While I’m sure everyone else in the world knows this, apparently in Firefox (at least version 1.5, under Windows XP), you can switch between tabs with your arrow keys. Holy Robin Hood, Batman!
You see, I’ve been trying to decide if I could do without the LastTab extension since I installed version 1.5 and it was automatically deactivated, and as of now, the answer is “yes!”, because I stumbled on this feature by accident (and I haven’t seen it documented anywhere).
So, to use your arrow keys to switch between tabs, just click a tab to select it (if it’s not already selected), then click it again. It also appears that you can just double-click. Whichever action you choose, you will display the tab, then “select’ the tab. You’ll be able to tell by a little box around the tab title.
Once you’ve selected a tab title, just use your arrow keys to navigate. To move left, press left or up. To move right, use right or down. You can also use home to go to the first tab and end to go to the last.
If you hold down the control key while pressing one of these keys, you will “scan” to that tab, but it won’t display it’s contents. The display is pretty fast on my PC, so I’m not sure why you’d want to do this, but it works!
For those of you wondering why you cannot just use control-tab, you certainly can. But it only goes in one direction. You can even control-shift-tab to reverse, but I don’t find the keystrokes as easy to use when jumping back and forth.
Now I just wish there was an easy “select tab title” command. I know you can use control-# (1-9) to select tabs 1-9, respectively. But unless I’m on the first tab or two, that doesn’t help much, as I have to figure out which tab I am on. And if I have more than 9 tabs, it doesn’t work at all! In any case, that select doesn’t select the tab title, so you can’t use it for navigation.
Right now, if I want to jump to another tab, I have to use the mouse to select it (or to select the title). It would be cool if I could use some keyboard shortcut to select the current tab’s title, and then just use the arrow keys to move among them until I find what I want, then reverse it when I want to come back.
Anyone feel like whipping up an extension to do this? I don’t think I’ll have time to do it in the immediate future.
Firefox also has loads of other keyboard shortcuts, including such sweet ones as find previous (shift-f3), opening addresses in new tabs (alt-enter) and automatic domain completion (for .com, .net and .org). You may want to review the list every once in a while to see what else you can do without using the mouse!
Comments
12 responses to “Firefox Tab Navigation via Keyboard”
I know it’s been 10 months since this post, but I was googling for an answer and found your site.
I also found the answer elsewhere.
Thought I’d share for anyone else looking for a way to browse the tabs with control + arrow key (keys)..
Using ctrl and the arrows, you can re-arrange the tabs… not just scan to them.
Great info. Thanks a lot dude. Helped me a lot. Keep up the good work.
You may find this tutorial useful.
I wrote a modification to the tabbox.xml file in the chrome to move forward/back tabs using F2/F3. F3 goes forward a tab, F2 goes back one.
Unfortuantely I don’t know how to make this into an extension, and every time FF updates I have to overwrite the file… I could give someone the code if they can make it into an extension. Just post back.
it’s always handy to also know that Ctrl-T makes a new tab, Alt+Home goes to your homepage, and Ctrl-W closes a tab.
Try the LastTab extension, linked above.
Yes, very nice collection of shortcuts here. Very proficient, very nice indeed.
But you know… using all of these I still have to have both hands in the keyboard. I have to take my right hand away from the mouse and do the works.
I reeeeeally miss the Control-Tab / Contro-Shift-Tab tab browsing. I could have one hand on the mouse and be browsing with the other one.
How can I get that feature back in Firefox 1.5?
That exactly feature. Those same keys.
Can I do it in the about:config screen? Do I need an extension? Or do I have to go back to 1.0 and just be left out of the “1.5 revolution” ? (hehehe)
Anybody have any thoughts on that?
If so, I urge you to please also answer me via e-mail.
Cheers.
Good call – though I only need a single tab, since I don’t use the search box.
The PgUp/PgDown keys aren’t bad either, but for jumping back and forth between tabs rapidly, which I tend to do with some regularity (usually comparing pages), the key combination isn’t completely natural to me. Still, good to know. Thanks!
To select the tab title you can do CTRL+L, to select the address bar and then press TAB twice (first select the search control and then the tab title). To move up and down the tabs, without having to select the tab title, you can use the shortcuts CTRL+PgDown and CTRL+PgUp.