FireFox annoyances

cormie

Just recently got FireFox. There are a few little annoyances I have with it though.

1) If I want to click on the link in the address bar to edit it, with IE, I used to be able to just click and click again and hold and drag the bit of the link I want to remove, with firefox, if I click and then click and hold and drag, it actually drags the hole link as if I want to make it a shortcut to somewhere, rather than IE, which will just highlight the text in the link I want to delete etc.

2) I'm using a touchpad on my laptop, in IE, I could use the right side of the touchpad to scroll pages up and down like you would with a normal wheel on a mouse, but it wont work in FF. I don't think it works in Open Office for me either.

3) I was on a page that said I needed to install "Apple Quicktime", I've been to the page before on IE and it never said any such thing and displayed the page fine. I have QuickTime Alternative and don't fancy installing Apple Quicktime on top of that.

4) Sometimes if I press the ' button or other buttons in the same area, it will open up the "find" tool which is really annoying because I'd have to close the browser, open it back up and go to the same page to do it again. I don't know how the find tab comes up, it's only happened about 3 times.

5) I can't move the forward/back buttons up to the same level that the file/edit tabs are on.

and just a few little requests;

1) Is there a spell check extension you can get? I searched but couldn't find anything.

2) I heard there was some way you could get a window to open with more than one homepage, so for example if I just turned the computer on and wanted to go to 3 homepages, I could do it without having to go to them each individually, that they would automatically load?

3) Is there any way to open up things such as attachments on posts in a tab rather than a new window when you left click?


I think that's about it for now, I've had some suggestions on some of the above already but if anyone has any more input I'd like to hear it too:)

Mr E

cormie wrote:

2) I heard there was some way you could get a window to open with more than one homepage, so for example if I just turned the computer on and wanted to go to 3 homepages, I could do it without having to go to them each individually, that they would automatically load?

Tools/Options/General.

Separate your homepage URLs with a BAR, e.g.

http://www.google.com/ig|http://www.boards.ie|http://www.slashdot.org

cormie wrote:

3) Is there any way to open up things such as attachments on posts in a tab rather than a new window when you left click?

Hold control before clicking. You may need to install the Tabbrowser Preferences extension.

8T8

cormie wrote:

2) I'm using a touchpad on my laptop, in IE, I could use the right side of the touchpad to scroll pages up and down like you would with a normal wheel on a mouse, but it wont work in FF. I don't think it works in Open Office for me either.

The support for the application is hard coded into the driver you should check to see if there is a driver update for the touch pad Synaptics are the most common - see this Mozilla KB entry for more info.

cormie wrote:

3) I was on a page that said I needed to install "Apple Quicktime", I've been to the page before on IE and it never said any such thing and displayed the page fine. I have QuickTime Alternative and don't fancy installing Apple Quicktime on top of that.

Firefox uses the QuickTime web player plug-in that comes with QuickTime you might have to install QuickTime in order to playback QuickTime content in Firefox. The only things you need to stop with QuickTime is removing the tray icon and stop it loading at start-up that is it if you are concerned about bloat with QT installed you can remove the QT alternative.

cormie wrote:

4) Sometimes if I press the ' button or other buttons in the same area, it will open up the "find" tool which is really annoying because I'd have to close the browser, open it back up and go to the same page to do it again. I don't know how the find tab comes up, it's only happened about 3 times.

The @/’; key is set to bring up the find toolbar this can be changed with an extension like Keyconfig along with this.

cormie wrote:

5) I can't move the forward/back buttons up to the same level that the file/edit tabs are on.

There are extensions that will allow this can’t recall the names of the top of my head search around Firefox Add-On's and the Extension Mirror.

cormie wrote:

1) Is there a spell check extension you can get? I searched but couldn't find anything.

Quite a few see the official Google Toolbar which is what I use just drag the spell check icon onto your toolbar then hide the Google Toolbar via the View->Toolbar menu. Also see Spellbound as another means of spell checking. Firefox 2.0 will actually have built in spell checking.

cormie wrote:

3) Is there any way to open up things such as attachments on posts in a tab rather than a new window when you left click?

See Tools->Options->Tabs for some additional control over Tab behaviour, some extensions offer finer control over this.

EWheelChair

TmB wrote:

Hold control before clicking. You may need to install the Tabbrowser Preferences extension.

Woo, didn't know that..

28064212

cormie wrote:

Just recently got FireFox. There are a few little annoyances I have with it though.

1) If I want to click on the link in the address bar to edit it, with IE, I used to be able to just click and click again and hold and drag the bit of the link I want to remove, with firefox, if I click and then click and hold and drag, it actually drags the hole link as if I want to make it a shortcut to somewhere, rather than IE, which will just highlight the text in the link I want to delete etc.

Try clicking twice, then click and drag

cormie wrote:

3) I was on a page that said I needed to install "Apple Quicktime", I've been to the page before on IE and it never said any such thing and displayed the page fine. I have QuickTime Alternative and don't fancy installing Apple Quicktime on top of that.

I would imagine there is some way of getting QT Alternative to work with Firefox, try googling it.

cormie wrote:

4) Sometimes if I press the ' button or other buttons in the same area, it will open up the "find" tool which is really annoying because I'd have to close the browser, open it back up and go to the same page to do it again. I don't know how the find tab comes up, it's only happened about 3 times.

' and / both open up the find tool, it's just a handy shortcut. Why do you have to close the browser? Why don't you just close the tool?

cormie wrote:

5) I can't move the forward/back buttons up to the same level that the file/edit tabs are on.

Right click to the right of 'Help', choose 'Customise...', then just drag the buttons wherever you want.

Dman_15

cormie wrote:

Just recently got FireFox. There are a few little annoyances I have with it though.

1. Click, hold and drag does what your describing for me. No double clicks needed

2. On my acer laptop there's scroll button between the left and right that doesn't work in FF either. none of the touchpad gestures for scroling work either

TerrorFirmer

try going back to IE for literally two minutes like I had to last night on a new install and youll realise how amazingly fantastically superbly brilliant Ff is.

but while were on the subjcet I somehow managed to hide my firefox address bar and all the buttons like refresh, home, etc, I did it this morning before work and didnt have time to try get them back before leaving, so could anyone tell me how to reverse that so i know straight away for later

It was just one of those things when ya click when ya arent looking at the screen, and then suddenly you look back and youve borked something up...

Rollo Tamasi

that spelling pluggin doesn't work with the latest firefox, could anyone recommend one that does? I would be quite interested to see it in action

8T8

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

that spelling pluggin doesn't work with the latest firefox, could anyone recommend one that does? I would be quite interested to see it in action

Which the Google Toolbar or Spellbound ?

Both say they are compatible with Firefox 1.5.0.4 & I have the Google one installed which is what I use for spell checking. Spellbound has multiple versions it will auto pick the correct one when you go to it's installation page.

Personally I find the Google spell check better than Spellbound & it's very likely the spell checker that will be integrated into Firefox 2.0

Edit: According to jor el Spellbound doesnt work at that link just tried to install it and he is right, the version that will work [SpellBound Development version] can be found at this link for Firefox 1.5.0.4 and greater.

edanto

5) I can't move the forward/back buttons up to the same level that the file/edit tabs are on.

Get the extension milewideback

This beautiful piece of code (2k!!) lets you use anywhere on the left hand side of the window instead of moving up to the arrows. Left click back, right to go forward. And the sweetest thing, you can use your roller button to switch quickly between tabs once the cursor is tight to the left wall of the screen.

jor el

Spellbound doesn't work on 1.5.0.4 yet, but the Google Toolbar does.

>> 3) Is there any way to open up things such as attachments on posts in a tab rather than a new window when you left click?

TabBrowser Prefs will let you configure a whole host of options for Tabs, but you can also set the option to force links to open in a new Tab in Options -> Tabs.

>> 4) Sometimes if I press the ' button or other buttons in the same area, it will open up the "find" tool which is really annoying because I'd have to close the browser, open it back up and go to the same page to do it again. I don't know how the find tab comes up, it's only happened about 3 times.

Strange, the Find dialog comes up as a toolbar at the bottom of the page for me and never caused a problem that would leave me having to close the browser. What version are you running?

Giblet

There should be a red x beside the find bar.

Or you can just press esc

Vokes

TmB wrote:

cormie wrote:

2) I heard there was some way you could get a window to open with more than one homepage, so for example if I just turned the computer on and wanted to go to 3 homepages, I could do it without having to go to them each individually, that they would automatically load?

Tools/Options/General.

Separate your homepage URLs with a BAR, e.g.

http://www.google.com/ig|http://www.boards.ie|http://www.slashdot.org

That is simply awesome. Cheers for that.

philologos

at least Firefox knows how to properly interpret CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). While you have to keep tweaking at your code to somehow make it work in Internet Explorer. That is the most annoying thing about IE.

The_B_Man

also, if u click on a link with ur mouse wheel button, it'll open in a new tab.

Sam Vimes

cormie wrote:

4) Sometimes if I press the ' button or other buttons in the same area, it will open up the "find" tool which is really annoying because I'd have to close the browser, open it back up and go to the same page to do it again. I don't know how the find tab comes up, it's only happened about 3 times.

grrr, that happens to me in work sometimes too. one minute ' comes up as normal, the next it makes the find bar pop up. a few other keys stop working properly too. when it happens seems to be completely random. any posts of mine on boards where a ' is missing, that's why.

never happens at home though

mad m

Sometimes my FF takes ages to start up.

Wertz

Just to add to handy FF tips; if you like using LOTS of tabs like me, pressing CTRL+X where X = the number of the tab (counting from the left of the tab bar) changes to that corresponding tab.

Also two handy extensions for tabs (apart from the ubiquitous Tab Browser Preferences) :

- SessionSaver (stores a copy of exactly how the browser was before you closed it, including all open tabs and respective non-refreshed pages)
- SnapBack (allows you to re-open tabs you may have accidentally closed)