typing the name of the preference in the filter box, then double-click on the one you want and enter a new value. Right click and select Reset to go back to the default. All Firefox preferences are documented here. Some won't take effect until you open a new window or restart.
Have any other Firefox 2 tips you'd like to share? Add them in the Talkback section.
Ed Burnette is a professional developer and author of several articles and books about computing including Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform, 2nd Edition. For disclosure of Ed's industry affiliations, click here or to view his full profile click here.
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