Monday, November 19th, 2007
Making the backspace key in Firefox a shortcut key to go back in Ubuntu!

Coming from Windows a few months ago, one of the things I took for granted was the backspace key being a shortcut key for the back button on my web browser - Firefox.

Once I shifted over to Ubuntu, this shortcut was missing from a default installation. If you want to replicate how the Firefox web browser on Windows has mapped the backspace key to go back a page on linux based systems, do the following:

    * Open up firefox
    * In the address bar, type about:config *this should give you a payload of preferences going down the page*
    * Once this happens, enter the word “backspace” in the filter field, this should narrow your entry to one that says browser.backspace_action.
    * Double click on the entry and change the value to 0 instead of 1.

The change should be immediate, so if you now press the [Backspace] key, it functions as a back button. I must have done this a several times when I was installing and reinstalling distributions as I messed around with my installations, but kept forgetting how to do it. :)

So this is more a quick note than any ground breaking hack.













In Windows, the default for Firefox is to select the entire url in the address bar when you single left click into it. Under Ubuntu, this doesn't happen, and you have to double click. If you use Firefox in both OS on a regular basis then this tip might help to avoid some annoyance.

Open Firefox

type:
about:config
in the address bar and click Go (or press Enter/Return)

In the filter box type:
click
From the filtered list you need to work with:
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll
Right click on this entry and select "Toggle" from the drop down menu, to change the value to "true"

Close Firefox

Re-open Firefox and single left click in the address bar, you should find the entire url is selected :-)

Of course, if you prefer the Ubuntu default action, then do the reverse in your Windows Firefox :-)


EDIT:

I have collected together the other keyboard shortcuts available for working with the address and search bars, Thanks to everyones contribution to make my trick more complete, and to morfeibg for gathering them together
Here are the other helpful shortcuts that were posted:
Ctrl + L - selects the URL address
Ctrl + I - shows page information
Ctrl + K - selects the text in the search bar
Hitting Esc when the pointer is in the address bar selects the url



















>>> Create a shortcut >>>

ln -s [target] [createwhere]

(e.g., ln -s /windows/ /home/user/Desktop/)









Ctrl+H : show hidden files