Why don’t you try this? Press the slash (“/”) character on your keyboard. A “Quick Find” bar will appear at the bottom of the web page you are browsing. Type the word you wish to search for in the text box. As you type, the first matching word on the page is highlighted. Press the F3 button to move to the next occurrence of the word. This is one of the accessibility features of the Mozilla Firefox browser.

If you’re not yet using Firefox, you must first download it by clicking on this link and continue learning the rest of its best features. It may also help if you read this guide to switching article.

So, what else?

Tabbed Browsing
Tabbed browsing allows you to open several web pages or sites at the same time and let you view them inside one browser window. After you open a tab, you can type the internet address that you wish to visit in the text box of the location bar. While the page is loading, you can click on the other tab to continue browsing. To do this, click File on the menu bar, and then choose New Tab or to open a new tab simply press CTRL+T. You can open more tabs if you wish.

While you are reading a page, you can right click on some of the links and choose “Open Link in New Tab”. You can continue reading while the new page is loading in the background.

Bookmarks
Place a bookmark on your frequented pages so it will be easy to open them again. Just click on the “Bookmarks” item on the menu bar then choose “Bookmark This Page…” or press “CTRL D” as a shortcut. First, you can organize you bookmarks into folders to group similar items. To do this, click “Bookmarks”, then choose “Organize Bookmarks…” Make sure the Bookmark folder is selected on the left column, then click “New Folder”. Give your new bookmark folder a name, and then click Ok.

You can add annotations to remind yourself of why you bookmarked a particular item. You can sort on any of a number of properties including Name, Location, Date Last Visited, etc. Firefox also lets you associate a Keyword with any bookmark so you can open it by simply typing its keyword in the Location Bar of the browser.

I created a bookmark folder and name it myDefaultPages. I saved 5 of my favorite and commonly used sites. The next time I use my computer, I open the Firefox browser, click Bookmarks, then select myDefaultPages, then I clicked “Open All in Tabs”. Wow, 5 of my favorite pages loading at the same time.

Popup Blocker
Firefox stops annoying popup windows right in their tracks. When Firefox blocks a popup window, it displays an icon in the status bar. Clicking this icon shows a breakdown of the popup(s) that Firefox stopped when loading the current page. You can then allow some or all of the popup windows to be shown.

Plug-ins Support
Aside from supporting the agreed upon standards, Mozilla supports popular plug-ins such as Java, Flash, Acrobat, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, and RealPlayer.

Best Accessibility
Firefox offers the best set of keyboard shortcuts, some of them are:
CTRL+L focus the Location Bar.
CTRL+K focus the Google Bar.
CTRL+T opens a new tab.
CTRL+S you guess it right, save the current page.

When I am through browsing for the day or just wanted to take a rest for the meantime but I wanted to open the same tabs I am browsing right now, I just minimize my Firefox browser and then shutdown my notebook. The next time I open my notebook, I click on the Firefox browser icon, and then a Restore Session or Start New Session dialog is shown. If you choose Restore, all the tabs you were working on last time are loaded. Convenient, isn’t it?

Actually, there are more features to learn. And before I forgot, Mozilla Firefox is Open Source, it means that it is open for development and is FREE. Since it is Open Source, it is guaranteed not to have malicious code or spyware included!

Download right now and make the big switch!