My Favorite Firefox Tricks

To celebrate the long-awaited release of Firefox 1.0, I'm going to share a few of my favorite Firefox tricks and techniques.

1. Middle-clicking. I read a lot of articles with links peppered liberally throughout. Firefox allows me to middle-click links and continue reading while the new pages load up in background tabs. When I'm done, all those pages are finished loading and ready to read! (If your mouse has a scroll wheel instead of middle button, click the scroll wheel.)
2. Text-zoom. Web designers absolutely *love* the look of microscopic font. Evidently, their mantra is "Let not the content interfere with the design". Well, pooh on them. I just zoom until the font size suits my taste. Text-zoom is [CTRL +] and [CTRL -]. [CTRL 0] resets the font to original size.
3. Kiosk mode. AKA fullscreen mode, kiosk mode is when the viewport (the part of the screen that shows web page) is stretched from edge to edge, minimizing the amount of scrolling and other UI distractions. Hit F11 to toggle to kiosk mode. (Combine text zoom with kiosk mode to make web pages more visible for presentations, etc.)
4. Block images from... If a web page insists on using banner ads that would induce seizures in epileptics and annoy anyone else, right click on the ad and choose "block images from...". Reload the page and all ads from that server will be gone.

(Originally posted on 11 Nov 2004 at my work blog)