Mozilla Firefox is my favorite web browser for all it’s features and support for standards. And recently due to very poor Internet speeds I stumbled upon a feature I never knew existed. I was looking for the option to stop images from loading to increase the page loading speeds. I decided to look through all the tabs and check out all the options. I found this feature in the advanced tab - “Search for text when I start typing”.

I never knew this could be done in Firefox! In fact I don’t really know if this is a new feature in Firefox 2 or if it has been there in previous releases. But I love the ability to begin a search by just typing. Apparently enabling this feature enables the quick find bar - again something I didn’t know existed. I usually searched by hitting F3 and typing whatever I was looking for. Now it’s much easier because while browsing the page you just type whatever you are looking for to find it on the page! But there are a couple downsides to this feature of course. Web services like Bloglines and Gmail for example have keyboard shortcuts that you could inadvertently activate while trying to find something. Also the quick find bar disappears after 5 seconds which could be less according to some. To change the amount of time it remains active just type about:config in location bar and type find the in the filter input box. Change the accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout by right clicking on it and selecting modify to whatever you wish. Remember that 1000 ms is equal to 1 second.