When Firefox's bookmarks are a scattered mess of links, you can restore order instantaneously by alphabetising them. Simply reordering the column in the Bookmarks Manager won't do it though—you've got to invoke the context menu. Macworld explains:

Select a folder full of bookmarks in the left pane of the Bookmarks Manager window. The right pane will fill with that folder's contents. If you want to sort all the items in the right pane by name, just Control-click (Ed: Windows users, right-click) on an item in the right pane and choose Sort By Name from the contextual menu. Firefox will first organise folders alphabetically, and then follow those folders with alphabetised items that carry URLs.

If you're a heavy bookmarks user, your newly alphabetised list will be a lot easier to navigate.

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You can get around Firefox fast without taking your fingers off the keys, but mouse fans will be happy to know there are a whole lot of ways you can get things done in the 'fox by dragging and dropping text and images as well. For example, you can drag and drop:

• a URL (hyperlinked or not) onto an empty area on the tab bar to immediately have that URL opened in a new background tab.
  
• an image onto the address bar to immediately have that image open in the current tab.

CyberNet News runs down more more drag and drop goodness in Firefox; hit the link to see the rest.

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Mac users eager to try out Firefox 3 Beta 4 without messing with their time-honed Firefox 2 setups can do so with a pretty simple trick. Download the beta, but at the end of the installation process, drag the Firefox icon/application onto your Desktop or another free space instead of the Applications folder. Then rename the file (perhaps something like "firefox 3 test"), and finally place wherever you'd like. Windows users should look to the portable edition for similar risk-free beta-driving.

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If you use Firefox's autocomplete function, blogger Simon Rumble offers up a quick way to fix entries you've mistyped. All you need to do is select the autocomplete entry with the up/down arrows on your keyboard, then hit the Delete key. Bingo, the mistyped autocomplete entry is gone. Nice and simple!

Firefox tip: Delete an autocomplete entry [Simon Rumble] via Be the Signal [Jeff Waugh]

Speaking of Firefox keyboard shortcuts, reader John writes in:

Noticed a peculiar thing on my girlfriend's MacBook the other day—I hit "g" then Enter from Firefox's location bar, and voila, Gmail launched. I have a keyword bookmark on MY computer configured to make Firefox act this way, but not on hers... maybe this is a built-in Firefox "Easter egg"?

Not sure if the g shortcut would be considered an Easter egg, but I confirmed that it works on a pristine Firefox 2.5 profile on Windows, too. Strangely, the dict keyword, which used to take you to dictionary.com, is no longer built in. We're big fans of configuring our own keyword bookmarks. If you haven't already, here's how. Thanks, John!

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When web sites open new windows with JavaScript, they have the ability to disable certain features of the new windows—like your address bar, toolbar, or even resizability. All-things-Mozilla web site MozillaZine details how to tweak your about:config settings to prevent JavaScript from launching these stripped windows. Just type about:config in your address bar, then paste dom.disable_window_open_feature into the filter textbox to start tweaking your settings. We've mentioned this feature once before, but the MozillaZine article goes into great detail on how each change will affect your browser.

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Dan Warne writes he's found a solution to the annoying tendency some websites (especially bank sites) have of forcing open 'naked' windows stripped of your preferences. For example bank websites often pop up small and unresizable windows without your toolbars on them.
He points to a solution at MozillaZine, which explains how to prevent websites from disabling new window features.

1. Open a new tab in Firefox and type about:config into the address bar.

2. Copy and paste this text into the filter box: dom.disable_window_open_feature.

3. Double click each of the items that appears in the list to change the default behaviour. There is a list of the different features and what they do in the MozillaZine article.

Nice tip, thanks Dan!

Stop websites disabling your browser address bar, toolbar, bookmarks etc [Dan Warne]

Long-time Firefox users will remember moments when, usually after a browser crash, they've been unable to restart Firefox, receiving an error message akin to "Firefox cannot use the profile "X" because it is in use." The CyberNet tech blog notes that you can delete a file or two named "parent.lock," ".parentlock," or, in the case of Linux, both "Lock" and ".parentlock," in your Firefox profile folder to solve the problem without having to restart the system. The CyberNet article has the goods on where to find your profile and which files to delete on which systems, and saves many of us a frustrating restart (or five).

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You already know you can open a link in a background tab by clicking it with your mousewheel, but the TechMalaya.com site points out five other mousewheel Firefox tricks that you may not have known. Like this gem, which requires a change to about:config:

Change the value of middlemouse.paste to true. This will let you paste a clipboard content to any text field with the middle mouse button.

Using this tweak coupled with the beloved AutoCopy extension, you could select text on-page and paste it into a textarea (like in a comments response) with a simple click, drag, and mousewheel hit. See more of our favorite Firefox 2 about:config tweaks.

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Firefox tip: If Firefox is too unresponsive for your tastes when it's loading a new web page, the How-To Geek weblog suggests a simple tweak to improve responsiveness. First, enter about:config into your address bar and then add the content.switch.threshold setting (which isn't there by default). Right-click the page and select New -> Integer, name it content.switch.threshold, and give it a value of 1000000. The catch is that Firefox will take slightly longer to load pages, but while it's loading you'll be able to scroll the already-loaded content more easily. If you like that, you may also want to tweak Firefox's rendering speed or check out some of the best Firefox config tweaks.

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