The Best Mozilla Firefox Tips and Tricks 2016

You may have seen many articles on Top Mozilla Firefox Tips and Tricks, but we have filtered the best tricks and bucketed them under 5 major categories – Settings, Configuration, Performance, Features and Shortcuts to help users tweak Mozilla Firefox based on their needs.


PERFORMANCE

1. Optimize RAM usage when minimized

Firefox continues to consume memory even when it is minimized, but you can move this memory to your hard drive by typing ‘about:config’ in the URL and then right-click anywhere in the blank space. New -> Boolean, name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to ‘True’. Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

We won’t recommend editing the “browser.cache.disk.capacity” as Firefox in many cases restores its default value. Instead, clear your cache regularly to improve performance.

2. Minimize Page Rendering Duration

Firefox by default waits for about 250 ms before it renders a page and acts on the information it receives. You can set it to 0 by typing ‘about:config‘ and create a New -> Integer with right click on blank space, name it ‘nglayout.initialpaint.delay‘ and then set it to 0.

CONFIGURATION

1. Enable TAB Preview

Type “about:config“, in the search bar type “browser.ctrlTab.previews” -> set it to true. Now you can preview tabs by pressing ‘Ctrl+TAB‘. Remember you need to have at least 3 tabs for preview.
firefox enable tab preview

2. Enable Multiple Websites on Firefox Homepage

You may want to open multiple websites when you open your Firefox browser to check emails, news, and updates. Let’s say you always or most of the times Google or check your Gmail when you open your browser, but you have to go to a new tab to check your Gmail every time. You can guide Firefox to open Google and Gmail at the same time whenever you open the browser by going to Options and aggregating Google and Gmail with a pipe symbol ( | )


SETTINGS

1. Master Password

a. Set a Master Password to protect your information by going to settings through three horizontal bars on top right corner
b. Under the ‘security’ section, check “Use a master password” and set your password
master password firefox

To change your Master Password, then follow these steps:

a. Type ‘chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul‘ in the Firefox URL
b. Press reset
c. Follow the steps above to set a new Master Password


2. Change default E-mail platform

By default Firefox Uses ‘ChromeHTML‘ to send emails but you may not be accustomed to this platform, rather, you prefer Gmail. 





You can change the default E-mail platform to Gmail, Yahoo or other E-mail platforms by going to Firefox settings -> Under Application, scroll down to ‘mailto‘ option. Select the drop down and change your default E-mail platform


If you couldn’t find the E-mail service in the drop-down, install ‘MailtoWebmails‘ add-on. It will allow you to choose from multiple E-mail platforms!

SHORTCUTS

1. Auto-complete

Firefox automatically adds www and .com with a Keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + Enter) to make the URL complete. For instance, type Gmail and Ctrl+Enter, Firefox will auto complete and load the URL (www.gmail.com)

2. Tab Navigation

Use Ctrl+PageDown and Ctrl+PageUp to navigate within tabs

3. Use special characters to refine your search

If you want to search a particular page in your Bookmarks or History, but are not able to, you can refine your search by using some special characters in the address bar. For instance, you have bookmarked a Moftare page, just type ‘moftare *‘ in the address bar, it will highlight all Moftare bookmarks.
moftare firefox bookmarks

4. Scroll without Mouse

Use spacebar to go down and shift+spacebar to go up a page 

5. Keyboard Shortcuts

New Window: Ctrl + N (New Private Window: Cntrl + Shift + P) 

Undo Close Tab/Window: Ctrl + Shift + T/N
Bookmark page: Ctrl+D
New Tab: Ctrl+T
Go to search box: Ctrl+K
Go to address bar: Ctrl+L
Go to Homepage: Alt+Home
Go to a specific tab: Ctrl+(1-9) choose the tab number

If you want a detailed list of keyboard shortcuts, this Mozilla Support page has entire list of keyboard shortcuts

FEATURES

1. Pocket

Mozilla has its own page management tool called ‘Pocket’. With this tool, you can save a page, categorize it, share it and even segment it as Articles, Videos or Images.


2. Firefox Share

With a click of a button, you can post on Facebook, compose a mail, tweet, download songs and do many other things…

Just go to this link on your Firefox browser and Activate the service. Once activated, click on the paper plane symbol on top right corner to enable services.


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