My Favorite Feature You Don't Know About

[rsadelle]

I complained on Twitter last week that the lack of find as you type in Chrome was a deal breaker for me. Based on the responses I got from other people, find as you type is not a feature anyone knows about. Find as you type is pretty much what it says: you start typing, and the browser (Firefox, SeaMonkey, "any Gecko HTML content window") finds whatever you just typed. No more wasting time and keystrokes by hitting Ctrl+F! You can turn find as you type on permanently, or you can use it per instance to search all text by hitting the / key or to search just links by hitting the ' key. I use it all the time, so I have it turned on permanently at home and at work. You can read all kinds of details about it at Mozilla's page about it.

So tell me, what are some of your favorite features (of software, fruit, cars, or anything else you can think of) that I don't know about?

Comments

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Ctrl + or Ctrl -. Ctrl + increases the size of text; ctrl - decreases it. Incredibly handy and I didn't know about it until about a month ago.

[rsadelle]

Oooh, yes, another favorite of mine! Ctrl+0 will return it to the default. These work for zooming in most graphics types programs too - including Adobe Acrobat/Reader.

[megyal]

I wasn't aware of it, but I'm so used to CTRL+F that I'm hardly bothered by it.

[rsadelle]

Too many keystrokes! (I am the kind of geek who types as much as possible and hates extra keystrokes. Any combo keys slow me down!) I'm so used to find as you type that I'm now sad when I have to find something in a program that doesn't have it.

[megyal]

How does it even work? What I'm getting is that...if you want to find a word on a screen, you just type when the window is active and it finds it for you?

[rsadelle]

Exactly! Or, well, that's what it does if you have it turned on permanently. If you don't, you can hit / then type something and it'll find it for you.

[megyal]

Oh, sounds cool.

[icanbreakthesky.livejournal.com]

Oh hey THAT'S what that box is! I keep turning that on by accident.

Not something you don't know, I'm sure, but my favorite thing about Firefox (or any recent web browser) is being able to find websites you've visited by looking for a word in the title or the link text in the address bar. So much less effort than opening history. I only realize how much I use it when I try to do the same thing in the ancient copy of IE we still use at work for some reason.

Although have you used the personas add on to Firefox? I have mine set to random, it makes me really happy whenever I look back at my screen and suddenly something new and beautiful is there.

[rsadelle]

Ah, yes, that is immensely helpful! That's pretty much how I get to things I'm not following a link to.

I'm actually using SeaMonkey, not Firefox (I have issues with change, and I'm using SeaMonkey for browsing and email). I like things to remain whatever color I set them (I am picky!), but awesome that you're finding personas pretty!