I was just forced to use IE6 for a short while. I didn’t do this for quite a long time, and I was surprised how frustrated I was with the experience. Part of it was because I didn’t have my bookmarks. However, it also made me think about all the little things I’ve gotten used to in Firefox, which didn’t seem like a big deal when I’ve started using them, and now I can’t live without them.

So, I’ve conducted a little experiment. I’ve tried to do what I usually do online for one day, but using only IE6, to see which features I’ll miss the most (except, of course, the obvious ones, like tabs).

This is what I came up with. None of these are really groundbreaking, but they might be viewed as little tips. Check them out: if you’re not using them, you might be missing out a lot.

1. Multi-page home page. When I’ve first discovered that I can add several pages to open when I start Firefox, colleagues at work said it was useless and it would just make Firefox boot slower. However, besides the obvious convenience of not having to open all the pages I go to everyday, there are other perks of this approach. I set up some pretty specific pages to open with Firefox, like several different Google Analytics pages. After an hour or more of surfing, I usually mess everything up and have 30 tabs open. It’s much faster to simply kill this instance of Firefox and open a new one, than opening all these pages by hand.

But it doesn’t stop there. There’s a handy command line argument for Firefox which enables you to open multiple home pages . Make a Firefox shortcut, right click on it and choose properties. Then change this argument: “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” to this: “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -new-window franticindustries.com|www.digg.com . This will open a new Firefox window and load these two pages. The way I use this, is by having several different Firefox shortcuts - “Firefox social” opens Digg, Reddit , Netscape, and other social content sites, “Firefox Google” opens up all my Google services, while regular Firefox opens a multitude of sites I usually use. Very handy.

2. Selection source. Like most webmasters, the first thing I look into when I find a page I like is its source. However, sometimes it’s tedious to go through the entire source if you’re interested only in a small part of the code. Well, in Firefox, you can select any part of a webpage, right click and choose View selection source. You’ll get the source only for the part you’ve selected. It’s not perfectly precise, but it’s good enough for me and it saves me a lot of time.

3. Undo closed tabs. Maybe it’s just the way I browse the web, but I often kill a tab only to realize I actually need it five minutes later. In IE6, if you happen to close a window, it’s gone. With Firefox version 2.0, I can now just bring back the last tab I’ve closed with Ctrl+Shift+T. I haven’t found a way to increase the history cache, though - if anyone has an idea, please let me know.

4. The test profile. Most users never use more than one Firefox profile. However if you do lots of testing, like me, it’s good not to touch your standard settings. So, I’ve created a test Firefox profile, like this: firefox.exe -CreateProfile test, which I use when I’m testing new extensions and themes. When I want to switch between profiles, I just start Firefox with firefox.exe -ProfileManager. You know what made me remember this? Because I got the IE6 .bmp images bug and it took me half an hour to remember how to fix it.

5. Search tricks. One of Firefox’s strongest features is the built-in search box. I use it so much I’m completely lost without it. Of course, I’ve added a lot of new engines, like Wikipedia, IMDB, and Webster. You can find a lot of new search engines for this box here. Also, I don’t use a lot of extensions, but Searchload Options is really lightweight and it will give you a couple of advanced options for the search box. But in IE6, all this is gone. I’m telling you, having to open a new Google window every few minutes is hell. Bless you, Firefox.
The feature I also use a lot is the “Find in this page” option, which you access with Ctrl+F. It enables me to find keywords in any webpage quickly, and most of the time it even works inside forms. Highlight All will highlight all the results with yellow color, which can also be handy. But most importantly, this search feature works in every Firefox page, even in the source viewer. The built-in source code viewer in Firefox is decent in itself, and with highlighting it becomes even more powerful.

6. Quick tabbing and session saving. This is something I do a lot. When I find a list of links which I have no time going through, I simply middle click them all. They open in the background, in new tabs. I can check if they’re worth anything later, and if I find anything worth saving, I just go Ctrl+Shift+D and voila - they’re all saved in a bookmark folder.

7. Spell checking. I instantly got hooked on this one. If you’re a blogger, it’s an absolute must. My posts would have many more grammatical errors if it weren’t for this little option (and some of yesterday’s posts probably do because I did them in IE6). Even if you don’t write in English, you can choose other dictionaries - right click in a field, and go to Languages - Add dictionaries.

This list is definitely much longer than this, but I’ve included only those features which are maybe less known or less used. I’m back to my trusty Firefox now and I’ll do my best to try to put this horrible experience behind me.