10 + Essential Web Browsing Shortcuts
Written by Vygantas Lipskas on February 20, 2009
If you are that kind of person who just loves to squeeze the maximum of your browsing experience, then this topic is for you.
Have you ever thought about your time spent during certain tasks while using web browser? For example: right mouse click > save image, clicking on new tab icons, etc.
Well, wonder no more. We have a list of the most useful keyboard shortcuts which will drastically improve your browsing experience.
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera
CTRL + T (New Tab) – Instead of clicking same and boring tab icon in your web browser, try CTRL + T.
CTRL + C (Copy), CTRL + V (Paste) – Why click right mouse click > copy/paste when you can do the same within a millisecond? Want to cut text? Try CTRL + X. Need to select all? Try CTRL + A.
CLTR + F (Find) – One of the fastest ways to find the text you are looking for.
CTRL + +/- (Zoom In/Out) – Simple yet effective way to zoom in/out.
Home/End (Go to Page Top/Bottom) – A quick way to instantly go to the web page top or bottom. Useful if it requires a lot of scrolling.
ALT + D – Moves your mouse cursor to the address bar.
F5 (Refresh) – Need I say more?
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome
CTRL + Click (Open Link in Background) – Does what it’s designed to do. Works great when opening lots of pages.
CTRL + D (Bookmark) – Speed up your bookmarking process and use CTRL +D instead of your mouse.
Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera
CTRL+J (Transfers) – Well, what can I say. Click and instantly open your transfer’s window.
CTRL + Shift + T or CTRL + Z (Opera Only) – Opens your previously closed tab.
CTRL + U (View Source) – In case you viewing web page source a lot, this is the fastest way to do that.
Instead of using a search box in the top right corner, you can type your search query directly to the address bar.
Firefox with Firebug
CTRL + Shift + C (Inspect Element) – Quick yet effective way to instantly inspect an element.
Opera
CTRL + Left Click (Save Images) – Found a page with nice looking images and would like to save few of them? Instead of repeating same and time wasting procedure, simply, hold CTRL and click on the image you would like to save.
CTRL + B (Paste and Go (in Opera 9.5 shortcut was changed to CTRL + V + Shift which is not so comfortable) – Have you ever wanted to copy and paste URL to your address bar? I am sure you did. So why not use CTRL + B which would past the URL and instantly try to load it without you requiring to press enter. You can actually press CTRL + B without even clicking on the address bar first.
CTRL + Shift + Click (Open Link in Background) – Does what it’s designed to do. Works great when opening lots of pages.
Conclusions
If you think that some of those shortcuts are not for you and mouse is much better option, try it for a day or two first. Yes, there is a learning curve, but once it’s mastered, I am sure you won’t ever look back.
Want More? Check our 5 Web Browsers Features To Save Your Time post.
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You forgot CTRL + K and CTRL + L!!
i use the opera9.2 keyboard layout. i fnd this better ^^
In Opera [Ctrl] + [+/-] will zoom +/-100%
To zoom in or out by 10% you need to use [+] and [-] w/o any additional keys.
Thank you. I really liked that with the “Ctrl+Left click” to save images in Opera:)
10 short cuts super
Zoom fantastic
Big Thanks
Correction
Paste and Go instead of Pate and Go.
Fixed, thank you ;-)
By the way, an even quicker way of zooming in and out, in your web browser is to hold CTRL and use the mouse wheel.
You can create a new tab by middle-clicking or double-clicking the tab-bar in most browsers.
Ctrl+L Will also send you to the location-bar in most browsers.
Paste and go, in Firefox:
Middle-click the favicon
Alt:
Set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to true and you can middle-click anywhere on a page to load an url from the clipboard.
This is the default on Linux and is the first thing I turn off :P
Ctrl+Left-click a link and Middle-click a link opens a tab in the background depending on weather you have checked the “When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately” under the “Tabs” tab in the preferences.
Shift+Ctrl+Left-click a link and Shift+Middle-click a link does the opposite of the above. That is, if you have it set to open links in the background the link will open in the foreground and vice-versa.
‘ can be used to search only for links and after that pressing Enter will go to the url for the link.
I think the following applies to all browsers.
Ctrl+Z can be used when editing any textbox, including the location-bar. Not so useful in most cases, but good to know.
Pressing Escape when editing the location-bar will reset the value to the current url.
Ctrl+D work in Opera too for adding bookmark