Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Firefox Quick Tip: The Mouse Wheel

No matter how popular Firefox gets and no matter how many people use it on a regular basis, there are still people out there making slow use of something that is literally right at their finger tips; the mouse wheel.

Pop quiz hot shot; how do you open and close tabs in Firefox, and do you even make use of multiple tabs? I still catch people around the office right-clicking on links to open them up in a new tab, or clicking the red "X" button to close a tab (they might even have to select that tab then hit the close button), waisting precious internet time when they could be doing something more useful like testing the work's firewall to see if you can take a look at naked pictures of Caprica Six from Battlestar Galactica.

The correct answer to my pop quiz is by using the mouse wheel and yes. Stop with the right-clicking and just click the mouse wheel on that link and it will magically opne it up in a new tab. This even works in Internet Explorer 7.0! Then, to close down any tab, just do the same thing; mouse wheel click on it. The tab you wish to close doesn't need to be your active tab, you can just wheel click on any tab that is open and it will disappear.

Another nifty mouse wheel trick is nice to have when you have too many tabs open and auto tab scroll comes into play. Just place your courser on the tabs bar and scroll the mouse wheel. You will then be side scrolling from right to left over all of your open tabs. This bypasses the left/right arrows that pop up when you have too many tabs open.

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