Three Firefox 4 tips

The latest version of Firefox, version 4.0, makes a few changes that take a little getting used to.

  1. The navigation bar is below the tabs by default.
  2. The “home” icon has moved from the left end of the navigation bar to the right.
  3. The little icon on the right end of the address bar that let’s you subscribe to RSS feeds is gone.

If you want the navigation bar back above the tabs, you can go to View -> Toolbars and uncheck “Tabs on Top.”

If you find the new home icon inconvenient, you could just learn the keyboard shortcut: Alt-Home. (By the way, you can navigate back and forward with Alt-Left Arrow and Alt-Right Arrow.)

If you miss the RSS subscribe button when reading blogs,

you can add it back with this add-on. [Link no longer available.]

9 thoughts on “Three Firefox 4 tips

  1. sherifffruitfly

    Not a chance in hell I’m moving to 4 until I’m sure all my plugins have upgrades available.

  2. You can also get the RSS button back, using the one natively provided by Mozilla. It’s no longer in the address bar, but they did provide a button that can be added to any of your toolbars.

    Too add the button you need to:
    Right Click on an empty area of your toolbars, (Tip: The right edge of the Tab Bar works great,) and select Customize.
    Search through the icons, one should look like an RSS icon.
    Drag + Drop where you want. I prefer the very right side of the address bar, so that it’s near where it used to be.

  3. You can also subscribe to a page’s RSS feeds using the “Subscribe to this page” item in the bookmarks menu, which appears next to the home button.

  4. Furthering the “That’s where they put it”, feel free to drag / drop in that view to put the home / refresh buttons wherever you like.

  5. Firefox 4 is back to being competitive with Chrome. They have different strengths, but it’s no longer the case that Firefox is simply _slower_. So I’m using it now, and probably will continue for at least a while. It’s nice to have competition. (Of course, as an XP user used to Chrome, I turned off the “menu” toolbar — that gives you a user interface closer to Chrome, and I’d say the Firefox button makes it better.)

    One thing I’ve always hated was the way Firefox worked with Google Reader — how it took you to that stupid iGoogle choice page, and then subscribed you to the feed without a preview. Well, I just found the solution: it takes you straight to your Google Reader preview, no extra clicks and no subscription unless you ask for it.

    Info at: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/reader/thread?tid=7ba29e3f44b6358e&hl=en

    -Wm

  6. Hi John,
    This is a very simple question which I expect very short answer.
    How we can be sure the a particular Firefox plugin does only its job not catching our information and other security hacks?
    Thanks in advance.
    Developer

Comments are closed.