Welcome to Mozilla! One of the most popular ways people use Mozilla is to browse the Web. Navigator, the Mozilla component that lets you visit web pages, offers many ways to visit web pages and search the Web.
This section introduces you to Navigator, and how you can use it to browse, search, and save web pages.
In this section: Copying, Saving, and Printing Pages Using Languages and International Content |
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When you start Mozilla, you see Navigator, your browser. A "What's New" page appears automatically in the browser window when you first launch Mozilla.
After the first launch, you will normally see your home page when you launch Mozilla. Unless you choose a home page yourself, your home page is chosen by your network or Internet service provider, or you see Mozilla's home page.
To choose your own home page, see Specifying How Mozilla Starts Up.
Tips:
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You move to a new page by typing its URL—its location (address) on the Web. URLs normally begin with "http://," followed by one or more names that identify the address. For instance, "http:/mozilla.org".
Using the lock icon near the lower-right corner of the window, you can check a web page's security status at any time. For details, see Checking Security for a Web Page.
Tip: To quickly select the URL in the Location Bar, press Ctrl+L (Cmd+L> on Mac OS).
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Location Bar
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Don't know a URL? You can type part of a URL, such as "cnn" (for www.cnn.com); or you can type a general word, such as "gifts" or "flowers." Navigator guesses what page you want to view, or displays a page with a choice of links related to the word you typed.
If you are new to the Internet, see the New to the Net Tutorial.
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Most web pages contain links you can click to move to other pages.
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There are several ways to re-visit pages:
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Back Forward |
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Location Bar |
Tip: The Sidebar History tab also allows you to choose from pages you've visited during the past several sessions. For information, see Adding Sidebar Tabs.
The history list contains links to recently visited pages. The Location Bar list contains links to pages you've typed into the Location Bar and then visited.
To access the history list from Navigator, open the Go menu and choose History. To access the Location Bar list, click the arrow at the right end of the Location Bar.
Tip: To quickly open the history list, press Ctrl+H (Cmd+Shift+H on Mac OS).
If you don't want the Location Bar or history list to display the pages you've been visiting, you can clear the history list and Location Bar history entirely or selectively.
To delete all pages from the Location Bar or history list, begin from the Navigator window:
To selectively delete pages from the history list, do any of the following:
Tip: To sort the history list, click one of the categories (Title, Location, or Last Visited). Click the title again to reverse the order.
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If a page is taking too long to appear, or you change your mind and don't want to view it, click the Stop button.
To refresh the current page, or get the most up-to-date version, click the Reload button, or press Ctrl+R (Cmd+R on Mac OS).
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Reload
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Stop
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To refresh the current page and reset all changes made (if the page contains a form), hold down the Shift key and click the Reload button, or press Ctrl+Shift+R (Cmd+Shift+R on Mac OS).
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The addresses, or URLs, of web pages can be quite long and difficult to remember. Fortunately, it's not necessary to memorize URLs in order to browse the Web. Your browser has a list of bookmarks, which are pointers to interesting web pages.
To go to a bookmarked page, begin from the Navigator window:
Tip: To retrace your steps, click the Back arrow.
You can save your own bookmarks to point to pages you frequently visit, or to other interesting places on the Web. See Creating New Bookmarks for more information.
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When you visit more then one web page at a time, you can use Tabbed Browsing to navigate the Web faster and easier.
Tabbed Browsing lets you open tabs, each displaying a web page, within a single Navigator window. You don't have to have several windows open to visit several different web pages. This frees up space on your desktop. You can open, close, and reload web pages conveniently in one place without having to switch to another window.
You can manage your navigation tabs easily and control when tabs are opened automatically. For more information about setting Tabbed Browsing preferences, see Navigator Preferences - Tabbed Browsing.
To learn more about using Tabbed Browsing, see Tabbed Browsing.
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In addition to navigating the Web with Navigator, you can let the Web come to you by using Sidebar.
Sidebar is a customizable frame in your browser where you can keep items that you need to use all the time—the latest news and weather, your address book or Buddy List, stock quotes, a calendar—and many other available options. Sidebar presents these items to you in tabs that it continually updates.
Mozilla comes with some Sidebar tabs already set up, but you can customize Sidebar by adding, removing, and rearranging tabs. For details, see My Sidebar.
To view an item in Sidebar, click its tab.
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Sidebar Handle |
If it is not already open, open Sidebar by clicking its handle. If the handle is missing, open the View menu in Navigator, choose Show/Hide, and then Sidebar from the submenu. |
Tip: To quickly open or close the Sidebar, press F9
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There are three ways to search quickly: from the Location Bar, from Sidebar, and from the Net Search page.
Searching for web pages on a particular topic is as easy as typing a question, or just a word or two, into the browser's Location Bar, as shown below.
For example, if you want to find information about baby dolls:
After you perform a search, the results are saved in Sidebar's Search tab until you do a new search. You don't have to click the Back button to retrieve the search results.
Note: You can also use Internet Keywords to search from the Location Bar.
The Sidebar Search tab lets you quickly search and bookmark your search results. For example, if you want to find information about toy cars:
Note: If the Sidebar Search tab contains a list of search engines from which to choose, then it is set to search in Advanced mode and you will have to choose one or more search engines before clicking Search. You can keep it that way or change to a basic setting in Preferences.
Tip: To display the next or previous page of search results quickly, click the Next and Previous buttons at the bottom of the Sidebar Search tab.
The Net Search page lets you type in a Search term or phrase, or explore several categories (such as Arts & Entertainment, Business, and many more) that may interest you. To visit the Net Search page, perform one of these steps:
Mozilla allows you to search for words you select within a web page:
Mozilla opens a new window and uses your default search engine to search for your selected words. To learn how to change the search engine used to search for your selected words, see Navigator Preferences - Internet Search.
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You can set the Sidebar Search tab to Advanced mode, which lets you narrow a search or choose one or more search engines.
You can specify which search engines should be used for different categories of searches. For example, you can select one set of search engines to search for travel, and select another set of search engines to search for software.
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You can choose a different search engine as the default. You can also specify how you want search results displayed in Sidebar.
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Internet Keywords work with the Location Bar to help you quickly find specific types of information. There are several ways to use Internet Keywords:
Hint: The most commonly used Internet Keywords are listed in the pull-down list to the left of the Location Bar. Click the triangle and choose from the list. To see a longer list of keywords, choose List of Keywords.
Important: To use Internet Keywords, you must press Enter on your keyboard (Return on Mac OS) instead of clicking the Search button. Pressing Enter activates the Internet Keyword feature; clicking Search initiates a search.
To see the difference, try this:
If typing Internet Keywords into the Location Bar is not working for you, check your Smart Browsing preferences to be sure the Internet Keywords feature is enabled.
To see a recent stock quote for a company, type "quote" followed by the company's stock ticker symbol, and press Enter.
If you don't know a company's stock ticker symbol, type the company's name. The quote page will list all companies with similar names, and you can choose the one for which you want a quote.
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To find text within the page you are currently viewing in Navigator:
To find the same word or phrase again:
Other than searching text through the Find dialog, you can also search by typing directly into a Web page.
To search for a link, type several characters into the active browser window to navigate to any link with that text in it.
If you repeat the same character, it will start to c