The Best Keyboard Shortcut in Firefox - Type Web Addresses Quickly
If you haven’t upgrade to Firefox 3 yet, please do so. The new version is far more responsive and stable that its predecessors.
Another reason for loving Firefox 3 is the way it auto-completes web URLs - very intelligent and something you’ll miss in IE. Update: Firefox 2 users share that this works in the previous version as well.
Also See: "Open Your Favorite Websites Quickly in Firefox"
To get started, press Alt+D or Ctrl+L to move the cursor to your Firefox browser address bar and then try some of these combinations:
To open Google Maps website, type "google/maps" in the Firefox address bar (no quotes) and press Ctrl+Enter. And for your Google AdSense page, type "google/adsense" followed by Ctrl+Enter.
Firefox will automatically surround the word(s) that are before the first slash with www. and .com. IE 7 and previous version of Firefox can’t do this.
And this URL auto-complete works even if you have several subdirectories in the URL. For instance, your Google Apps sign-in page will open correctly if you type "google/a/mysite.com" and press Ctrl+Enter.
If you want to open a .org site, you need to use Ctrl+Shift+Enter. Typing labnol/forums followed by Ctrl+Shift+Enter would therefore open our support website at www.labnol.org/forums.
And for .net websites, the shortcut key is Shift+Enter. So you can view the most popular PowerPoint presentations on Slideshare by typing slideshare/popular followed by Shift+Enter.
Bonus Tip: If you like Firefox to add a different suffix other than .com, open your Firefox settings page at about:config and change the value of key browser.fixup.alternate.suffix to something else like .org, .net, etc.
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Thats a neat suggestion Amit.
However, am using Safari 3.1 on Windows nowadays - very stable and fast and yes, just verified - it does the autocomplete for google/adsense. I just have to press “enter” - it does the rest ;-)
Try out the Safari browser sometime and let us all know your comments.
Um, have you tried these in FF 2.0.? They work just fine. In fact, they’re included on the official FF shortcut page.
First Google result for “Firefox shortcut”.
You’re welcome!
Huh? google/maps CTRL+Enter works for me in FF2. I’ve been using it forever.
It doesn’t look like this works with OpenDNS; it just gets me to the standard page not found.
Umm.. one thing… although I was very happy to use the FF3 betas, since Beta 5, I have been suffering… Every so often FF3 goes into an infinite loop of 100% CPU usage.
My computer becomes unstable, it hangs the explorer process.
I recommend holding off till the final versions are out.
Been using the CTRL+Enter trick for years. It has worked since FF 1.0.
He wrote it would be something you’d miss from IE.
ctrl+Enter even works for IE.
Mac IE 5 actually supported much of this.
#6,7,8 - The Ctrl+Enter shortcut is available in both IE and Firefox but try that key combination on something like google/news - you would know the difference.
The Cntrl + Enter thing works and has been working on EVERY browser I know for a really long time…It works on IE6 as well as 7, not to metion firefox 2 and safari…
The rest might be true but the autocompletion of web pages is not that big a deal…
Amit , you provide timely updates about FF , but it is sort of history repeating itself ….. It’s the same thing …. when you mention a ‘new’ feature , that feature is already present , for aes in Opera ….. probably , the FF guy’s copy their features from Opera…. Opera is a true innovator …a great browser ….and as you mentioned in an earlier post about FF crashing FREQUENTLY , Opera has never failed me for the past 3 years that I’ve been using it ….
Opera Rulz !! …. FF is OverHyped …
udkl—–> Opera Browser lover
i do like these tricks (they work in opera and IE as well - probably in safari too).
however _the_ fastest way i’ve found to get to sites i visit a lot is to bookmark them, access the bookmark’s properties, and create a 1- or 2-letter keyword. so googlemaps for instance is ‘gm’; reddit is ‘r’.
then alt+d, r, enter and i’m there!
you can also setup quicksearches this way. to google something it’s alt+d, g [search term], enter. to do this you need to construct the URL correctly though. last time i installed opera they had built this ‘g’ search thing in though.
This post isn’t accurate. IE has better functionality called Search URLs. Use Google and some common sense. IE also allows creating custom keywords for ANY site you want to visit. E.g.
w Firefox will load Firefox in Wikipedia
g Test will search using Google for “Test”.
mskb Search MS knowledge base
You just need to create the search URLs using some freeware tool or edit the registry (not very convenient).
Update: FYI, TweakUI can easily create search URLs for IE.
yes, FF2.0 had this feature for so long….ofcourse IE doesn’t even know that such a thing exists..
there was the time when i preferred firefox over other browsers, but now Safari rocks, and if you still want to use Firefox then go for Flock, it is much better responsive browser.
I’ve used this for years. It works great.
Shortcuts like, google maps, google adwords, google webmaster tool, google adsense and many-more will work if you have your Google toolbar installed in Firefox or IE. No need to hit Ctrl+Enter or Shift+Enter, just hit Enter from your address bar.
Pratheep
Even though it’s not a new feature, I’m glad this article was written as I did not know Ctrl (Cmd)+Enter could work with forward slashes before.
About other browsers such as Safari, Opera and Flock. The main reason I don’t migrate to those browsers is because, if I’m not mistaken, certain add-ons such as the del.icio.us toolbar isn’t written for them.