I’m looking to finish up Firefox for Dummies
- Problems to address in a “Troubleshooting” section. Both common and obscure are great. It would save me time if you could include the solution, but it’s not necessary.
- Tips and tricks. I want the book to reveal the little gems that make Firefox unique. This includes both intentional features and clever ways of combining features to make common tasks easier. The basic criteria here is that tricks should be difficult to discover but easy to accomplish. Middle clicking on the Back button meets this criteria, hand-editing configuration files doesn’t, and about:config is borderline. People shouldn’t have to leave the Firefox interface.
Thanks everyone! Writing a Dummies book on a product I helped build has been eye-opening. I’ll write a post-mortem when I finish.
September 4th, 2005 at 2:26 am
I guess all the tips on the Firefox Help site are too complicated. We should co-write a Firefox for Hackers book! :)
September 4th, 2005 at 2:27 am
Nice. Accidentally clicked backwards and no all my text’s gone. What did you do with this forms, they normall should keep their contents?!
Whatever, here in short, without explaination:
Middleclick group of bookmarks
Mention that there’s an internal help that’ll cover most of the questions
“View Page Info” -> “Media” makes it much easier to access all images (even if “protected”) and it also shows the link to e.g embed videos (faster than checking the source)
Mention ‘Add a keyword for this search’. (Most people create a bookmark and manually create a keyword search)
File->Exit closes all Firefox windows (unlike IE) -> Useful when installing extensions
That’s it for now, probably you can ask Abdulkadir Topal (German translation) as he’s up writing a book, too. His target group is the ‘little advanced’ group though, but maybe he’s got some tricks you maybe want to mention, too. (little advanced is best described with “about:config” user. Not much further, maybe editing userChrome but no programming or other things. Hope you know what I mean)
September 4th, 2005 at 3:46 am
I just discovered last week that middle-clicking a folder in bookmarks works like ‘open in tabs’.
September 4th, 2005 at 3:49 am
Click the throbber to go straight to Firefox Central.
Select and drag non-linked URLs to the tab bar (or even to the New Page or New Tab buttons in 1.5) to open the URL without having to copy it into the address bar first and hit go.
Delete individual items from autocomplete history by hitting shift+delete (this is the single least discoverable thing ever added to a Web browser. Hint.)
- Chris
September 4th, 2005 at 4:46 am
Is this for 1.0.x or 1.1.x? If it’s for 1.1.x you could mention draggin tabs to re-order them. It can be very useful, but it not easyily discoverable.
Middle-clicking the home-button. Middle-clicking links. Middle-clicking tabs to close them. Double clicking tabbar to open a tab. Single-window preferences.
September 4th, 2005 at 5:15 am
If you are filling out a form, take advantage of the fact the Firefox scrolls combo box lists as you type. If you are facing a list of states, for example, and you live in Indiana, just chose the combo box and type “Indiana” and it will scroll to that. It is easier then seeing a list of at least 50 entries that may not be in alphabetic order and picking the needle from the haystack.
September 4th, 2005 at 5:26 am
Perhaps you covered it in the book already, but … Tip: Select a word or phrase, right-click and then select “Search the web for..”. I always miss that feature when I’m using another browser.
September 4th, 2005 at 5:58 am
For the ‘tips and tricks’ category, I’d definitely suggest including something about how to switch the search engine for the search box. Even with the little down-arrow on the Google logo, lots of people don’t seem to realize that it’s clickable, so they completely miss that you can search other sites, or add new engines…
I wrote a tutorial about this to help make it clearer for folks:
http://www.jasonlefkowitz.net/blog1archive/001420.html
… and I’ve gotten lots of “I had no idea you could do that!” type feedback on it, so it would probably be great fodder for “Firefox for Dummies”.
September 4th, 2005 at 7:38 am
I found it interesting that they know how many pages an unfinished book will be (amazon that is).
As for problems to address, I’d add one for general Firefox UI wierdness. Answer being to delete localstore.rdf, XUL.mfl, and xpti.dat from the profile. I’ve seen this happen to people a few times. That little trick makes them very happy.
September 4th, 2005 at 8:19 am
I’m not sure whether it’s a “tip & trick” but the boomark keyword feature should be addressed in some way or another. Using the keywords for searching is unique. I have created searches for IMDb, php.net, Wikipedia and Gentoo portage, and I use them every day.
For your convenience, here are my searches (usage: ):
IMDb: keyword: imdb, url: http://imdb.com/find?tt=on;nm=on;mx=20;q=%s
PHP.net: keyword: php, url: http://php.net/manual-lookup.php?pattern=%s
Wikipedia: keyword: wiki, url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go
Gentoo Portage: keyword emerge, url: http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=%s
Enjoy!
September 4th, 2005 at 11:18 am
Middle click a subfolder in the bookmarks toolbar folder opens all bookmarks (in the folder) in tabs.
September 4th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Copy this line: chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksPanel.xul
into the Location Bar and hit enter. Your bookmarks will appear as in the bookmarks manager only in a tab. Then you can drag the tab to the bookmarks toolbar accessing it with a singel click or give it a keyword. A shorter and faster route for getting your bookmarks and the search function for them visible.
(Bookmarks management is not visible in tabs like this).
September 4th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Blake:
In ‘Troubleshooting’, be sure to include a section on lost bookmarks/profile troubles. I know the profile manager isn’t intended for use by regular users, but it is a really good troubleshooting tool, along with safe mode. Mention that, when creating a profile outside of the default location, profiles should be placed in their own subfolder so deleting them doesn’t take any non-Mozilla data with them. Also mention that a reinstall rarely fixes troubles with Firefox. The vast majority of problems are from corrupted profiles and busted/conflicting extensions.
September 4th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
Keyboard shortcuts:
“.” - Find, “‘” - Find In Links, Alt+Num - Switch to the tab with this index (counting from the left)
September 4th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Blake, I really don’t like the default Feeling Lucky searches from the location bar, and always try to change it to displaying the search results page on each Firefox installation I do. However, editing in about:config or even adding a user.js file with a line for that variable seem hit-or-miss. I’ve tried it on far too many computers for it to be a one-off incident.
September 4th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
These may be things you’ve already covered, but just in case. I hope you describe up front what a browser is and why people would want to switch from whatever they are using already.
Also, once they are convinced that they should (although they may only bother getting the book if they are already convinced), you should provide extremely detailed instructions as to how they go about downloading and installing it. For this purpose, I created a step-by-step guide with each screenshot one encounters on Windows. It’s here: http://webuse.info/firefox.
September 4th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
Can’t find the file you just downloaded using Firefox?
“Tools” | “Downloads” | Then locate and Right Click the File | Choose “Properties”
The path is shown in the “To” field.
—- o —-
Double click to the left of open tabs and a new tab will open.
—- o —-
Dummies use Linux - Dont they?
If the lock file isn’t removed after a crash, then
rm ~/.mozilla/firefox/********.default/lock
is needed.
—- o —-
Tools | Page Info | Media | Save As…
Handy if a picture or something is hard to right click save as usual.
—- o —-
Amazon.com: “Paperback: 360 pages”
That’s a lot of pages… :-)
September 4th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
The middle-clicking on the back button made me discover I can do that in Sage on RSS items too. Before, I used to click and item, read it, click the next etc. but now I can middle-click all interesting ones and while I’m reading the first, the remaining ones get loaded. Cool.
September 4th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
I thought it was neat that you could setup your “Home Page” location in Firefox (Tools > Options > General) to actually load more than one page in seperate tabs, by seperating your URLs with pipes:
e.g.,
http://www.mozilla.org/|http://www.mozillazine.org/
The couple people I mentioned this to didn’t know about it.
September 4th, 2005 at 6:53 pm
After reading the other comments on this post, I saw the ability to change the search engine in the search box. How do you get those results to open in a new tab? Thanks.
September 4th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
It’s interesting to see the ratio of Troubleshooting submissions to Tips and Tricks submissions–just another testament to Firefox’s ease of use.
A useful but subtle feature (I wouldn’t have known it existed if I hadn’t done a double-take when I saw that Home Page “Location(s):” was indeed plurel. This would be particularly useful if you have a few “favorite” news sites or blogs that you want displayed right when you start Firefox: To set multiple webpages to open when you start up Firefox or click on the “Home” icon on the toolbar, go to Tools > Options click on the General catagory and type in the addresses of the sites, separating each one with a pipe symbol (|), under the Home Page Location(s) field.
and on a related note:
Troubleshooting:
Problem: How do I restore my home page to the “Start Page” that Firefox used to start up to?
Solution (which is difficult to remember/track down if you want it back): Go to Tools > Options click on the General catagory and type “http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official” in the Home Page Location(s) field.
Will let you know if I discover any more.
Cheers,
Justin
September 4th, 2005 at 10:19 pm
It’s interesting to see the ratio of Troubleshooting submissions to Tips and Tricks submissions–just another testament to Firefox’s ease of use.
A useful but subtle feature (I wouldn’t have known it existed if I hadn’t done a double-take when I saw that Home Page “Location(s):” was indeed plurel. This would be particularly useful if you have a few “favorite” news sites or blogs that you want displayed right when you start Firefox: To set multiple webpages to open when you start up Firefox or click on the “Home” icon on the toolbar, go to Tools > Options… click on the General catagory and type in the addresses of the sites, separating each one with a pipe symbol (|) under the Home Page Location(s) field.
Troubleshooting:
Problem: How do I restore my home page to the “Start Page” that Firefox used to start up to?
Solution (which is difficult to remember/track down if you want it back): Go to Tools > Options… click on the General catagory and type “http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official” in the Home Page Location(s) field.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:48 am
A problem with Firefox that bugs me, and other people I’ve spoken to is the ‘download spawns blank window’ problem. As a solution you you could recommend the Disable Targets for Downloads extension (though it isn’t 100% effective in my experience) and explain this is a problem caused by Webmasters rather than Firefox.
September 5th, 2005 at 3:57 am
My top tips
/ for in page text search.
Fast search in new tab
Select text, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+V, Return
Fast “load text url” in new tab
Select text url, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+V, Return
Middle click a tab to close it.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:45 am
Even among people who’ve heard of bookmark keyword searches, most of them still seem to set them up by hand (doing a search and then bookmarking the resultant URL but replacing the search term with “%s”) — something that’s probably beyond many users.
Right-clicking on a text-box and choosing ‘Add a Keyword for this Search…’ seems to be something that many people haven’t discovered, so it makes a good tip.
September 5th, 2005 at 8:49 am
Another tip is that you can drag URLs to the tab bar. This is especially handy for plain-text URLs which aren’t clickable as links: just select the URL text then drag it to an empty space in the tab bar to open it in a new tab, or to an existing tab (such as the current one) to open it there.
September 5th, 2005 at 9:00 am
Press shift to be able to drag’n'drop (and thus reorder) Folders and Live Bookmarks in Bookmarks Menu and Bookmarks Toolbar.
Easy to do and even a lot of advanced Users dont know this (not documented). Just a pity that you need to press shift at all (at least for Bookmarks Menu), since you dont need that “trick” with Bookmark Manager and Bookmark Sidebar…
See also Bug 235244 about this.
September 5th, 2005 at 10:48 pm
You can squeeze a lot of items onto the bookmarks toolbar if you remove the names. As long as the bookmarks have icons (or you use the favicon picker extension), they’re still easy to spot. Since you’re turning them from long rectangles to squares, you’re not making them much harder to click according to Fitts’ Law.
The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+K / Ctrl+E for focusing the search bar, and the shortcuts ctrl+up/ctrl+down for selecting a search engine.
The address bar (Ctrl+L / Alt+D) can be used for I’m-Feeling-Lucky searches.
browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground
Please don’t put the “Multiple home pages with pipe (|)” feature into a book. It’s a bug that the pipe character, which appears in many http URLs, is used for purpose.
Using the find toolbar to follow links using the keyboard: Ctrl+F, linktext, Esc, Enter (Firefox 1.5 only) or ‘, linktext, Enter.
Alt+click to save the target of a link (or right-click, k).
September 6th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
Be sure to warn people that FireFox will eat your bookmarks and Thunderbird regularly becomes corrupted no matter how many times you compress the email folders. These are serious problems with the software that will keep these otherwise fine applications from gaining wider acceptance.
September 6th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
I like the text resizing by holding down the CTRL key and either hitt + or - to enlarge or reduce the text in a page.
September 6th, 2005 at 3:23 pm
Blake,
You can delete this after reading, no need to post it up.
I’ve been working around these computer books and have a great deal of experience with the customers for the book you have written for.
Let me just say that the #1 important thing is Pictures and screenshots. Lots of them, in fact most of the book should be made up of it.
Second comes colour, but scratch that, the Dummies series is black ink only.
Dummies has excellent branding, but in the end, the ‘Ma and Pa’ customers favour the colour/pic combo over the Dummies non-colour/lots of text format by about 15:1 for computer books.
if you got any q’s, hit me with an email
V
September 6th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
The “If all else fails try a really fresh install of Firefox” step-by-step instructions by “Zachariah” (on the Adblock forums) could fit either of the things you’re looking for, and is under a Creative Commons license (if that helps).
http://aasted.org/adblock/viewtopic.php?t=719
September 6th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
I like Firefox except for one little nagging problem, which appeared in versions from about five months ago and continues to date: the “parentlock” file sometimes comes into play on boot-up making it impossible to open Firefox. I suppose it happens about once or twice a month now on my system (which is better than the five month old version of Firefox which was prevented from opening about twice a week). Since parentlock is running you can’t delete it, so all you can do is reboot and then cross your fingers and open Firefox before anything else.
Maybe updates to Firefox later in the year will resolve this parentlock problem (or even banish parentlock altogether?) but if not the fact that it exists, and the way to deal with it, may need to be explained in your book.
Kind regards
David
September 7th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Be sure to include how to delete individual entries from saved forms - this was an issue that was raised quite often in letters/communication to Mozilla Foundation.
September 7th, 2005 at 11:49 am
I like the multiple home page feature, I open my browser and all the web sites that I need are right in front of me
I like the pop-up blocker
I wish it had a trusted sites list to spare me from enabling and disabling javascript for each site
September 8th, 2005 at 12:10 am
Joseph, try the NoScript extension.
September 8th, 2005 at 12:20 am
It only covers Windows, but if it’s useful then you can use what’s in these:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=206213
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=206216
They are all about embedded and streaming media playback in Firefox
September 8th, 2005 at 12:31 am
A tip: in order to maximize space for browsing, you can drag the toolbar icons to the menu bar and use small icons. This will create a style similar to that of IE7’s.
Please, make the book available in China!
May the fox be with you!
September 8th, 2005 at 12:41 am
Maybe if your book was free, it’d be a better resource for Firefoxers all around.
September 8th, 2005 at 12:51 am
Press Esc to stop the animated GIFs. Without this, some pages crawl like staring at an ants nest because of all the animated ads round the edges.
Hold Ctrl and move the scroll wheel for easy font size zooming.
If any developers are reading, I would love to see white/black lists of sites for allowing/blocking execution of java, javascript and flash.
September 8th, 2005 at 1:34 am
Use the mouse scroll while holding scroll operates a zoom on the page. Very handy.
September 8th, 2005 at 2:31 am
alt enter in search bar opens the results in a new tab.
September 8th, 2005 at 2:33 am
enter search word in the search bar and hit alt + enter. The results will open up in new tab.
September 8th, 2005 at 3:29 am
If we give free content for your book, do we get a free book?
September 8th, 2005 at 5:19 am
I have noticed that many non-power-users haven’t yet discovered the awesome array of useful extensions available and the ones that have get frusterated trying to find the one that they want. As I’m sure you’ve already addressed this in your book, it would be great to have a section on useful extensions.
If you don’t mind me making a shameless plug: Please check the extensions that I have written. There are many, such as CopyPlainText, OpenDownload and StockTicker, that are very useful to the commen user and help get past some simple annoyances.
http://mozmonkey.com/
It is always exciting to hear of another book promoting Firefox! Good luck and I can’t wait to read it.
Thanks,
Jeremy
September 8th, 2005 at 5:20 am
I have noticed that many non-power-users haven’t yet discovered the awesome array of useful extensions available and the ones that have get frusterated trying to find the one that they want. As I’m sure you’ve already addressed this in your book, it would be great to have a section on useful extensions.
If you don’t mind me making a shameless plug: Please check the extensions that I have written. There are many, such as CopyPlainText, OpenDownload and StockTicker, that are very useful to the commen user and help get past some simple annoyances.
http://mozmonkey.com/
It is always exciting to hear of another book promoting Firefox! Good luck and I can’t wait to read it.
Thanks,
Jeremy
September 8th, 2005 at 7:06 am
I don’t have tips, but rather 2 questions. Both are related, and if there are answers, it may be worth putting in the book:
1) Is there any way to make an individual website FORGET my password? It’s annoying when a website remembers a password that I typed incorrectly.
2) On a related note, is there a way to delete individual entries from the location pull-down history? It’s annoying when it remembers incorrectly spelled URLs.
September 8th, 2005 at 7:31 am
Here’s a useful one: Middle click works on any menu item that opens a web page.
September 8th, 2005 at 9:18 am
if you havnt allready got it, one that I find very useful is the ability to select the text of a url to the tab bar to create a tab with that url in it, (especialy useful when reading through eg blog posts, and they havnt been converted to links), so much easier than select, copy, open new tab, past, return
September 8th, 2005 at 10:27 am
In Deer Park alpha 2, which should be Firefox 1.5 by the time your book is published, the Sanitize function is right in the menus, but it’s not well explained without some level of user savvy.
For greatest privacy…
Press Ctrl-Shift-Del.
The first time you do so, a dialog box appears.
Check all items except “Ask me before Sanitizing Deer Park” (which will probably change to “…Firefox”).
Press OK.
After that, any time you press Ctrl-Shift-Del, you will clear history, cache, cookies, download history, and saved form information.
Share and enjoy!
September 8th, 2005 at 10:32 am
Most has been said, but the one who mentioned Page Info / Media tab failed to say his most useful purpose - saving embedded files (flash, video) which otherwise can’t be saved.
And I really think that middle-click is the most important thing to say - check it whenever you can.
September 8th, 2005 at 11:11 am
Please include in your book how to trouble-shoot problems related to the role of firewalls blocking Internet connections. This is a wide-spread issue. Many new users are frustrated at their useless Firefox in front of them, just because it isn’t connected to the Internet due to a firewall blockade.
It would be a good idea to include images as to how to unblock Firefox from a commonly used firewall software, i.e. Norton Internet Security. A short list of highly used firewalls would be fine.
Good luck with your book!
September 8th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
I haven’t finished reading through all the comments, and I apologze if this has already been mentioned but you should note that unless you specify otherwise, trying to do a search from the address bar will use the Google I’m feeling lucky function.
Also, talk about live bookmarks and how they can be used to minimize the time you spend browsing through websites for news and updates.
Finally, talk about how holding down the control button while using the scrolling wheel in a mouse will allow you to zoom in or out of a webpage making it easier to read and tailor to your specific needs.
September 8th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
user_pref(”nglayout.initialpaint.delay”, 0);
is my favorite barn-burner :)
September 8th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
If the user type
chrome://browser/content
in the address bar, a new browser will open inside the current tab! The user can open new tabs inside the internal browser and so on! A Tab-Hierarchy can be made :D
The user can make a link to this address in the Bookmark Toolbar for easier access!
I know, this is just for fun, but it shows how flexible a browser can be, and also helps dummies to show some strength to experts!
September 8th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Just a comment: I hope you write this book recognising that there are also Mac and Linux, even if the general public uses mostly Win. Cheers.
September 8th, 2005 at 6:30 pm
A note if anybody wants to use the chrome URI mentioned in comment 12 to open their bookmarks in a tab as one of their home pages.
In the current release version of Firefox you cannot have a chrome: home page.
I found this out after I went to restart Firefox.
Even trying to start with Safe Mode did not work, and I had to resort to removing it from prefs.js.
This has been recently fixed in bug 301073.
September 9th, 2005 at 5:51 am
Poor Mac users that don’t have a 3 mouse button.
Anyway, if you tips & tricks book will cover a section on Firefox Extensions, be sure to include the “Web Developer” extension, as well as the “View Rendered Source” extension. These are the most amazing extensions I’ve found for my work as a web developer.
September 9th, 2005 at 6:00 am
I agree with Ricco. Custom Keyword Searches (also known as Smart Keywords) is the most underrated Firefox feature. It really turns Firefox into the ultimate search tool when you combine that feature with tabbed browsing. Peak’s way of getting to the bookmarks in a tab by typing chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksPanel.xul into the location bar makes this step even faster! email me or PM me on forums.mozillazine.org under the nick D503 for some of my custom keyword searches that I use regulary. I don’t even use the default search engine toolbar on the right and have removed it with: View -> Toolbar’s -> Customise -> Drag n Drop the search engine tool bar onto where all the icons are to remove it. Custom Keyword Searches make any google, yahoo or other toolbar obsolete. It’s much faster to press ctrl-l to select the address bar and then type in gg or google, yh or yahoo and a keyword eg: gg mozilla firefox tips & tricks
or google edit user.js then it is to use the mouse to put the cursor in the search engine box and type in a keyword or select a search engine and type in a keyword. When custom keywords also make selecting an engine obsolete. I use custom keywords all the time. Like for doing currency conversions with www.xe.com I have a bunch setup to quickly convert from my native currency of AUD into USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, etc. A google search for “Custom+Keyword+Searching” or similar brings up a few pages with many examples but the possibilities are pretty much limitless.
Comples or not a step by step guide with screenshots on how to access the profile folder (in order to back it up, create files, do a clean install, etc), With a brief discription of what the files in there do and with screenshots is much needed so that people can manually backup either specific files like bookmarks.html , signons.txt and all the others that are required so that they don’t continually “lose their bookmarks” when they install a new version of Firefox and to do clean installations as the current Mozillazine forums information in “Frequently Asked Support Questions” thread is rather lacking. As Block Sheep mentioned “If all else fails try a really fresh install of Firefox”. Try explaining how to do it by text via email, IRC or voice by phone, video conferencing, web phone, etc It’s alot easier to visually show someone how to do something complex then it is to just tell them. And just providing a tonne of links isn’t going to help them, sure it may help some people with a little more motivation than most but not everyone and certainly not those who are stubborn. While visuallly showing them how to do it empowers them as once they have done it from the pictures a few times they’ll know how to do it by heart. And hopefully if asked they’ll pass this information on. Win, win. I too like people to find things out for themselves and “use google”. But sometimes more complex stuff needs to be shown to them.
While the adblock guide is good it still makes you click on links where as you can show someone how to get to their profile folder with a few simple screenshots. Because for those not confident with using Windows Explorer/My Computer it can be a real intimidating/scary process.
I probably wouldn’t buy a book like this. No need too. But I’d certainly buy a book with nothing but tips, tweaks and tricks. And customisation. Editing about:config and or user.js, userChrome.css and userContent.css a real comprehensive guide which explains all the possible things you can do under the hood of Firefox is something well worth it’s weight in gold. Also something with tricks like putting Firefox in ram or on a USB Key. And also using unofficial Firefox 3rd party builds. Like those optimised processor builds with certain flags. Also how to compile mozilla yourself on different platforms.
Even how to compile it on Windows with MingW/GCC or that Free Microsoft Compiler. Anything that puts the Geek of Firefox into you is good and is a book I would definately buy. A Dummies Guide is a book I’d probably buy from my Brother though hehe ;-).
September 9th, 2005 at 6:02 am
Oh btw. With an extension ChromEdit. Configuration files like user.js, etc can be edited without leaving the Firefox interface (in a matter of speaking) but I guess this’ll create many more pages hehe ;-).
September 9th, 2005 at 3:42 pm
Hey Blake, break a leg with the book!!
I’ve read all 52 posts so far and am disappointed to see my personal favourite has not been mentioned yet so here you are, hope this one will be useful for your readers ;)
shift + mouse wheel = backwards/forwards through history
all the best, looking forward to it hitting the shelves!
- Ian hayward
September 9th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
Why didn’t you tell us about this book before? (Or maybe you did and I am just being stupid) Anyways, this is awesome, Blake! Good job!
September 10th, 2005 at 4:44 am
1) Use the “/” key to start find-as-you-type. Use ESC to exit. This is so much easier for people who’ve used vi.
2) Double-click an empty form field to see the full list of auto-complete values stored by the form manager for that field.
3) In drop-down lists, hit the same key multiple times to scroll through options that begin with that character. For example, if the drop-down list contains the 50 states, I hit “c” once and get California, but when I hit it a second time I get Colorado, which is the state I want.
4) How to remove a search engine from the search box (go to the FF directory and manually delete the files from the searchplugins subdirectory). This is good for me because I don’t want all the ones that come with the browser by default.
September 10th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
Tip - you can export bookmarks with the Bookmarks Manager: Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks -> File -> Export. Really easy, and easy to miss.
Troubleshooting - try clearing the Downloads history if you’re having trouble with downloads.It never occurs to most users that letting it pile up could cause problems, even when the problems arise.
September 13th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
My favorite:
Right-click then “Open Containing Folder” in the Download manager is a huge timesaver for when you want to file downloaded stuff somewhere.
September 15th, 2005 at 6:23 pm
> 64. My favorite:
>
> Right-click then “Open Containing Folder” in the
> Download manager is a huge timesaver for when you want
> to file downloaded stuff somewhere.
>
> Comment by theo — September 13, 2005 @ 3:00 pm
OMG … I have always wondered why Firefox didn’t have that feature … AND NOW I know that it does!!
Thank you!!
September 16th, 2005 at 2:16 am
Hi Blake,
I have purchased all prior Firefox Books since I am a beginner and found most of the material way over my head. Remember, this is a “dummies” book. My suggestion is to include Flexbeta Firetweaker in your book. It has been very valuable. The way Firefox is evolving you may be publishing a second edition in the future and this could include more technical matter.
Good luck.
September 21st, 2005 at 3:18 pm
I think that is great that you are writing a book on Firefox. Keep at it.
Lewis
www.solutionbound.com
September 23rd, 2005 at 2:05 pm
I’m just hoping that Firefox will have a feature like that of IE7: Automatic downscaling when printing to keep from printing two lines on a second page.
September 24th, 2005 at 3:18 am
I dont see a plugin listed under the downloads page
September 29th, 2005 at 11:41 am
All the advice claiming “it’s so easy” to edit the userchrome.css file makes me feel like even more of a dummy. Nothing I type in that file (after following all the directions to create the file properly) does anything at all.
October 1st, 2005 at 12:10 pm
My favourite shortcut: opening links in a new tab by clicking them with the scroll wheel/middle mouse button. People are always excited when I tell them this.
October 3rd, 2005 at 9:31 am
I know something that would be great to add to your book for Firefox dummies! It would be great to add a place where a Blogger or site owner can learn how to make a little Icon show next to there URL in the address bar.
First they would have to create a 16 by 16 pixel Icon with some graphics program and save it as either a GIF or a BMP, then convert it to a ICO file using a converter like IrfanView, which is free.
http://www.irfanview.com/
Save the Icons ICO file to the Root Directory, and after the
tag in your site or blogs HTML place this code:Make sure to replace YourSitesName with your sites name, and to replace YourIconsFilename with your icons file name, because if you copy and use the code above without these changes it wont work, then you would really look like a dummy, which is not a good thing.
When you save your Icons ICO file to the Root Directory, make sure ICO is in lower case, not upper case like this: bigfoot.ico
If you visit my blog you will see an Icon of Bigfoot next to my URL, so you know this HTML code works with Firefox.
http://www.rockchild.com/
P.S’s. If you use my blogs URL as an example in your book to show the Icon next to my URL it would make me so happy, and my hamster Duckie!
October 9th, 2005 at 4:23 am
I’d really like to, at some point, perhaps FF v2.0
see a more robust bookmark manager:
- the ability to export to other than HTML
(xml/rdf, tab-delimited - is there an extension for
this?)
- the ability to export folders selectively
rather than the WHOLE bookmark list
(I have yet to find an extension for this, still
would be nice if this were a feature rather than
an extension)
- the ability to SORT bookmarks
(I think there’s an extension for this, but, I
don’t think it supports FF 1.5 beta, still it
would be nice to have this as a feature rather
than an extension)
There’s a whole page of bookmark related ideas at:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Bookmarks_Use_Cases#keyword_option_for_bookmark_folders
That would be a REAL good place to start.
October 19th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
1) If Firefox cannot activate clickable links offline, go back to your source HTML document and make sure all location addresses use a forward slash / instead of a backslash \
2) When used offline, Firefox can also have quite a lot of difficulty in accepting changed formatting within HTML documents. To fix this remove all FONT FACE=… tags and only specify fonts under STYLE settings between the /TITLE and /HEAD tags. Should any “FONT FACE=…” tags still be still required in the document, turn them off with a /FONT tag before any section subject to STYLE settings and reapply them again after that section.
October 29th, 2005 at 5:22 am
At one time I remember Firefox had a drop-down menu-driven feature that allowed one to selected “next item” or “previous item” when one was looking at, for example, a bunch og pics in a gallery. One could easily toggle thru it without having to go back to the main page again. I can’t find that functionality anymore. Is it still there?
November 5th, 2005 at 6:21 am
There is an extenstion that has that next/previous functionality:
http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic=272
November 27th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
If you want to temporarily not query for an rss feed update, in the bookmarks manager, edit the particular active bookmark so that is has an imaginary protocol. For example change
http://fxfeeds.mozilla.org/rss20.xml to
ihttp://fxfeeds.mozilla.org/rss20.xml
When you want to resume getting your feed, edit the bookmark to undo your changes.
December 16th, 2005 at 6:55 am
Hit Alt+Enter to open a search result from the Search Bar (or a page in the Location Bar) in a new tab.
January 14th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
If you want Firefox to use several homepages, open the pages you want to use, then in tools>options>general click the “Use current pages” button and it will create the list for you.
Here’s another trick I found to extend your bookmarks toolbar.
In the bookmarks manager, put all your bookmarks into categorized folders. Move THOSE folders into the “Bookmarks Toolbar” folder. The folders will show up on the toolbar instead of the bookmarks. Clicking on a folder will drop down a content list.
To add a bookmark, just drag the address to the folder you want to save it in. If you keep the folder names relatively short, there’s room for 10 to 12 folders.