When you use Firefox’s built in search bar, the default behavior is for the search results to be returned in your current tab. This is fine for most people, but for bloggers, it can mean that the search results overwrite something long and unsaved that the back button can’t salvage.

If you have this issue, you can eliminate it by forcing search results to open in a new tab. It’s like a built in safety mechanism for absent-minded bloggers, and it’s really easy to implement through a simple change to the Firefox configuration page.

1. Open a new tab and type about:config into your browser’s address bar as if you were trying to go to a web page. If you’ve never seen the configuration page before, this is where you can make all the custom tweaks that can make Firefox into your own personal browsing machine.
2. There are a lot of properties, so type browser.search.openintab into the filter box to filter out everything except the property that we’re going to modify.
3. Double click anywhere on the line that shows up, and the line will became bold and the value will be set to true.

That’s it. Modifications to about:config are instantaneous, so you will no longer have to worry about losing whatever you’re working on to search results. If you ever give up blogging and want search results to show up in the current tab, just find and double click the property again to set it back to false.

Posted in Blogging