Firefox 3 – What is new ?

Browsers, Tech, Windows

Firefox 3 was downloaded by more than 8 million users in 24 hours and it might well go down as the most downloaded software in 24 hours !

India’s contribution in the above 8 million was 226K  and US was the highest with 4632K.

Talking of new features in FF3, Alex Faaborg, the user experience designer who worked on Firefox 3 has a very detailed post on the new UI features here

http://tinyurl.com/yv5xp4

Below are 2 unique features in FF3, which I haven’t seen in hundreds of posts that cover the new FF3 features.

Scrolling using Spacebar

If you are keyboard junkie, I am sure you too will love this feature.

Till now, If you intended to scroll a web page, you either had to enable the Caret Mode (F7) and then scroll the web page or use the keyboard Page up and Page down key.

The first option isn’t that straightforward and the second one for some reason wasn’t always working reliably on FF2. Even in FF3, scrolling via Page keys doesn’t work properly.

However in FF3, you can easily scroll using the "Spacebar"

Spacebar - Scrolls the page down
Shift + Spacebar - Scrolls the page up

Reopen/Undo Closed Tab

Tabbed browsing keeps your taskbar clutter free and also makes you more productive.

However you might also end up closing tabs (browser pages) which you did not intend to !

FF3 has a new feature using which  you can quickly reload a closed tab. All you need to do is press Ctrl + Shift + T

Ctrl + Shift + T - Reopen closed tab / Undo Close tab operation

The shortcut is also kind of easy to remember since Ctrl + T is used to open a new empty tab.

Also FF3 does not just reload the last closed tab; in fact it maintains the history of closed tabs.

If you continuously press the Ctrl + Shift + T, you can reopen all the closed tabs in the session (the most recently closed is reopened first)


For the complete list of Firefox 3 shortcuts, check out this page

http://tinyurl.com/5hucpj

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • TheAnand Jun 23, 2008 Link

    Feels good to be a part of a world record 🙂 But my only complaint being that the new interface reminds me of the sick IE7 !!!! 🙁

  • Vasuki Jun 23, 2008 Link

    I think Undo Closed Tabs existed in FF2 also. I remember using Ctrl Shift T. Not sure if I had an addon.

  • venukb Jun 26, 2008 Link

    Anand – Yup it does 🙂 Meanwhile I don’t see similarities between FF3 and IE7. FF3 looks more clean and tabs still open faster in FF3 😀

    Vasu – I checked in one my systems which had FF2, but Ctrl Shift T did not work.

    But again I have had issues with my Dell keyboard and you might be right. But I’m already onto FF3 (like you 🙂 ) and not sure how to confirm this !

  • Resonator Jun 26, 2008 Link

    hi venu..just landed up in ur website to see more useful infos …
    thanks for sharing

    happy blogging
    Prema

  • Athena Jul 15, 2008 Link

    FF3 is a great..
    but i still see many plugins not supported.. any hack for this ?

  • Athena Jul 20, 2008 Link

    I just dont know why the ff3 when you open an email , the first oe you open will work well. When you sign out, the second email ad you attempt to open will not work.

  • luz Sep 7, 2008 Link

    I prefer ff2 than ff3 its a little bit slow.

  • Joey Logano Mar 15, 2009 Link

    I really enjoy Firefox, I hope that in their next big release they attempt another PR stunt 🙂

  • Mystery shopping May 15, 2009 Link

    I have my favorite adult oriented websites bookmarked. Is there a way to disable the smart address bar in FireFox 3 from bringing up my bookmarks while I type? If not, can you suggest an alternative?

  • Mystery shopping Jun 1, 2009 Link

    What you need is an add on go to this link i provide this addon is perfect for you it restores previous windows and tabs closed either accidentally or if PC crashed.

  • Mystery shopping Aug 1, 2009 Link

    I just downloaded Mozilla firefox, how do i make it so my opening page is bebo? I know its possible i just can’t remember how. I mean so that when you open firefox its not google its bebo, if yous get what i mean?

  • Mystery shopping Aug 1, 2009 Link

    Try installing a slightly older version. I have already chosen 3.0.4 from the list which is the version directly before 3.0.5 (the current version). You can choose any version from the list, but I would recommend that you do not go any lower than version 2.0.

  • Mystery shopping Aug 1, 2009 Link

    How can I fix Firefox browser because it opens everytime not only my homepage but 2 more pages from NoScript and Firefox update? I tried cleaning cache and everything I found. Still no ideea!

  • Mystery shopping Aug 1, 2009 Link

    My Firefox stopped working saying the server wasn’t found but Internet Explorers still works. I used to use firefox all the time but only recently it stopped working. I already checked the firewall and it allows firefox so i don’t know what’s wrong.

  • Mystery shopping Aug 1, 2009 Link

    I have Firefox as my main web browser already, but I want my windows live messenger to open all windows on Firefox and not IE7. For example, the email icon on the top left hand corner of wlm.

  • Mystery shopping Aug 1, 2009 Link

    I stored a library account number and had to renew the card. How do I now eliminate the old account number from the Firefox memory?

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