Firefox

From UCanWiki

Contents 1 About Firefox 2 Getting Firefox 3 Basic Firefox controls 4 Links 5 Using tabs to quickly move between webpages 5.1 To open a new tab 5.2 Switching between tabs, and closing tabs 6 Closing Firefox when many tabs are open 7 Creating and using a bookmark 7.1 To create a bookmark 7.2 To use a bookmark 8 Creating and opening a bookmark in Firefox 3 (with add on) 8.1 To create a bookmark 8.2 Opening a bookmark 9 Printing webpages 9.1 Displaying a print preview 9.2 Printing a selection from a webpage 9.3 Copying information from a webpage, and pasting it into a word processor 10 The Firefox Spellchecker 10.1 Installing the dictionary 10.2 Forcing Firefox to check spelling in a given field 10.3 Using the spellchecker 11 Troubleshooting 12 Saving an image 13 Printing an image

About Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a web browser: a program you can use to access websites. It can be downloaded and used for free by anyone.

Getting Firefox

Firefox can be downloaded from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/. The "Free Download" link at the top of the page will automatically find the correct version for your computer.

Basic Firefox controls

When you load the Firefox program, you will see a window that looks something like this:

There are four areas of this window which you need to make note of. These are all labelled in the above picture:

1. The back button. Click here to go back to the previous webpage you were visiting.
2. The home button. Click here to go back to your home page; i.e., the webpage that loads when you first load Firefox.
3. The main pane. This is where webpages are displayed.
4. The address bar. This is where you can type in addresses for websites you know. For example, typing http://www.yahoo.co.uk will take you to the Yahoo! webpage.

Links

All of the webpages on the world wide web are interconnected via hyperlinks - often abbreviated simply to links. Links are pictures of text on a webpage that you can click on to take you to another webpage. For the moment we'll just worry about text links. Have a look at this picture of a list of search results from the Google search engine:

1. Whenever text is blue and underlined, it is a link to another webpage. Click on it to go to that webpage.
2. It is the convention that all links on webpages should be blue and underlined. However, a lot of websites do not follow this convention, so it can be difficult to tell, at first, what text on a webpage is a link and what isn't. But help is at hand - if you're not sure whether a piece of text is a link, just move the mouse over it: if the mouse turns into a finger, like in the picture, the text is a link.
3. This link is a purple colour - that's because you've already been to the website it is linking to.

Using tabs to quickly move between webpages

Firefox makes it possible to have more than one webpage open at a time. Each webpage is opened in a different "tab", so that you can easily switch between them.

To open a new tab

1. Click on the File menu.
2. Click on New Tab.
3. A new tab will open, simply type the address of the website you want to go to in the address bar at the top of the screen.

Switching between tabs, and closing tabs

1. When you have webpages open in multiple tabs, they will be displayed in a row along the top of teh screen.
2. Simply click on the tab you want to open the respective webpage.
3. Click on the cross on the right-hand end of a tab to close that tab.

Closing Firefox when many tabs are open

If you try and shut down Firefox when a number of tabs are open, your computer will display the following dialog box:

This is displayed in case you had forgotten that you had a number of tabs open. If you really do want to close all of these tabs in one go, click "Close tabs". Otherwise, click "Cancel".

Creating and using a bookmark

If there is a website that you visit frequently, you may wish to "bookmark" it so that you don't have to remember its address.

To create a bookmark

1. Click on the "Bookmarks" menu, and then on "Bookmark this page". A new window opens.
2. In the new window, click the "Done" button.

To use a bookmark

1. Click the "Bookmarks" menu;
2. Click the bookmark for the website you wish to go to.

Creating and opening a bookmark in Firefox 3 (with add on)

If there is a website that you visit frequently, you may wish to "bookmark" it so that you don't have to remember its address.

To create a bookmark

1. Click on the star in the address bar. A new window opens.
2. Press enter on the keyboard.

Opening a bookmark

1. Click the "Bookmarks" menu. A list of bookmarks opens.
2. Click the bookmark for the website you wish to go to.

Printing webpages

Printing out a webpage can be a little problematic. This is because webpages are designed to be viewed on the screen, rather than on paper. There are three ways round this problem: you can either perform a print preview, which will display, on your computer's screen, how a webpage will be printed out; or you can highlight the section of the page you want to print; or you can copy and paste the webpage, or part of it, into a word processor such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer.

Displaying a print preview

1. Click on the "File" menu in Firefox
2. In the "File" menu, click on "Print Preview"
3. A new window will open, showing you exactly how the webpage will look when you have printed it out. At the top of this window there are two buttons labelled "Print" and "Page Setup". Next to "Page Setup" is a set of controls that allows you to move through the pages in the print preview:

This set of controls allows you to move through the document, page by page. Use the controls to move through the document, and make a note of which pages you would like to print.

Then, click the "Print" button in the top left of the screen. A new window opens. Around half way down on the left hand side of this window is a section labelled "Print range". In this section, select "Pages" and then type in which pages you would like to print: typing in "3" in the first box and "5" in the second box will print pages 3, 4, and 5, for example. Typing the same page number in to the first and second boxes will ensure that only that page is printed. When you have told the computer which pages you would like printed, click the "OK" button to print them.

Printing a selection from a webpage

1. Highlight the selection you would like to print.
   1. This can sometimes be difficult, especially when the selection you want to print is not all displayed on the page at the same time. If this is the case, just select the first few lines of the selection you would like to print, and then hold down the "shift" key. With the shift key held down, repeatedly press the down arrow key. Every time you press the down arrow key, another line will be added to the selection.
2. Once you have selected everything that you would like to print, open the "File" menu and select "Print".
3. A new window will open titled "Print". Around half way down on the left hand side of this window is a section labelled "Print range". In this section, select "Selection" to ensure that only the part of the webpage you have highlighted is printed.
4. Click "OK": the area of the webpage you highlighted will now print.

Copying information from a webpage, and pasting it into a word processor

1. Highlight the selection that you would like to print.
2. Copy the selection by using Ctrl+C - more information on this can be found in the article on cut, copy and paste
3. Open up your word processor program - this will usually be OpenOffice Writer or Microsoft Word.
4. In your word processer program, use Ctrl+V to paste the information you copied from the webpage. Once the information has appeared in your word processor, you can edit it, and then print it as normal.

The Firefox Spellchecker

More recent versions of Firefox (2.0+) include the option of checking the spelling of information you type in to websites. Before you start using this feature, you will need to make sure that an appropriate (i.e., usually English) dictionary of words is installed.

Installing the dictionary

THIS SECTION IS INCOMPLETE. YOU MAY WISH TO ADD TO IT.

The first time you right click a field you want to spell check the option isn't there but the option to install dictionaries is, just select that and it will take you to the correct download page.

Forcing Firefox to check spelling in a given field

By default, Firefox will check the spelling only in certain fields. It will not check the spelling of smaller fields such as the area of Google where you type in your search terms. However, you can force Firefox to spellcheck in any field you like:

1. Right-click on the field you want Firefox to spellcheck;
2. Click "Spell-check this field".

Firefox will now automatically spell-check the field you selected.

Using the spellchecker

As you type into a field that Firefox is spellchecking, incorrectly spelt words will be underlined in red. Right-clicking on these red-underlined words gives you the following options:

• Select the correct spelling of the word from a list;
• "Add to dictionary": use this when Firefox thinks you have made a spelling error, when in fact you haven't.

Troubleshooting

THIS SECTION IS INCOMPLETE. YOU MAY WISH TO ADD TO IT.

Firefox will occasionally fail to display a website, and display one of the following error messages. Here is what to do if you get one of these error messages:

• The connection has timed out
  • This error usually occurs when there is something wrong with the computer you are trying to connect to - i.e., the computer on the internet which stores the website you are trying to view. It is very unlikely that there is anything wrong with your computer. Wait ten minutes and then try connecting to the website again

Saving an image

Sometimes you might want to save an image displayed on your website, so that it is stored on your computer. Once the image is stored on your computer you can do many things with it; for example, you could attach it to an email and send it to a friend.

Note that, sometimes, clicking on a small image takes you to a larger version of that image. For example, the images in Wikipedia articles are often smaller versions of an original, larger image. To access the larger image, click on the small image.

1. Right click on the image you want to save. In the small menu that pops up, click "Save Image As...".
2. A window opens which allows you to choose whereabouts on your computer you want to save the image. To to the folder you want to save the image in, and then click "Save". Before you click save, you can change the name the image will save under, if you like.
3. That's it - the image will now be saved to the location on your computer that you specified.

Printing an image

In order to print a picture that you have found on the web, do the following:

1. Right click on the picture.
2. A small menu appears; in this menu, click on "View Image".
3. The picture will be displayed on its own. Now click on The "File" menu, and select "Print Preview".
4. A new window will open which shows you exactly how the picture will look when it is printed out.
   1. If you want to make the picture bigger, click on the drop-down box labelled "Scale", which is in the middle of the top of the window.
   2. If you want your picture to print as "landscape" rather than "portrait" (i.e., so that it prints across the long side of the paper rather than the short side), click the "landscape" button towards the top right of the window. Once you have done this you might find that you have more room to make the picture larger; if this is the case you can adjust "Scale" again to make the picture larger
5. Click the "Print" button in the top left of the screen.
6. A window titled "Print" appears. Select how many copies of the picture you want to print, and then click "OK". Your picture will now print.

Note that if you enlarge a picture too much, the quality of the picture might decrease.