You Don't Know Jack About Firefox!

Tab-Related Preferences

Let's take a look at the available user preferences that are related to tabs and tabbed browsing. Start Firefox and choose Tools > Options (Windows), Firefox > Options (Macintosh) or Edit > Preferences (Linux) from the menu bar, then select the Advanced panel. You should see a dialog box that's something like the one shown in Figure 2.7.

Figure 2.7. Tabbed browsing preferences in Firefox 1.0.

Note that the options panel has been redesigned slightly for Firefox 1.1 and beyond: there, you must click a tab rather than an icon to see this information. Figure 2.8 shows the shape of things to come.

Figure 2.8. Tabbed browsing preferences in Firefox 1.1 and beyond.

You can see that, although there's a little reorganization, the options are much the same in both versions. Here's what each preference does:

• Open links from other applications in: If you click on a link displayed in an another program, such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat Reader, this preference dictates how that link will be displayed by Firefox. I prefer to have links from other applications open in a new tab in the most recent window, because I usually use a single window, and I don't want to lose the Web page on my most recent tab. Of course, links will only load in Firefox if Firefox is set as your default browser.
• Force links that open new windows to open in: This is a newish feature that can be used to tame popup windows: check the box to turn it on. Instead of popups launching in a separate, new window, or being blocked by the popup blocker (discussed later), this option lets that new content be created inside an existing tab or an existing window. This option is available only in Firefox versions 1.1 and later.
• Hide the tab bar when only one Website is open If checked, this hides the tab bar when only one Web page is open. Personally, I have this unchecked (it's checked by default), because it's disconcerting to have the tab bar disappear and re-appear. This option was made the default as a deliberate design decision to enable users who don't use tabbed browsing to enjoy more screen real estate. Users of tabbed browsing, however, will probably prefer to have this option unchecked.
• Select new tabs opened from links This is the preference I was talking about earlier, which allows you to choose whether new tabs open in the background, or steal focus from the current page. Checking this option will cause links opened in new tabs to steal focus. I recommend that you leave this unchecked to gain the productivity benefits I mentioned earlier. Note: Those who have the Select new tabs opened from links preference set one way or the other can reverse their setting temporarily with the Shift key modifier. For example, if you've set Firefox up so that new tabs opened from links load in the background, but you want a particular link to open in the foreground, just hold on to the Shift key when clicking the link (i.e. Shift-middle-click, or Ctrl-Shift-left-click).
• Warn when closing multiple tabs This option will display a warning dialog if you take an action to close more than one tab simultaneously, as will occur if you try to close a window in which multiple tabs are open. This is a useful warning that can prevent you from accidentally closing a window full of tabs, but it could be annoying if you mean to close that window. Figure 2.9 shows this warning.

Figure 2.9. Warning dialog shown when closing multiple tabs simultaneously.

As you can see, you don't have to change any of the options if you are a "normal" user: Firefox is built so that sensible configuration choices are available from the start.

A Single Homepage: So 1999!

Another good thing about tabbed browsing is that tabbed browsers are no longer stuck with a single homepage. If you're like most other Web surfers, you probably have more than one favorite Web page: pages that you absolutely must visit the first time you launch your Web browser. I, for example, have a total of eight URLs that I want to check at the start of every Web surfing session.

What's a user of a Single Document Interface (SDI)Web browser—Internet Explorer, for example—to do? A Single Document Interface (SDI) is, simply put, a way to organize applications into individual windows, one for each application (or each instance of an application). If you've used Internet Explorer, you already know what an SDI is. Well, they'd better start looking through their bookmarks! Those lucky users of tabbed browsers, on the other hand, can set multiple homepages and load all of their favorite pages at once. Figure 2.10 illustrates the format required for setting multiple homepages via the Options dialog box.

Figure 2.10. Specifying a tabbed set of homepages.

Note the vertical bar (|) that separates each URL: one URL is shown per tab. You simply load the preferred Web pages into tabs, and mark the set as your homepage. For example, if you want http://www.sitepoint.com/ and http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ to be your homepages, load them up in Firefox, go to Tools > Options > General (or Firefox > Preferences > General on Mac OS X, or Edit > Preferences > General on Linux), then click the Use Current Pages button.

Alternatively, you can hand-enter the URLs you want to set as your homepages in the Location(s) text box, separating each using the pipe character (|) as shown above. For example, if you want sitepoint.com and Spreadfirefox.com to be your homepages, enter http://sitepoint.com/|http://spreadfirefox.com/ into the Location(s) textbox. The pipe character key is located near the Backspace key on most PC keyboards, and is represented by two vertical dashes placed on atop the other.

A third approach is to click on the Use Bookmark… button, and then select the bookmark folder that contains the bookmarks you want to use as your homepages. We'll cover bookmarks in more detail later.

Setting more than a single homepage does have a disadvantage, though. If all you want to do is a quick Web search, Firefox startup is too clever (or perhaps too dumb), and insists upon loading your entire set of homepages instead. This does slow things down a bit, especially on a dial-up connection, because loading eight Web pages is almost certainly slower than loading just one. You can always press Ctrl-T to get a new tab and turn eight into nine, if you're feeling impatient. You can then type your desired URL into the ninth tab and have it load at (hopefully) more than one-ninth of its normal rate.

Despite the performance implications, it's hard to deny the convenience of loading up multiple Web pages at once, and it's even harder not to feel sorry for those poor Internet Explorer users still facing dilemmas like, "Do I want Yahoo! email as my homepage, or should I set it to sitepoint.com instead?" With Firefox, you can avoid such decisions. Just set all your favorite Web pages as your homepage and be done with it!

Back, Forward and Home Buttons

Now, Firefox is a tabbed browsing Web browser, right? Of course it is. So it would make sense if Firefox could open the previous page in a new tab if you middle-click on the Back button, right? In fact, this is exactly how Firefox behaves.

You can middle-click (command-left-click on Mac OS X) on all of the Back, Forward, and Home buttons in the toolbar to open the corresponding link(s) in a new tab (or tabs). If your homepage is a set of four pages in separate tabs, middle-clicking on the Home button will add four tabs to your current tab set. Figure 2.11 reminds us of what these major buttons look like. There's no special tab action for the Reload or Stop buttons.

Figure 2.11. Firefox's toolbar icons.

The provision of tab support within the main browser buttons clearly demonstrates that tabbed browsing is part and parcel of Firefox's design. It's neither an afterthought nor a bolted-on feature.

Search and Search Tools

Search: you can't escape it as a fundamental Web surfing activity. Well, perhaps you can if you have the uncanny ability to guess URLs that give you the exact Web page you wanted. A good dab of clairvoyance is probably necessary as well! "Hmm… Let's see. Are there any good Firefox ebooks online? I shall use my Powers of Uncanny Deduction to find out…" (Supernatural pause.) "Ah, I'll go to http://firefox-book.com/."

Does that even sound remotely possible? Well, if there was a Website at http://firefox-book.com/ (there isn't), it would probably have something to do with a book on Firefox. Relying on your powers of deduction is, in the end, unlikely to produce results, and besides, Uncanny Deduction is tremendously exhausting!

This rigmarole underscores the reality that Search is an integral part of using the World Wide Web. You can't find the information you want using hit-and-miss techniques. Instead, we use search tools that offer systematic solutions: search engines, directories, and similar online services.

Examples of search are everywhere. Are you looking for the scoop on your favorite band? Perhaps you're trying to learn Java programming? Google is your best bet. Are you reading up on the latest in flux capacitors and time travel for your thesis? Run a search over at ScienceDirect or arXiv.org. Looking for a good computer book, self-improvement manual, or Dragonlance novel? I'm a Dragonlance fan, in case you're wondering. I'm not into self-improvement books, though. (It's more fun to write your own D&D campaign settings—Ed.). Amazon.com has a nice search feature that yields customer reviews and recommendations.

If search is an integral part of the Web, it follows that it should also be an integral part of your Web browser. Firefox promises unobtrusive and integrated search functionality. The Firefox developers know what you want, and they give it to you. I wish all software projects did that!

Here, we take a detailed look at Firefox's search-related features and see how you can best employ them to make things easy for yourself.

There's More than One Way to Find it!

That's right: There Is More Than One Way To Find It (TIMTOWTFI). Search is an integrated feature in Firefox, but it's integrated in several ways. There are many separate search features and several different starting points from which you can perform a search. Each method of searching is convenient for its particular situation.

For example, you can search for the meaning of a word or phrase (say, "blogosphere") on a Web page by highlighting it, then context-clicking and selecting the context menu entry Search Web for "blogosphere." Figure 2.12 shows this technique at work.

Figure 2.12. Context Web searching for highlighted text.

Alternately, you can surf to the search engine's homepage and type your search terms into the form (not that this is a Firefox feature, but it is a way to perform a search). Or you can… but let's put an end to these trivial examples and dive straight into discussing the more effective and efficient ways that you can search using Firefox.

The Search Bar: Drunk on Search!

When you first launched Firefox, you probably noticed that there were two textboxes into which you could type text. One of these is the location bar, into which you can type URLs; the other has a funny looking "G" next to it. Figure 2.13 shows this corner of the browser.

Figure 2.13. Search bar on the right, location bar on the left.

The "G" is actually an icon for the Google search engine, and this textbox is called the "search bar." If you type in a search phrase, and hit Enter, Firefox will take you to the Google search results page for that phrase. Go ahead and try it out for yourself: it's a very convenient arrangement. No longer do you have to type in http://www.google.com/, wait for it to load, and then search using the standard form. The search bar saves a good three seconds each time you do a search—possibly more if you're on dial-up. Since the average Web surfer performs 12 searches per hour, that's a good 36 seconds saved for every hour spent online, or 14.4 minutes per day, or 3.65 days per year! This figure was derived through a complex process called guessing! Try doing a search on Google for "36 seconds per hour in days per year." Google's calculator kicks in and does the conversion for you! I knew Google's calculator function was really smart, but this smart?! Imagine what you could do with those 3.65 days. You could take a three-day vacation and still have 0.65 days left in which to do nothing. When the Firefox folks say that Firefox helps make your online experience more productive, they aren't just boosting the marketing hype: the productivity increases are real.

Using the Search Bar like a Pro

The search bar is easy to use, but you can do a lot more with it than merely search Google. Learn these other tricks before you embarrass yourself in front of your Firefox evangelist friends!

To start with, hitting Enter loads the search results page in the current tab. At times, it may be more convenient to load in a new tab. For cases like this, hit Alt-Enter instead of just Enter.

The shortcut keys that place the input cursor in the search bar are Ctrl-K and Ctrl-E—you can use either. If, like me, you don't like to take your hands off the keyboard, those shortcuts are very useful. The way I search is to hit Ctrl-E, type in my query, and then hit Alt-Enter to specify a new tab.

You can also search using drag and drop. Simply select a piece of text (from any drag and drop-capable program, not just Firefox), and drag it into the Firefox search bar. And, if you're thinking of dragging and dropping text from a Firefox Web page specifically, there is an Even Better Way! Let me keep you in suspense for now: we'll come back to this shortly.

Adding More Search Engines

You aren't restricted to searching on Google, even if it is the best search engine around and complemented by totally cool software. You can easily add other search engines, like AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and even the new kid on the block, Clusty. To do so, click on the G icon. You should see a drop-down like the one shown in Figure 2.14, which lists the search plugins installed by default in the Firefox product.

To search with a different search engine—say, Amazon.com—simply select that item from the drop-down. The icon to the left of the search box will change from the G icon to its Amazon equivalent. Now, any searches you perform through the search bar will be run on Amazon.com (try searching for "Firefox").

Naturally, everyone has his or her own specific needs and favorite search engines. You'll probably be wondering how to add a new option to the search bar, and you might have guessed that you simply click the Add Engines item in the drop-down to do so. Choosing that item takes you to Firefox Central, where you can add other search plugins. Figure 2.15 shows a slice of that page.

Figure 2.14. Adding and changing search engines.

Figure 2.15. Adding new search engines at Firefox Central.

Figure 2.16. Adding the Wikipedia search plugin.

To add a particular search engine, just click on the appropriate link. Let's add the search plugin for Wikipedia (a very useful and comprehensive online encyclopedia). You should see the confirmation dialog shown in Figure 2.16 after you click on the Wikipedia search plugin link.

Click OK, and you're done! You can now see Wikipedia in the search bar drop-down. Simply select it to search Wikipedia, as shown in Figure 2.17.

Figure 2.17. Successful installation of the Wikipedia search option.

If you want to add a search engine that isn't on the provided list, go to the Mycroft project Website, which offers a collection of search plugins for many sites. Search for the plugin you want, or browse the search plugins categories. Over a thousand search plugins are listed here, so there's definitely something for everyone.

Removing a search engine from the search bar is a little bit of a hassle. First, use the desktop file manager (Explorer or Finder) to locate the searchplugins directory inside the Firefox installation directory. It's at C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins on Windows systems. There, two files are stored for each search plugin. One is a .src file, the other is a graphic, usually either a .png or .gif file. Delete the pair of files whose names match the search option that you no longer want. For example, if I wanted to remove the Yahoo! search plugin, I would simply delete yahoo.src and yahoo.gif, then restart Firefox. An interface for removing unwanted search engines is planned for inclusion in a future release of Firefox. The related bug note is available online.

Next, we'll take a look at a clever and convenient way of searching.