Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts
Review Of Common Browser Keyboard Shortcuts
Before we get started on Firefox, let's do a quick review of the most common Web browser keyboard shortcuts from another article on Common Keyboard Shortcuts:
| Ctrl+N | Open a new window |
| Ctrl+T | Open a new tab |
| Ctrl+W | Close the current window/tab |
| Ctrl+R | Refresh |
| Esc | Stop |
| Alt+← | Back |
| Alt+→ | Forward |
| Alt+Home | Go to your homepage |
| Alt+D | Move focus to the address bar to type in a URL |
| Ctrl+Enter | Add "http://www." and ".com" around an address |
| MiddleClick | Middle-clicking a tab will close it, even if it's not the active tab |
All of the above work in Firefox, as well as Internet Explorer, so learn them and love them!
Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts
If you know the above keyboard shortcuts, you are well on your way to working faster with Firefox.
But, there are some Firefox-specific keyboard shortcuts that will save you even more time.
Check them out:
| Ctrl+T | Open a new tab |
| Ctrl+W | Close the current window or tab |
| Ctrl+Shift+T | Undo close tab (re-open the last closed tab) |
| Ctrl+Tab | Switch to the next tab |
| Ctrl+Shift+Tab | Switch to the previous tab |
| Ctrl+[0-9] | Switch to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. tab |
| / | Open the "Find Text As You Type" widget (bottom of screen) |
| ' | Open the "Find Links As You Type" widget (bottom of screen) |
| Ctrl+G | Find the next occurrence of a search phrase |
| Ctrl+Shift+G | Find the previous occurrence of a search phrase |
| Ctrl+K | Move cursor to the Web Search widget (top right of screen) |
Some of these keyboard shortcuts need additional notes:
- Ctrl+W will close the current tab. If there is only one tab left, it will close the window, exiting Firefox.
- Think of Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab as analogies to Alt+Tab and Alt+Shift+Tab.
Whereas the Firefox keyboard shortcuts (using Ctrl) switch between tabs, the Windows keyboard shortcuts (using Alt) switch between windows.
- Just to be clear, Ctrl+[0-9] actually means Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, etc.
Here, Ctrl+0 will switch you to the 10th tab.
- The "Find Text As You Type" widget that appears at the bottom of your Firefox browser when you press / looks like this:
 Figure 1 - Search Widget
- Note that instead of searching through a whole website, you can search just through the links on a website by using the ' keyboard shortcut.
- If the search phrase you entered highlights a link, you can simply press Enter to navigate to that link.
- Pressing Ctrl+K moves your cursor to the Web Search widget, which looks something like this:
 Figure 2 - Web Search Widget
Example Scenario
Go to the Xbox & Games website from www.microsoft.com
- Alt+D to bring you to the address bar
- Type "microsoft" and press Ctrl+Enter
- Hit ' to open the Find Links As You Type widget
- Type "xbox" to let Firefox find the phrase
- Press Enter to navigate to the highlighted Xbox & Games link
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Links To More Information
The keyboard shortcuts we taught you in this article should be plenty.
If you're interested in learning even more, check out the exhaustive list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts at Mozilla's Firefox Help: Keyboard Shortcuts website.
-Ben
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