Previously, we covered the most common hotkeys for Mozilla Firefox which everyone should know to use the browser productively. In this article, I would like to share with you an additional set of hotkeys which are not so well-known.
Category: Firefox
Quickly disable ads on the New Tab page in Mozilla Firefox
The latest Mozilla Firefox shows sponsored ads on the tiles which you see on the New Tab page. If you have used the Opera 12 browser in the past or used recent Firefox Nightly builds, you won't be very surprised that ads are now in your browser's user interface! If you can't tolerate these ads, here is a simple and effective method to get rid of them.
How to restart Firefox with a single click
Here's how to restart Firefox and do not lose open tabs.
There are many occasions when you need to restart Mozilla Firefox. For example, when you enable some secret hidden feature in the Firefox browser via about:config such as "Hello" in order to use the WebRTC feature, you may need to restart it. Installing or uninstalling add-ons also means you have to restart it. While it is easy to close all tabs in Firefox manually and re-launch it, I would like to share with you a faster way which involves the built-in Firefox option.
Enable Firefox Hello to use WebRTC features
Mozilla has released a major new version 34 of the Firefox browser, and it comes with a nice WebRTC feature called "Firefox Hello". Using this feature, users can make video and audio calls to other Firefox users without any additional software or plugins. But this feature is not enabled by default so many users couldn't figure out how to use Hello in Firefox 34. Here is how to force Firefox to enable it for you.
How to disable the new drop-down search UI in Firefox 34
In Firefox 34, which is in beta at the moment, Mozilla has introduced a new Search UI. Unlike the previously available search box where you had to explicitly choose a different search provider if you wanted to search with it, the new interface shows you a drop down allowing you to select the search provider while you are typing the search query. As you are typing, the search box now shows a list of installed search providers, allowing you to send a request to another service besides the default one. For instance, you can instantly search with Wikipedia, even if the default search provider is Google.
Personally I like this new option, but some users don't and would like to get rid of the new search UI. Here is how it can be disabled.
Get the HTML color code of any web page element in Firefox
Previously, we covered how Mozilla has added an extremely useful command line feature to their Firefox browser. Let's continue exploring more useful built-in commands available in Firefox. The command line functions are very helpful and save you time. We already saw the screenshot command which allows you to take a screenshot of a web page or the entire browser window, and also the folder command which can open any folder from Firefox directly. Let's take a look at another brilliant command, eyedropper.
Move tabs and address bar in Firefox to the bottom with Bottom UI
Some time ago I covered a trick which allows you to move tabs to the bottom in Mozilla Firefox. In that article, I used the awesome Classic Theme Restorer add-on. I was a fan of the classic Opera browser which had a fully customizable UI and I appreciate having the same ability in Firefox to be able to modify its look with the help of add-ons. One such addon is Bottom UI. It is a very interesting extension for Firefox. Let's take a look at what it offers to the end user.
Open the Firefox profile folder or any other folder right from the Firefox browser
Mozilla Firefox has several useful built-in commands as part of its console. Let's continue exploring them. Earlier, I reviewed the awesome screenshot command which allows you to take a screenshot of a page, or a specific element of the page, or the entire browser window. Today, we will play with the folder command which can be used to open various folders directly from the Firefox browser including the browser's profile folder.
Enable the Update Badge in Firefox
As you might be knowing, Mozilla Firefox can update itself automatically. If you didn't change the default settings when you installed it, it will be configured to check for updates periodically and install them, so you will always have an up-to-date browser. However, there is no clear indication that an update is available for Firefox until you restart it, so Mozilla has finally added a special badge to indicate that updates are available for Firefox. The update badge is disabled by default. Here is how to enable it.
How to take a screenshot of the opened page in Firefox without using addons
I would like to share with you several useful built-in commands in Mozilla Firefox which can increase your productivity and save your time. For such tasks, Firefox has dozens of addons, but not many users know that it is possible to execute simple commands in Firefox to do them. We will start with a simple tutorial on how to take a screenshot of the opened page without using any add-ons.
