Making the Most of Tabbed Browsing in Firefox
Posted on April 16, 2010 at 5:38 am
One of the more useful features in Firefox is Tabbed Browsing, which other browsers eventually included. Some of the benefits of opening web pages on tabs rather than in new windows each time are faster loading times, less buttons for open instances of Firefox on the Windows taskbar, the ability to load pages in the background while reading the current page, and the convenience of being able to switch to other loaded web pages just by clicking a tab.
This post contains some tips for making the most of the Tabbed Browsing feature in Firefox.
To open any link on a web page on a new tab, click your center mouse button while hovering over the link. If you don’t have a center mouse button, hold down the Ctrl key and then left-click on a link to get the same result.
You can reorder the order of the open tabs by dragging and dropping them on the tab bar.
If you want to open a web page currently open on a tab in a new instance of Firefox, drag the desired tab to your Windows desktop.
If you have more than one instance of Firefox open and you want to move a tab from one instance to another instance, drag the desired tab from one instance of Firefox to the other. The contents of the tab will move accordingly.
To close a tab quickly, click the center mouse button on the tab, or press Ctrl + W or Ctrl + F4 while the tab is active. You can also just click on the ‘X’ on the tab itself.
To reopen the last tab you closed, right-click on the tab bar and select Undo Close Tab from the pop-up menu. This option is like a typical Undo option. Firefox keeps track of the tabs you close and each time you select Undo Close Tab, Firefox goes through its list of tabs you have closed and reopens the next one in line.
To switch quickly between open tabs, press Ctrl + Tab to go to the next open tab, or Shift + Ctrl + Tab to go to the previous open tab.
To go to a specific open tab, press Ctrl and a numerical key corresponding to the desired tab’s position from the left of the Firefox window. For example, to go to the third tab, press Ctrl + 3. Note that this only works up through the the eighth tab. Pressing Ctrl + 9 takes you to the last open tab, whether it’s the ninth tab or a higher number.
The middle mouse button is useful for opening a range of things in a new tab. For example, Click the middle mouse button on the Back button to open the previously accessed web page in a new tab.
You can also click the middle mouse button on an item in your history to open that web page in a new tab, or on the Homepage button on the toolbar.
As of Firefox 3.5, the tab bar is always shown, even when only one page is open. You can change this in the Firefox settings. Select Options from the Tools menu.
To avoid displaying the tab bar when only one page is open, click the Tabs button at the top of the Options dialog box and uncheck the Always show the tab bar check box.
You can add a new tab by clicking the plus button to the right of the tab bar.
Hopefully, these tips will help you to make the best use of tabs in Firefox.
by Lori Kaufman
» Filed Under Computer Tips
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You can also reopen last tab closed with Ctrl+Shift+T.
Can you tell me what program/tool/technique you use to get those ragged-edged screen shots illustrating this content?
Various screen shot tools are used for the articles on Online Tech Tips. For this post, I used Techsmith’s SnagIt to capture the screens and to create the “torn edge” effect and the caption bubble.
Thanks, Lori. I appreciate your identifying the tool you use.
@ Sherry. SnagIt is one of the best tools of that kind that I’ve evr used! It is just awesome and allows not only to take snapshots but also do all the standard set of actions that most of the people would use in their every day usage…