All too frequently I come across a posting on a blog or a tech website (such as this: Easy Firefox 'open in a new tab' : Lifehacker) heralding middle-clicking on links to open new tabs as the hot new time-saving technique.
I just have to wonder, how the hell were they opening new tabs before? Did they use the tab button? Did they use the incrementally more robust "Ctr-T?" Did they not even know about tabbed browsing until they slipped while scrolling on a link?
The whole fucking reason to switch to Firefox, Opera, etc. IS THE FUCKING ABILITY TO OPEN NEW TABS IN A NEW WINDOW WITH A CLICK!!!
You can also do other fun things with the middle mouse button, such as close a tab by middle-clicking on it as well as re-open the last three closed tabs by middle-clicking on the tab-close button.
I am sure that any person that just discovered this tip would have their mind blown by the Tabbrowser Preferences extension or the awesome (if buggy) Tabbrowser Extensions extension (may sound redundant, but it is Japanese in origin). I prefer the latter, since my tabgroups (opened by middle-clicking bookmark groups) are color-coded.
A more useful tabbed-browsing hack is to map another mouse button specifically for opening/killing new tabs. I have a Intellimouse Explorer 4.0, and I use its 5th button mapped to open and kill tabs. The mouse has an awesome scroll wheel, but it is imprecise to push-down to open links (especially rapid-fire tab manipulation).
Categories: firefox, tabs, extensions, hacks, hacks?
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1 comment:
I can't get my damn mouse configured to do the middle click thing in Firefox. Drives me NUTS.
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