Firefox 3.6 keyboard shortcuts

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 (codename Namoroka) was released yesterday. Mozilla claims that Firefox 3.6, which was built on Mozilla's Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering platform, is faster and more responsive than the previous version.

Table 1 listed the Firefox keyboard shortcuts that will help you use Firefox expeditiously.

Table 1: List of Firefox keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcut	Function
ctrl + T	Open a new empty tab
ctrl + W	Close a tab
ctrl + shift + T	Reopen a closed tab
ctrl + +	Zoom in
ctrl + -	Zoom out
ctrl + 0	Zoom reset
ctrl + L	Move cursor to the location bar
ctrl + K	Move cursor to the search box
space bar	Scroll down the page
shift + space bar	Scroll up the page
ctrl + R	Refresh the page
alt + left arrow	Back
alt + right arrow	Forward
ctrl + 1	Switch to the first tab
ctrl + 2	Switch to the second tab
ctrl + 3	Switch to the third tab
ctrl + 4	Switch to the forth tab
ctrl + 5	Switch to the fifth tab
ctrl + 6	Switch to the sixth tab
ctrl + 7	Switch to the seventh tab
ctrl + 8	Switch to the eight tab
ctrl + 9	Switch to the last tab

As an addition, the mouse middle button is also useful. Click the middle mouse button on a tab will close it. Click the middle mouse button on a link will open the link in a new window.

You can also make the middle mouse button to paste copied text, as in Linux. However, you need to tweak Firefox a bit.

This are the steps to enable the middle mouse button as a paste command.

1. Move the cursor to the location bar by using your mouse or ctrl + L shortcut key.


2. Type about:config in the location bar and press Enter.


3. Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!”.


4. Type middlemouse in the Filter bar. A list of commands will appear.


5. Double click command middlemouse.paste. Note that it’s value will now turns to True.

I have listed some useful Firefox keyboard shortcuts that help me browse the Web efficiently. If you know other keyboard shortcuts that I have missed, please leave a comment.