In my capacity as “the guy who knows something about computers”, I occasionally get a phone call from a frantic friend or acquaintance to come round and help them fix their computer. Their problems normally come about because they’d thought they’d see what would happen if they deleted the “Windows” folder or because they thought it was their lucky day when someone emailed them an attachment entitled “nakedBritneySpearsphotos.exe”. I guess you get the idea what kind of people we’re talking about.

Whenever any major motion picture has a “hacker” character, they always show the actor violently typing on their custom interface and causing all kinds of programs to pop up just from their keystrokes. Now, I’m no hacker to be sure, but I do like the ability to access any program or file at the touch of a key. A utility that does just this is called a “launcher” and makes the process of finding and opening things on your computer easier than navigating through a bunch of windows. In the past I have tried Launchy and RocketDock, but neither of them have completely satisfied me.

I was stunned at the positive reception my last Firefox tips post received so when I discovered a new tip today, I decided to share it on Make Use Of. It’s obvious you guys like Firefox tips so here’s another one for your arsenal - navigating between pages with your keyboard.

When you want to go back to a previous page or go forward to another page, most of you would probably immediately reach for the mouse and use the arrow keys on your browser.

But there is a way to do it with the keyboard!