Article by George Norman

On 07 Sep 2009

The mouse may be the most used computer peripheral, but the simple truth of the matter is that using the keyboard instead of the mouse can sometimes prove to be speedier. Not to mention the fact that you will impress your friends when you’ll use a keyboard shortcut instead of the mouse – assuming of course they are impressed by your newly acquired level of geekiness. Here are some of he most common and most useful keyboard shortcuts that work with the Mozilla developed Firefox browser.

Mac OS X: Firefox keyboard shortcuts
- Cmd + [ or Cmd + left arrow or Delete to go back one page.
- Cmd + ] or Cmd + right arrow or Shift + Delete to go forward.
- To go to your home page simply press Opt + Home.
- Reload a web page by pressing F5 or Cmd + R. To override cache reload press Cmd + Shift + R.
- To zoom in press Cmd + + (plus sign); to zoom out press Cmd + - (minus sign). Cmd + 0 (zero) will reset the zoom level.
- Cmd + C to copy; Cmd + V to paste; Cmd + X to cut.
- Cmd + Z to undo a change; Cmd + Shift + Z to redo a change.
- Cmd + F displays the find feature. Type in a word or phrase and Firefox will automatically look for it on the web page you are visiting. To find again, press F3 or Cmd + G; to find previous press / (slash).
- Cmd + T to open a new tab; Cmd + N to open a new window.
- Cmd + W to close a tab, Cmd + Shift + W to close a window.
- You can switch open tabs between them with Cmd + Left or Up arrow and Cmd + Right or Down arrow. Press Cmd + Home to move a tab to beginning; Cmd + End to achieve the opposite effect. You can move from one tab to another with Ctrl + Tab or Cmd + Opt + right arrow or Cmd + } or Ctrl + Page Down – this will take you to the next tab. To get to the previous tab you could use Ctrl + Shift + Tab or Cmd + Opt + Left Arrow or Cmd + { or Ctrl + Page Up. To jump directly to a particular tab, press Cmd + number 1 to 8. To jump to the last tab press Cmd + 9.
- If you accidentally closed a tab, you can unclose it with Cmd + Shift + T.
- Bookmark a page with Cmd + D; access the bookmarks menu with Cmd + B.
- Cmd + Shift + Del to erase your private data.


Windows: Firefox keyboard shortcuts
- In the long row of F keys, three are of interest to us: pressing F1 will direct you to the Firefox support page (F1 is the generic key for Help in pretty much all applications out there); pressing F5 will refresh the browser window; pressing F6 will highlight the address bar.
- If you would like to open a new tab, just pres Ctrl + T. If you would like to switch from one tab to another use Ctrl + Tab or Ctrl +Shift + Tab (the first moves from left to right, the second from right to left). If within a tab you would like to move to the bottom of the page, just press End; press Home to do the opposite. To close a tab press Ctrl + W.
- If you would like to open a new Firefox window, press Ctrl + N.
- If you would like to jump to a certain word on the page, a word that you know is there but you cannot locate and click it, just use Ctrl + F or F3 and type in that word. When you press enter, the word you specified will be automatically highlighted.
- If you would like to select all the text on a certain page you must press Ctrl + A. To copy it press Ctrl + C, to paste it press Ctrl + V.
- If you would like to revisit a page, press Ctrl + Shift + H and the history tab will open.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts. I've only listed the ones I find the most useful.

Tips and warnings
You might want to check out these tutorials as well:
How To Install Firefox 3.5
How To Use Private Browsing in Firefox 3.5




Tags: Mozilla, Firefox, Browser, keyboar shortcut, Windows, Mac OS X

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