If you're an experienced Firefox user, you've probably already discovered this tip, but if you're new to the browser you might find it helpful.
Tabbed browsing is one of Firefox's strengths, but depending on how you prefer to work, you might need to tweak it a bit to make it more efficient. For whatever reasons, I seem to click a lot of links in applications external to Firefox...links embedded in email messages, in Word documents and PDFs, in my GoLive files, and so on. In its default configuration, Firefox opens such links in the tab (or window) that's currently active.
That means that if you're in the middle of, say, an online article about the Norwegian Porridge Feud, and you get an email from a friend providing a link to a breaking story about Jen and Brad, when you click on the email link you'll lose your place in the porridge story because the Jen-and-Brad story will open in that same window or tab. Fortunately, Firefox has an option to change this behavior, so that when you click on a link in another application, the resulting webpage will open in a new tab (or window), thereby maintaining the current status of your open tabs.
To specify the desired behavior, open the Firefox preferences and find the Tabbed Browsing section (see screenshot below, from the Mac version of the program). The screenshot shows the setup to have a new tab opened when you click on that external link. [Firefox Preferences Screenshot]
Now, there is a downside to this option, and that's the potential for an amazing proliferation of tabs. If you build webpages and do a lot of previewing of your work from your layout program, you could easily end up with dozens of new tabs as you work on your pages. You'll have to decide if this is something you're willing to live with.
One more option in this setup is worth noting. The meaning of "Select new tabs opened from links" option may not intuitive, but it simply means that when a page is opened in a new tab, Firefox should make that new tab active. Again, the value of this option depends on your personal preferences about how you like to work. Most of the time, when I open a new tab from a link within the current page, it's because I want to later look at that new page...but not right now. So, I've left the option unchecked.
Technorati tag: Firefox Posted by Eric at 12:56 PM | Permalink
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