- Scroll Wheel Click on a link opens that link in a new tab. Utterly useful.
- Ctrl-F, Find that just Works.

Use "View --> Page Style --> No Page Style" when hanging out in myspace.
Spell Check in Text Boxes.

Extensions. Particularly Adblock Plus, flashblock, bugmenot and noscript. And definitely get Greasemonkey and check out the greasemonkey scripts here.

It may seem like a lot of stuff, but that's part of the allure of firefox - customization.

Holly, can I jump in?

How do I get that little open a new tab icon that I used to have on FF? When I reinstalled FF not too long ago I lost it.

I've tried searching the add-ons on the FF page. Since I'm dumber than a box of rocks I can't figure it out. I saw tab add-ons, but nothing looked familiar.

Don't know about an icon for opening a new tab, but you can do it by typing Ctrl + T. You can also right-click on any link to open it in a new tab.

Thanks mudpuppie!

Ctrl-W closes the current tab.
Ctrl-T opens a new tab.
Ctrl-Tab (and Shift-Ctrl-Tab) navigates between tabs.

There are plenty more keyboard shortcuts, but that's a start.

Extensions, part II: Adblock Plus, All-in-one Gestures, BookBurro, Chatzilla, Compact Menu 2, DownThemAll, Greasemonkey, NoScript, Search Engine Ordering, Session Saver.

(I don't know about p&c, but I'm just rattling off the extensions I have here on my work computer. If we knew more about what you use the computer for, we could come up with more specific suggestions.)

And don't forget the Themes and Search Engines.

Lori: right-click on a blank space in the toolbar, then select 'Customize,' then drag the 'New Tab' button up to your toolbar.

Here's a good list: "The 50 best extensions."

I personally like FoxyTunes, 1-click weather, Gspace and Stumbleupon.

Second installing Ad-Block Plus.

Woo! Just figured out the little new tab icon. Right clicked at top of screen and clicked "customize".

On preview, thanks box!

Those were just some of the extensions I'm using, that's just kinda the bare minimal I listed. Extensions get to be a pain in the ass to deal with if you have too many so I only listed a couple. To anyone just getting into firefox I would recommend just going to the extension page and looking around.

Couple more - CacheIt!, copy plain text, CustomizeGoogle, Downthemall!, fasterfox, Linkification, UnPlug, Web Developer and MR Tech Local Install

You can also open a new tab by double clicking on the tab bar. (You need to set it so the first page opens as a tab - I can't remember how to do that off hand though). If you have a three button (or 2 plus scroll wheel) mouse, clicking the scroll wheel / middle button should opne a new tab too). To make the latter work, you should have it set to always show the tab bar (under "tools" | "options" | "tabs").

I just noticed seanyboy already mentioned the scroll wheel.

(And that I said "opne").

Another thing, the built-in search bar. You can add search engines to it. It's very handy.

If I it's okay, I have a piggyback Firefox question (new user here, too)... In IE, I scroll up and down within a window with the arrow keys, but it doesn't seem possible to do that in Firefox - am I missing something? I hate using the scrollbar.

This isn't exactly a cool Firefox feature, but I like that having Firefox and IE allows me to keep two Gmail accounts open in two windows at the same time. When I just had IE I could only be logged in to one or the other.

Also, I just found out (from a MeTa thread) that in Firefox "Ctrl +" allows you to increase font size, and "Ctrl -" to decrease.

amro: you can scroll up and down with the arrow keys in Firefox. But if your cursor is focused on a text box, or a different frame or something, you can't. Hitting Tab often fixes the problem.

Ctrl+left click will open links in a new tab too.
Ctrl+scroll wheel up/down will decrease/increase font size.

Thanks box. I don't know what my trouble was.

This isn't exactly a cool Firefox feature, but I like that having Firefox and IE allows me to keep two Gmail accounts open in two windows at the same time. When I just had IE I could only be logged in to one or the other.

Amro, get the Gmail Manager add-on. It allows you to check multiple gmail addresses simultaneously. Then, with one click (there's a notification in the status bar), you can log in to an account that has new mail. It's very handy. Maybe that's not quite what you're after, though -- being logged into two accounts at one time.

My favourite extensions not already listed:

Download Statusbar: puts downloads in a toolbar at the bottom of the window.

Fetch text URL: gives right click options to open plain text URLs in new/current tab

Stop-or-Reload: replaces the stop and reload buttons with a single button that changes state between stop and reload depending on whether the page is currently loading.

Leet Key: gives the ability to translate text into Leet speek, ROT13, Bin, Hex and other common text forms.

Adblock Plus is useful by itself, but if you add the Filterset.G updater, it becomes magical.

My essential Add-ons are:


BugMeNot
Flash Block (Best. Add-on. Ever.)
IE View (useful for the occasional page that won't display in Firefox)
Image toolbar (puts one of those little floating 'Save Copy File, etc' things in the top left corner of an image, like you get in IE)
Launchy (right clicking gives a number of options into which you can open something)
Tiny URL creator
Titlebar Tweak

I have a few others but these are the essentials.

I do not understand what Greasemonkey is or does.

Middle-click to open links in new tabs
Extensions - I use gmail notifier, tabmix plus (this adds the new tab icon too, btw) and adblock plus
Themes - I use Blue Ice
Search bar

Plus, it's just plain cool for no particular reason.

Lori: right-click on a blank space in the toolbar, then select 'Customize,' then drag the 'New Tab' button up to your toolbar.

I'm not Lori, but thanks, box!

Adblock and tabbed browsing. You will wonder how you ever lived before.

Here's what you do with Adblock:
Load up a commercial page you like to visit that has ads. Right-click on a still-photo ad (not a Flash movie one) and a box will appear with the URL of the ad image. You can say "OK" to block just this one ad, or you can block all ads coming from that ad server... here's how to do that:

The URL will often be something like:
www.adserver.com/ads/image376.jpg

If you remove the last bit and replace it with * like this:
www.adserver.com/ads/*
you will block all things that have URLs starting with adserver.com/ads -- which will often be ALL the ads for that site.

A caution: don't get overzealous with this, because if you block this for example:
nytimes.com/images/*
you will block pictures from the news that you want to be able to see. Be sure you're only blocking URLs that you intend to block. You can always unblock things by going to Tools - Adblock - Preferences.

When the ads disappear they are replaced by peaceful white space. It's beautiful.

To block a Flash movie, there will be a little grey tab attached to the movie that says "Adblock" -- left click the tab and you'll get the magic block-box.

When the ads disappear they are replaced by peaceful white space. It's beautiful.
And frightening when you suddenly use a browser that has no ad-blocking, after getting used to no ads - it's amazing how much better every site looks without ads.

Oh, hey, check out the FireFox tweaks on this page too.

Extremely useful for someone who multitasks tabs like MAD (I often have 10+ open for articles I want to read, especially when I'm on AskMe or doing research for school) and can be a bit click-happy with the scroll-wheel...

Ctrl + Shift + T opens up whatever tab you just closed. And the tab before that, and the tab before that. :D