6 Other Uses Of The Mouse Scroll Wheel In Firefox

Firefox is a wonderful piece of software. Many of us don't know that it can be configured to give even better performance and many others do not even know of the really good usability features built into Firefox. This article shall reveal you the multiple use of the scroll wheel in Firefox.

Closing Tabs

To close a tab just place your mouse cursor on a tab and click with the scroll wheel. This is more convenient and faster than clicking the small cross on the tabs, especially when you want to close several tabs.

Scrolling through your tabs

When you have many tabs open, an arrow appears on either end of the tab bar to let you scroll through the tab bar and view the hidden tabs. There is a much easier way. Just place your mouse cursor anywhere on the tab bar and scroll your mouse wheel up and down to scroll through the tab bar.

Opening hyperlinks in a new tab

Very often we would like to open a link in a page in a new tab. The normal way to achieve this is by right-clicking on the the link and choosing €˜Open Link in New Tab€˜. Here€^TMs a much quicker way. Just click on the link with the scroll wheel. Presto! the link will open in a new tab. You can even click on the Home button or the Forward/Back button to open the respective url in a new tab.

Paste URL & Go

Sometimes you would need to copy a link from another source and paste it into the address bar and hit Enter to open the link. There is an easier alternative in Firefox. You can just press the scroll button in the content area to paste, and go to the url. By default this functionality is disabled in Firefox but you can enable it with two simple tweak in about:config. Why two tweaks? Because of a bug in Firefox, the €˜Paste URL & Go€^TM does not work if AutoScroll is enabled. So besides enabling the paste and go feature you need to disable autoscroll. So here we go. Enter about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Look for the Preference Name middlemouse.contentLoadURL and double-click on it to change it€^TMs value to true.

Also look for the Preference Name general.autoScroll and change its value from true to false by double-cliking on it.

That€^TMs all to it. Here are few different ways you can use the Paste URL & Go feature after you have copied a url.
Pressing the wheel button in the content area pastes the url and loads the page in the current tab.
Holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the wheel button opens the url in a new tab.
Holding down the Shift key and pressing the wheel button opens the url in an entirely new Firefox instance.

Scrolling through the tabs

When you have many tabs open, an arrow appears on either end of the tab bar to let you scroll through the tab bar and view the hidden tabs. There is a much easier way. Just place your mouse cursor anywhere on the tab bar and scroll your mouse wheel up and down to scroll through the tab bar.

Moving Forward/Back

You can use the scroll wheel as an alternative to using the Forward and Back buttons on the toolbar. Hold down the Shift key and rotate the wheel forward to view the next page or rotate backward to see the previous page.

Zooming Of Pages

To zoom into a page, hold the Ctrl key and turn the scroll wheel away from you. Similarly, to zoom out, hold the Ctrl key and rotate the scroll wheel towards you.

If you know more uses of the mouse scroll wheel in Firefox, please drop a comment and let other viewers know about it.