Here are 7 simple tips to become a Mozilla Firefox power user and enjoy the experience of the internet even more. Firefox is one of the world's most popular browsers, is completely customizable and has tons of Add-Ons to help you simplify many of the tasks we do online every day.
1. Upgrade to the latest version
Always download the latest version of any browser from it's official website. If by any chance, you are not using the latest stable version (Firefox 3.5.3), then you could probably be using a lesser version. Check your version from your browser's Help -> About Mozilla Firefox and head to the Firefox website to upgrade your Firefox to the latest version.
2. Speed it up instantly
Firefox (or any browser) is essentially configured to handle a single request for a webpage at a time. You can tweak those settings by allowing it to handle several requests at an instant which can hence speed up your web browser. You can also reduce the time Firefox takes to act on requests.
Learn how to do that here. A point to note here is that streamlining multiple requests is best done on a broadband connection. Avoid it if you are on a dial-up connection.
3. Get the best add-ons
What makes Firefox truly special is it's collection of remarkable, user-created add-ons. You can make Firefox truly your own and unique by customizing it. Find add-ons for bookmarking, sharing, automating daily tasks, improving the usage of tabs, downloading YouTube videos, taking screenshots and almost all other tasks that you do on the web daily.
You can surf for add-ons on the Firefox website here. Find a list of recommended add-ons and download them here.
4. Set multiple home pages
Improve your productivity by setting multiple pages as home pages. An alternative is obviously to bookmark your most important ones, but more on that a little later. But you could probably set all of your email accounts on the internet as your homepages.
If you are a blogger, you could open your blog, a tracking website and your Adsense or Feedburner webpages all together to instantly get an update on blog activity. This is again a tip recommended for broadband users.
Simply set multiple home pages by going to Tools -> Options. Provide all the homepages you want with a '|' in between each.
5. Fill up the bookmarks bar
The bar that is displayed below the Navigation toolbar in Firefox is the Bookmarks bar. Add regularly-visited websites to this toolbar and instantly access them with a click. Shorten their names on the toolbar to accommodate more websites on the Bookmarks bar.
Fill it up completely with your favorite websites and use them faster. Use Smart Bookmarks Bar to only show only the icons of the bookmarked links. Once you hover over the icon, the website's name is displayed as information. Get Smart Bookmarks Bar here.
6. Get all the best search engines
Firefox comes with a separate Search Bar within the navigation toolbar. You can select your search engine for anything you are looking to find instead of going to the website itself. While the best ones like Google and Yahoo! are already present, you can fill up the Search Bar with other search engines (Bing for example) by simply browsing the add-ons site.
Become a power user by using search engines without having to visit the search engine websites every now and again.
7. Learn Firefox shortcuts
Improve your experience on Firefox by learning the browser's shortcuts that make it faster and easier to use. You can find a list of keyboard shortcuts on Mozilla's website here. Shortcuts always make applications faster to use and with Firefox, browsing will only become much more simpler and better than it already is.
These basics should make you enjoy Firefox a lot more than other web browsers. And give you a great internet experience to savour.
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