One thing that you may not realize is how many different actions can be performed simply by dragging and dropping text or URL’s in Firefox. Most browsers actually support similar actions, but we thought it would be useful to provide an overview of the different ways you can put it to work.
You can drag and drop…
- a URL (hyperlinked or not) onto the address bar to immediately be taken to that site in the current tab.
- a URL (hyperlinked or not) onto an existing tab or blank tab to immediately replace it with the new URL.
- a URL (hyperlinked or not) onto an empty area on the tab bar to immediately have that URL opened in a new background tab.
- highlighted text onto the address bar to replace the URL with the text, but it will not be executed immediately.
- a single highlighted word (cannot contain spaces) onto an existing tab or blank tab to replace it with www.[highlighted word].com immediately. Where [highlighted word] is the single word you were dragging and dropping.
- a single highlighted word (cannot contain spaces) onto an empty area on the tab bar to immediately have www.[highlighted word].com opened in a background tab. Where [highlighted word] is the single word you were dragging and dropping.
- an image onto the address bar to immediately have that image open in the current tab.
- an image onto an existing tab or blank tab to immediately replace it with the image.
- an image onto an empty area on the tab bar to immediately have the image opened in a new background tab.
Tip: When dragging and dropping the text, images, and URL’s you can also hold down the Control key to force them to open in a new tab.
Ryan:
Thanks a lot for this post. You have made my surfing days a lot shorter. I owe you one.
Cheers,
Omar.-
I knew a couple of these but not all.
Appreciate you not assuming this is too simple to post. It’s always a bummer to miss out on the simple (and useful) stuff.
TNX!
Wow! I wasn’t aware of most of these. Awesome tips.
Jeez, using Fx for several years & I wasn’t aware of any of these.
Thanks,
Marsman
I was also unaware of these, but at the same time I don’t see how many of them (besides dragging urls into the tab bar) are that helpful.
This can also be done with one of my fave browsers … Maxthon.
Existed since 2.0 or was it 1.5.. been so long as I use the 1.9 Trunk nightlies.
Try gabbing the tab down abit with left-click and release to reload the tab.
Which is just another IE shell…
That is wicked cool, neat touch there Mozilla. Oh and thanks for sharing this tip with us.
This is completely useless. You can right click on a link or picture and do the same things, without pointless dragging.
To be honest I’m really shocked at how many of you enjoyed this tip. The anonymous commenter above said that they appreciated us writing about this instead of assuming it is too simple to post. I was actually on the fence as to whether something like this would be seen as stupid since it is so simple.
What about text that isn’t hyperlinked? About half of the things we listed above can’t be done by right-clicking.
Check out the add-ons Drag De Go and/or Drag & Drop Zone for more advanced drag actions in Firefox!
Hey, a great tip that isn’t well documented at all, I prefer to middle click to open a new tab myself.
Speaking of dragging URLs though, I also find it handy to drag a URL into my bookmarks and into a specific category (I have tons to satisfy my OCD tendencies), it can save a couple clicks and having to manually select the category yourself can sometimes be a pain. The logo at the top of a page usually links to the homepage of a site so if I find a really useful site I just click the logo and drag the link into my bookmarks wherever it belongs.
Drag n droppin is been around for as long as i can remember, the url thing hmm ok maybe not that old…but since windows 95 you can drag pics to open alone in the browser.
You can also drag n drop pics to your desktop to quick save them in your computer. I first did it with a site that had right click disable and i was too tired to go to the source and find the pic. Also when XP came out with the little save as, print (n whatever else was there) button on mouse over pics i remember seeing friends using that damn button and going thru all the SAVE AS pic window and i told this trick to them and they were amaze.
Funny that you mention Drag and Drop Zone… we’re covering that extension and a few others in our CyberNotes for tomorrow.
We were actually going to mention that, but we didn’t want the list to become so overbearing that no one would want to read it.
Thanks for the tip though!
Great tip! We might have to write that up in its own article. I’m sure that could save a lot of time for people.
First of all, I don’t know why it says my name is Nate above. Second, the dragging and dropping is annoying, because I use my laptop touchpad to navigate pages, and sometimes it starts dragging something that I don’t want dragged anywhere, and then I have to click to undrag it.
I still don’t see one useful application of dragging and dropping you can do with a right click. View image is a right click option. Right click and save image if you want it. When would you ever need to go to [a certain word that you see].com? Probably never. And if you do, can you just type it yourself (or copy and paste) and press ctrl+enter. I bet it’s faster.
u missed one most important drag n drop.
“drag elements (text, image, url, anything) cross tabs of same/different window, drop in text area of that tab”. much more useful when writing blogs.
You might want to refer to this setting, particularly if the cursor icon is hiding exactly where you are dropping.
[kb.mozillazine.org]
That’s an excellent tip! I was actually looking for a way to disable the images when dragging and dropping tabs the other day.
Soo… How the hell do i turn this crap off?
I want to know how to turn off the dragging of URLs and Search terms FROM the address box and the search box. I don’t care what gets dragged INTO them (because I have no need to do that) but I want to turn off the ability to drag OUT of them.
One thing I hate about Firefox is that if I drag-select text in the address box (and I think search box) so I can copy, delete, or modify part of it, it decides for itself that what I really was doing was dragging it — onto itself. This causes a page refresh, interrupting whatever media was playing on the page.
This violates two common-sense expectations of text boxes. First, text boxes don’t auto-select everything (or anything) when you enter them. Second, selected text in text boxes usually cannot be dragged anywhere. The second surprise isn’t so bad, because it’s a harmless convenience for those who know it’s there and want it, until it’s combined with the first and becomes extremely annoying. The key rule (or Oath, if you will) of user interface design is “do not surprise”.
This behaviour also violates a common-sense quality issue, which is answering the question “What did the user mean to do, by dragging the same URL back onto itself?”. The obvious answer is “nothing”, because that’s what the Reload button is for, and one click is easier than click-drag. Dragging the same URL onto itself is most likely to be user error (itself a result of poor design).
I’m aware that if I click TWICE in these boxes, then I get the expected behaviour, but why is Firefox the only application that I need to do this for? It shouldn’t be that way.
Amen… I got here exactly because I’m looking for a way to disable drag and drop OUT of the address and search bars. Far too often I’m just trying to select a portion of the URL or search text to copy and it decides I’m dragging some of it’s own text back on to itself. This is made so much worse when it selects all text upon entering the text area.
Single click = position cursor
Double click = select word
Triple click = select all
about:config
(filter on “select”)
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll false
browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll false
browser.triple_click_selects_paragraph true
This seems to get at least some of the traditional behaviour back.