Firefox – App tabs, Panaroma view, Smart Keywords

Firefox! A product from the Mozilla, a web browser, and it needs no introduction. Everyone of this generation who browses the internet should be probably knowing this browser. What am I writing about it then? Well, I just want to highlight its Certain Special Features, which holds it unique to work efficiently.

I hope everyone uses Tabs rather than using the browser multiple windows open. Does everyone have a favourite website? Facebook? Twitter? Gmail? or atleast Google search? You neither have to open a tab everytime nor do you have to let the tab occupy a huge space in your Tabs toolbar. There is an alternative cool way. Just pin them as app tabs! Yes! App Tabs is the name given to those tiny pinned small tabs. You can Right Click on the tab and select ‘Pin as app tab’. The tab will goto the top right corner and turn into a small tab. Now that should fit into your Tabs bar sweet and cute. There are added benefits of using the Pin tab. I’ll get back to them when I talk about the Tab Groups. You can access those pinned tabs just like you use the ordinary tabs. Here is a quick look at the pinned tabs. I have pinned Google Search, Gmail, Ymail, Facebook, Twitter & Google plus.

I generally use lots of tab simultaneously when I work, say 15. Would that look comfortable while shifting tabs? No, It will surely suck. How about grouping tabs according to usage or however you wish them into different windows? That would look cool, isn’t it! But noah! Im not going to open new windows, instead we can have tab groups in a single browser window. Try pressing Ctrl+Shift+E or clicking the ‘small tiles’ in the top right corner, left of minimize button. Surprised? Yes, that’s the one best feature of Firefox. Click on the blank space to create a group. Drag and move tabs between groups. And you can arrange your tabs in different groups depending on your usage. You can customize the view as you wish. I arrange them like this – Social sites and Mail accounts, Blog work, Forums and my sources in another group.
Going back to the App Tabs, added benefit, If suppose you open a new group, then those pinned tabs will default load into the new tab group and remains invisible in the panaroma view. Say a Google search page is pinned. Then whenever you move to a new group, it follows you. Cool..

Now how will you shift between groups? You can go to panaroma view and select the group. This may irritate you. Lets do that in a magical way, just press Ctrl + `. And I bet, someone watching your screen will surely start thinking – ‘ Woow! How’d he do that? ‘

Here is my Panaroma view. (Click on image to enlarge)

Smart keywords are really smart. If I type imdb insiduous in my address bar, the browser will direct me straight to the search results for the word ‘insiduous’ in the website ‘imdb – International Movie Data Base’. Its not just for this website, you can enable this option for any website which has a ‘search bar’. Wanna learn to do that? Follow these little steps. Go to the website with a search bar, say filehippo.com, done? Right click on the search bar, done? Click on ‘Add a keyword for this search’. You will get a pop up. Fill in the name, say ‘filehippo’ and the keyword, say ‘file’. Save it. And its done!

Now Open a new tab, type in the address bar “file firefox”. You should probably know what should happen. Happy Smart Browsing. You can set as many keywords as you want. All that you need to do is follow the simple syntax

<keyword searchterm>

Setting a Smart Keyword on FileHippo.com