Tips on Using Firefox

Here are some tips about using Firefox on Linux.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Some useful keyboard shortcuts:

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+T	Open a new tab
Ctrl+Shift+T	Re-open the tab you just closed
Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown	Switch to the next tab to the left/right
Alt+1,Alt+2,...	Switch to the Nth tab

For a full list, click here.

Extensions

You can install Firefox extensions to add more functionality to it. To see what extensions you have installed, go to the Tools menu and click Addons, then go to the Extensions tab.

A few useful extensions:

Name	Description
Adblock	Block advertisements
del.icious Bookmarks	del.icio.us bookmark integration
Forecast Fox	Get weather updates on your status bar
Gmail Notifier	Get notifications when your Gmail account has new mail
Greasemonkey	Customize webpages using JavaScript
It's All Text!	Use an external editor to edit text boxes (useful for TWiki)
Stylish	Manipulate webpages with CSS
Tab Mix Plus	More powerful tabbed browsing
TWiki Firefox Extension	TWiki editing menus
ViewSourceWith	Another external editor addon with some other features
Web Developer	Tools for web developing

The full list of extensions can be found here.

Themes

Firefox has the capability to install spiffy themes to make things look groovy. To see what themes you have installed, go to the Tools menu and click Addons, then go to the Themes tab.

The full list of themes can be found here.

Search Engines

You can add more search engines to be used in your toolbar. Go here for a full list.

Here are a couple of search engines for use with our TWiki:

Jump To Topic

This is a searchbar plugin that lets you jump to a TWiki topic from the Firefox search bar. It will also automatically suggest topic names as you type. This is similar to JumpAutoComplete, except that you don't have to visit the TWiki first.

To install it, simply click here.

Search

This search plugin lets you search the TWiki from the Firefox search bar. To install, click here.

Miscellaneous

Firefox 3 may be really slow because it creates a large sqlite file in ~/.firefox/default/PROFILE/urlclassifier3.sqlite. This file contains a list of phishing sites (see here for more info).

However, you may go to Edit->Preferences->Security and turn off the option to check for phishing sites, quit firefox, and delete the file.

Other resources

Page	Description
ModdingMozilla	Modding Mozilla workshop page
JavaSetup	Installing Java for Firefox
Firefox and Printing	Using KDE's print system with Firefox
Firefox and PDFs	Using Adobe Acrobat to open PDF file from Firefox
Firefox FAQ	Frequently asked questions about Firefox