Keyboard Shortcuts
First, lets go over keyboard shortcuts. I'm a touch-typist, and I find that keyboard shortcuts can really come in handy for saving time. I don't have to take a hand off the keyboard, move the mouse, click, and then put my hand back on the keyboard to start typing again. The first shortcut is for opening a new tab, and it is ctrl-t. Just hold down the ctrl key and press t. This will open a new tab with the cursor in the address bar ready for you to type in a website to visit. The second shortcut is also for tabs, but this is a very useful function that has saved my bacon more than once. If you accidentally close a tab you didn't want to close, you can open it back up with the keyboard shortcut ctrl-shift-t. Firefox even remembers where on the page you were. It's like you never even closed the tab. This trick even works with my bank website if I'm quick enough re-opening the tab. The third keyboard shortcut I'm going to cover is probably the one I use most often after ctrl-t and that is ctrl-f. Use this to search for text contained in the website you're currently looking at. Pressing ctrl-f will open a find box in the lower left side of the browser window. Just start typing what you want to find. The fourth shortcut is to put the cursor up in the search box. Just press ctrl-k and your cursor will jump up into search box. If the search engine selected is not the one you want, just use the up and down arrows while holding down the ctrl key to change between engines like google, amazon and eBay. Similarly, if you would like to navigate away from the current page by typing in a new website address, just press ctrl-l and your cursor will jump up to the location bar and select the current page's address. You can just start typing in a website like www.aztechsupport.net and press enter. These are the keyboard shortcuts I most commonly use, but if you're looking for more you can go to http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/keyboard for the full list.

Mouse Shortcuts
If you find yourself using Firefox with a mouse in hand, you may find the following mouse shortcuts useful as well. If you want to open a link in a new tab instead of the current window, and you have a mouse with a scroll wheel or a center button, use that center button or wheel to click on the link. By default, this will open the link in a new tab. I find this very useful when I am reading headlines on a news site. I can open the stories of interest in new tabs and then go through the tabs reading the stories. Another mouse shortcut for opening new tabs is to double-click the empty area to the the right of an open tab. Now, this will only work if that empty space is there, so if you only have one tab open, or so many tabs that they fill the screen, this trick won't work. If you still want to use this trick when only one tab is open, go into the options menu under tools and under tabs check the box that says "Always show the tab bar." This is how I have Firefox setup for myself.

Forced Restart
Finally, the last tip I want to cover today is what to do if Firefox becomes sluggish or locks up your computer. Unfortunately, I have found that if I leave Firefox open for extended periods of time (Like a few days or longer) it will start to slow down my computer. When this happens I do a forced restart of Firefox. The advantage of this is that when I restart Firefox I can choose the restore option and have all my tabs and windows still open, yet it's no longer slowing down my computer. In order to do a forced restart of Firefox in windows, open the task manager. Two ways to do this is to either press ctrl-alt-del, or right click on the task bar and choose Task Manager. Select the Processes tab and find firefox.exe under the Image Name. Select firefox.exe and press the End Process button. Choose yes on the pop-up notification. Wait about a minute, and then re-launch Firefox. When Firefox launches it should ask you if you want to "Restore Session" or "Start New Session." Choose to Restore the Session.

Well, that's it for Episode 1 of Tech Bytes. I hope these tips help you to better use Firefox. While putting this show together, I made a much longer list of tips and tricks I wanted to cover for Firefox, so expect more Firefox tips in the future. If you want to hear more talk about technology, you should subscribe to our sister show Tech Talk with 5 to 9 Computer Services which you can find at http://www.techtalkshow.com. For show notes or to subscribe to Tech Bytes, visit http://www.techbyteshow.com/ that's t-e-c-h-b-y-t-e-show.com. If you would like to request a topic to be covered in a future Tech Bytes show, send an e-mail to (listen to the show for the email address). I'm Kevin, and I'll be back next week with another serving of Tech Bytes.