I love Firefox and wanted to try out the latest beta of Firefox 3, but couldn’t bring myself to go through the hassle of trying to install it on my computer before it’s full tested. It’s just asking for trouble, isn’t it? But there’s a website called PortableApps (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/test) that has a portable version of the software, which you can run on a USB memory drive without having to install it.
If you delete a bookmark by accident, don’t panie. Click Bookmarks, Organise Bookmarks, and then click Edit and Undo (or press Ctrl+Z on your keyboard). The bookmark will be instantly restored.
You don’t need to click the address bar to select it each time you want to type in a web address. Just press Alt+D to highlight the bar ready for you to enter a URL.
You can reload the current web page from scratch, so that all content is pulled from the site and not from your cache, by pressing Ctrl+F5. This tip also works in IE7.
You can create a direct shortcut to any website simple by dragging-and-dropping the page to your Desktop. Double-clicking the shortcut icon will load the page in Firefox.
Caret Browsing places an insertion point cursor wherever you click. This lets you select text from a website using your keyboard, like in a word processor. Press F7 to toggle this feature on or off.
Google’s toolbar takes up a lot of space but you can configure it so it simply replaces the existing search box. Click the Settings button, choose Options and click Layouts. Select the option ‘Replace Fiefox search box and hide Toolbar’.
We’ve all closed tabs by mistake before, but with Firefox it’s really not a problem. Just press Ctrl+Shift+T and the closed tab will magically reopen.
Firefox remembers all the tabs you’ve recently closed and will let you quickly reopen any of them. Just go to History, Recently Closed Tabs, and choose one to restore from the list.
