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!

This is a handy browsing trick I just learned about recently.  Usually in my Firefox browser, I have the menu bar hidden, to save on screen real estate.  However, there comes a time (every so often) when I need to get it back.  Rather than un-hiding it, getting what I need, then hiding it again – I have found a much quicker way to bring the menu bar back for just a minute.

Let me start first with the steps you will need to take to hide the menu bar in the first place.  You will want to right-click on the navigation toolbar, then uncheck the menu bar.

Menu Bar Recovery Secret

Now that the menu bar is out of the way, I can share with you my resent keyboard shortcut I found.  To pull the menu bar back up for a few seconds, all you have to do is hit the Alt key on the keyboard. To hide it again, click anywhere else on the screen.

There you have it.  Now you can hide your menu bar and bring it back whenever you need it.  Have another interface tweaking tip to share?

Oh undo function, what would I do without you? 

Well, I would probably be forced to do it again – but that is beside the point.  I love being able to reopen a closed tab or window in Firefox.  It has saved my rear end many times.  This is just one of those Firefox tips you really should memorize.

Tab Restore Shortcuts

If you accidently close a tab, you can bring it back by pressing the following keyboard combination:

Ctrl + Shift + T

The great thing about it, is the newly restored tab keeps all the surfing history too.  You can can keep doing it to, to browse backwards through all the tabs you have closed in your current browsing session.

You can also bring back closed Firefox tabs or windows by clicking on “History” in the menu bar.  At the very bottom, you should see selectable menus for:

• Recently Closed Tabs
• Recently Closed Windows

There you have it.  This tab and window restore tip will help you get out of a pinch more than a few times, so it is a good one to memorize.  This is one of my favorite keyboard shortcuts and Firefox browsing tips, second only to Ctrl + T to open a new Firefox tab.

Searchy, a new experimental add-on for Firefox will allow you to do that in a very stylish and unique way.  Once you get it installed, just hit Ctrl+Shift+K to bring up the Searchy search box, then type in what you are looking for.  You will get the results in real time as you type.

Also, another neat tip is that you can use “@” before your search to just search the web site you are on at the time.  If your not in love with the keyboard combo you must use to get it to search – that can easily be changed in the options.

It might not re-invent searching, however Searchy does give a pretty (and unique) new face to something we all do every single day.  To learn more about the development of the extension, be sure to check out the Searchy’s official web site.

Been playing with this for a while, and have yet to break it. Seems to work flawlessly each and every time. If you jut type in “firefox keyword” then you will get the same effect as just typing a phrase into the address bar.

Bonus: In Window Vista, the same trick works for me from the Vista search box in the start menu too. Whoo hoo for one less step!

Check out the other posts in this series:

• Launch Tabs from Run Box
• More Command Line Firefox Tips
• Learn to Write a Batch File with Firefox