You can do it!  All you need to do is type in % into the Awesome bar. 

As you can see in the picture to your right, this is a great way to quickly jump to any tab you currently have open in Firefox. 

Hope this quick navigational tip for Firefox 4 helps you out!

Now that I have been using Firefox 4 (as a beta) I can take a look at some of the neat add-ons I might have missed because they were not updated to run with the current version of Firefox.  One of these neat additions to the browser is Instant Previews.  With this Mozilla Labs created add-on, your browser will start loading webpages found in the awesome bar – without the need of clicking on them.

The idea here is that when you are searching through the address bar (aka the awesome bar) the suggestions will automatically start loading.  So by the time you find the page you want, it should already be loaded up and ready to use. This is all about speeding up the surfing process.

Here is a little more information from the developers:

This restartless add-on makes it so results that get highlighted in the Awesome Bar suggestions will automatically start loading, so by the time you confirm that the first result is the one you want, the page might be all ready for you to use. To glance at pages to check up on some information, e.g., the weather, stocks, or comics, let the page load as a preview, and once you are done, hit <Esc> to get rid of the preview and return to where you left off.

This is definitely an interesting feature – and I am excited to see where the Mozilla Labs team takes it in the future.  You can pick up Instant Previews on the Firefox Add-ons website.

One more change to come in Firefox 4 is the removal of the RSS icon in the browser’s Awesome Bar (aka the Address Bar).  I am guessing this was done to reduce some of the clutter when it comes to the default look and feel of Firefox 4. The ability that made RSS feed so easy to subscribe to is not gone though.  It has simply been bumped down to being an additional button you can add to the interface.

So how can you add the RSS button into Firefox 4?

1. Right-click on the Navigation Toolbar
2. Choose "Customize…"
3. Locate the RSS button from the selection of icons you can add to the Firefox 4 interface
4. Drag and drop it onto one of the active toolbars

Now, as with most changes – there are a couple of Firefox add-ons that will add the RSS feed back to the Awesome Bar. They are not perfect, but they do the job.

• RSS Icon In Awesombar
• RSS Icon

I wonder if Mozilla is reading some tea leaves that the rest of us do not know about how often people use Firefox’s RSS option? Just remember, you can always subscribe to the Firefox Facts RSS feed anytime, anywhere, at any place!

The Awesome Bar (or address bar, as those “normal” browsers might call it) does a great job at matching a web site saved in your bookmarks or history when you start typing in the Awesome Bar.  By default, Firefox doesn’t give you a way of saying, “Don’t show these bookmarks there” so now somebody has written up an add-on to give you that ability. 

The NotAwesome add-on for Firefox will help you hide any bookmarks tagged with “notawesome” from awesome bar searches.  This way you can totally flag bookmarks you don’t want showing up in the Awesome Bar results.

You can pick up this great add-on via the Firefox Add-ons web site.  (credit for this find goes to Lifehacker, when in turn goes to gHacks too!)

This add-on for Firefox extends your awesome bar with more commands, such as:

• Make Tiny URL
• Copy URL
• Search Site
• Go Up a Level
• Easier Page Tagging
• Navigate Sequential URL’s
• View Cached Version of  the Web Page
• Surf Anonymously Proxy Servers

That is definitely a lot to do in such a little space.  You also have the option to show or hide any icon you don’t need using the settings dialog.  The only negative I could find, is that the options for the add-on do look a little cluttered – so much in there to configure in such a small amount of space.

You can pick UrlbarExt up on the Firefox Add-ons site.

This changes up how you use the awesome bar.  Your tags will be light yellow, you bookmarks will be blue, and your history items will be light green.

Colorful, isn’t it?  If you like this you may also want to check out more work by the creator, -=Ben=-.

If you would like to include this tweak to your own Firefox 3 awesome bar, all you need to do is pick up the Stylish extension for Firefox and then install this script:  Awesome Bar Background Color Based on Type (WOW) *.

One of the features that makes the new address bar system really awesome is that it will match what your typing against the URLs, page titles and tags in your bookmarks and history – in turn giving you what you have been looking for.

The best news is that in Firefox 3 Beta 5, they have cut down a lot in the CPU power that is used when searching via the bar of awesomeness.

If you want more insight into the awesome bar and it’s development, go check out Edward Lee’s web site. Now I haven’t really been a huge bookmarker in the past, but with Firefox’s new address bar and bookmarking system I might have to rethink the way I browse the Web.

Update: If you find yourself not so happy with the new awesome bar here is how you can get rid of it:

The easy way woudl be grab the Old Bar Addon for Firefox 3

The hard way would be to type about:config into the address bar, and type this into the filter box (or scroll down to look for it) browser.urlbar.maxRichResults . Set the value of that to be “0″ and then restart Firefox.