Top tips for Firefox

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Master your plug-ins, add-ons and extensions

There are lots of fantastic add-ons and extensions for the Firefox web browser and this is probably one of the reasons many people prefer it to the built in browser bundled with the system. Do you know what add-ons, extensions and plug-ins are installed though? It is easy to lose track. If you enter about:plugins in the box where you normally enter a website address you'll see more information about your plug-ins than you'll ever need to know. Add-ons and extensions occasionally cause problems and can cause Firefox to misbehave, (each new version of Firefox brings the danger of incompatibilities with old add-ons), and if the browser is acting up you can go to the Tools menu, select Add-ons and then click the Extensions and Plug-ins icons. If you click a plug-in, a Disable button is shown next to it and if you turn them all off and re-enable them one by one, you'll soon find the problem. Just leave that troublesome plug-in disabled.

Favourite add-ons

Everyone has their favourite plug-ins and add-ons for Firefox and there are too many to mention. A popular one though, is FastestFox. It adds some useful features to Google searches, Wikipedia and web pages. Another useful extension is Flashblock, which is a way of preventing annoying Flash, especially adverts, from running on a web page. You can choose to enable Flash when you need it though. On the other hand, you might want to download the Flash movies on a web page, and FlashGot is a good tool for that task.

Use shortcuts

Firefox shortcuts Most people instinctively reach for the mouse whenever they want to do anything, but it is actually faster to use the keyboard if you learn some quick keyboard shortcuts. For example, you can scroll down a long web page by pressing the spacebar in Firefox, and if you want to scroll up, then press Shift+spacebar. If you want to search the web, just press Ctrl+K and enter the word or phrase. If you want to go straight to your home page all you need to do is to press Alt+Home.