Mouse tips

Tips from Firefox support

Middle Click

Note

Two-button mouse

A Mouse Wheel Click can be used wherever a Middle Click is required in the tips below. For those without middle mouse buttons or mouse wheel, clicking both mouse buttons at the same time also mimics the Middle Click function. Many Laptops mimic the Middle Click function if you click the right and left pads at the same time. Note that CTRL+Click will also open new tabs for links, bookmarks, bookmark folders, history items, and toolbar buttons (see Firefox : Tips : Keyboard Tips).

Opening Tabs

Personal Toolbar

Middle Click on a Bookmark on your Personal Toolbar will open it up in a new tab.

Folders

Middle Click on a folder will open all the bookmarks in the folder in a new tab or tabs. (Note: see [1].)

History

Middle Click on a History item will open the page in a new tab.

Back and Forward buttons

Middle Click on the Back and Forward buttons will open the last/next page in a new tab.

Home button

Middle Click on the Home button will open your homepage in a new tab or tabs.

Links

Middle Click on a link will open that link in a new tab.

Throbber

Middle Click on the Throbber (the 'busy' icon at the top-right) will open the Firefox homepage in a new tab.

Images

Middle Click on "View Image" or "View Background Image" will open the image in a new tab.

Closing Tabs

Middle Click on a tab marker will close that tab.

Double Click

Opening Tabs

Tab Bar

Double Clicking empty space on the Tab Bar will open a 'New Tab.

Download Manager

Double Clicking a file entry in the Downloads Manager will open/launch the file (provided you haven't moved it yet).

Right Click

Customize Toolbar

You can adjust your toolbars to your liking. Right click on any toolbar, and select 'Customize'. While this dialogue is up, you can move buttons around on your toolbars by click-and-drag to the new location. The window that pops up when you do this is a holding area for unused icons. You can drag any item from it onto your toolbars to have it made available, and you can drag any icon from your toolbars onto this box to hide that icon completely.

Tip

Some toolbar items, such as the Location bar, will expand to take up all available space.

Keyword Bookmark

Right clicking in a search box (such as the 'search mozillazine, powered by Google', on the left of this page) and selecting 'add a keyword for this search' lets you make an interactive keyword bookmark.

Here is how it works

Give it a name, such as 'Mozillazine search'

now, assign a keyword to it, such as 'moz'

click 'ok'

From now on, you can search mozillazine (or any other search box you used for this) from your address bar like this

Enter 'moz search topic' in your address bar and click Go!

Drag and Drop

Moving bookmarks and folders

You can change a bookmark's position in a folder or move it from one folder to another or move it to another position on the toolbar by highlighting it & clicking on it (WITHOUT LETTING GO) and dragging it to your desired position. A folder can be moved the same way as above tip but u MUST hold down the SHIFT key while dragging. (note: didn't see that SHIFT made any difference) To copy a folder, hold the Ctrl key while dragging.

Icons

You can bookmark the current page by dragging the icon from the location bar to your Bookmarks folder. You can also drag it to the desktop to make an icon for that page. Drag a text file, a link, a picture, etcetera... from your folders or your desktop to Firefox and it will open in Firefox!

Links

"Click-and-drag" a bookmark to the main content window (which is the biggest on the Firefox user interface),so you can open it in a new tab! Dragging a link onto a new tab will open the link in the new tab.

Downloading links

Drag any link to the Download Manager Window to add & download the link. You can also directly download anything from a page by drag and dropping it onto the 'download' icon in your toolbar (provided you put it there in 'right-click > customize').

Mouse and Keyboard

Images

Holding down the Shift or Ctrl key when you Right Click to "View Image" or "View Background Image" will open the image in a New Tab or New Window.

Selecting text

If you hold down the CTRL key and left click on part of a web page, that section of the page will be highlighted. If you right click on the selection and choose 'View selection source', the source code for that part of the page will be displayed. To quickly highlight text, especially long text fields. Left-click once in the window where you want the selection to start; and then shift=click in the spot where you want the selection to end (selection range). *this is a lot easier than click-selection-dragging, especially where there is a lot of text to highlight.

Font Size

Hold Ctrl AND scroll up down with the mouse to change font size. (The font changing on IE is 5 sizes. FF has dozens of size settings.)