Skip to main content

Secret Firefox Trick: Prevent Browser from Stealing Focus

Here is probably one of the most useful Firefox hack that I have encountered in the recent times - it prevents me from lot of frustration and saves lot of time.

Problem Description: Say, you have set Firefox as your default web browser. So when you click an external hyperlink in another application or file like a Microsoft Word document, Adobe PDF file, Outlook email or your desktop newsreader, the corresponding webpage is automatically opened inside Firefox.

Excellent but the problem here is that Firefox browser window takes away the focus from the current application and sends that application to the background. So I have to minimize Firefox each time or click the application icon in the Windows status bar to bring back Microsoft Outlook or Word to the foreground.

Why stealing focus frustrates me ? When I am reading RSS feeds inside a news reader (in my case, FeedDemon) I keep clicking on URLs that I find interesting but at the same time, I want to remain inside my RSS reader. Only when I have finished reading all my unread news items, I want go back to the browser window and read the webpages from there.

Firefox Hack to prevent the focus problem It is actually very simple to instruct Firefox so that it opens a new tab from a link sent by another application but continue to run in the background. Here are the steps:

1. Open a new Firefox tab and type about:config

2. In the Filter bar, type browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground

3. The value of this is False by default. Double click the line to toggle it and set it to True.

4. Restart Firefox.

More Firefox Hacks:
» Amazing Firefox Search Bar Tricks
» Firefox Keyboard Tricks for Power Users

Popular posts from this blog

Learn to Create a Firefox Search Plugin in Less Than 2 Minutes

Almost every blog has a site search form where you just type in the search query and press enter to digg through the archives of that blog . The only drawback here is that you first have to visit the site homepage to locate the search box. And there's also a possibility that the site has no search form at all. This tutorial will show you a very simple Firefox hack that allows you to search any blog straight from the Firefox search bar without having to visit the actual blog . And there's something for IE users as well. Related: Firefox Search Bar Hacks First the not-so-good approach though it works with IE: Type the following query in the Google IE toolbar or in the Firefox Search Box with Google selected as the default engine: site:labnol.blogspot.com adobe captivate This query will retrieve all documents about Adobe Captivate on Digital Inspiration. You can replace labnol.blogspot.com with any site URL that you intend to search. You may have know the above trick already but i

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.