Jeff, this is absolute drivel. honestly. A post on shortcut keys that even my five year old nephew knows about- weak sauce.
“I’d argue the burden of compatibility-- particularly for such essential shortcuts-- falls on all those other browsers.”
On the other hand, IE didn’t even have tabs until just recently. Those “other browsers” are the ones being innovative.
If I had a dollar for every shortcut I’ve learned and ‘forgotten’ over the years, for what seems like an endless array of half-baked software products I’d, well, I’d retire and then I wouldn’t have to remember any more shortcuts (man, am I sick of having to remember shortcuts! 
Isn’t that computer thingy s’posed to make my life easier and remember things for me?
I sympathize. I used to use Wordstar, and learned a lot of keyboard shortcuts for it. Then I used qedit, which came with Wordstar key bindings, and was very happy. But times change and now I use vim. Then there are the people who mastered WordPerfect in all its function-key majesty. Too bad for them.
I’m not afraid to keep spending time learning shortcuts, though, especially since I do most of my work in Linux. Its Unix heritage means that much of what I need to know has been the same for two or three decades, and is likely to last much longer.
Does anyone else you “add keyword for search” option in firefox?
I use it religiously
Preach it, brother! Way to master the web.
The very first thing I do when I install Firefox, is go into about:config and change browser.search.openintab to true. This seems to reverse the default, except when in a blank tab.
just to say that using the middle button in a link to open it in a new tab won’t work in all the pc’s (not to say in all the web browsers), you can configure all the buttons in your mouse to do whatever you want. I think that you shouldn’t assume that everybody has the same configuration setting in their mouses, I suggest that you make the links open in a new window/tab.
Thank you
The real WTF is that people need to launch their web browser frequently. Rather than just having it permanently open. 
My awesome sauce for the day is: Thumb mouse button = “Back”.
People are still using Internet Explorer?
Didn’t you know the US Government recommends against that?
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878
Do you guys hate America and support terrorism, or what?
Taskbar shuffle seems to allow closing with the middle button… I only realised just now when I went middleclick crazy on my taskbar expecting it to do nothing !
I’d also add Command-} and Command-{ (that’s the curly bracket, so you need Shift in there too) go from tab to tab in the current window
There’s another way to do this, which I feel is more natural. Command-Shift-arrow (right or left) moves through the tabs the same as if you had used brackets.’
I love Middle-Click=Close.
I also love Middle-Click=MoveViewableArea. Sadly, this is implemented in far fewer applications.
My awesome sauce for the day is: Thumb mouse button = “Back”.
I’m more a fan of mouse rocker navigation.
Right-Left = Back
Left-Right = Foreward
Works in Opera or in Firefox with the right extension.
Suggestions 4 5 are great! I’ve already got #1 set up for my most commonly used programs. I’d like to suggest Alt+F4 to close a browser, especially if anyone is like me and is constantly closing and reopening a browser, so the shortcut to open and the shortcut to close is very handy.
I’ve also memorized the shortcuts to switch between tabs in Firefox. Ctrl+Tab to next tab. Ctrl+Shift+Tab for previous.
I’ve seen a few posts on the Ctrl-Enter shortcut, I use that one all the time. I even saw someone post about the Shift-Enter shortcut to switch the appended TLD to “.net”. You can also use Ctrl-Shift-Enter to append “.org” to the address bar entry. So to summarize:
Ctrl + Enter = “http://” + address bar entry + ".com"
Shift + Enter = “http://” + address bar entry + ".net"
Ctrl + Shift + Enter = “http://” + address bar entry + “.org”
I use Firefox:
Ctrl+L: Address link focus
Ctrl+K: Search forcus
Middle click: Close tab or open new link in new tab
F5: Refresh
Esc: Stop
backspace
Shift+bakcspace
Alt+letter
. . .
Rather than promoting my personal top 5 list of keyboard shortcuts, I would argue that anyone (other than the 1% text-only diehards) can benefit from observing your own mouse/keyboard usage and trawling through the list of documented shortcuts.
In the web browsing domain, I would recommend aiming for elimination of switching between keyboard and mouse, rather than just maximising keyboard use; web pages themselves tend to be heavily geared towards mouse input. Shuffling tabs around en doing other things that typically involve either menus or navigation between major sections of the interface are good candidates for keyboard shortcuts.
I can’t speak for IE (which I try to avoid as much as possible on general–though quite possibly outdated–principle) but FF has a truckload of available add-ons, that very often supply a handful of very specific usability features. Mouse Gestures is a good example, but there are many more smaller (less features, narrower target audience) add-ons as well.
Last point to make is that it is often possible to adjust keyboard shortcuts to your liking or expectations, either from within the browser configuration or through external tools that emulate a series of keypresses.
An add on to Chris H
Ctrl + [ENTER] will place the leading http://www. and the trailing .com ONLY if you have a English OS… if Danish it will place .dk if French will place .fr
to change this value you can edit your registry
follow this link: http://blogs.msdn.com/jeffdav/archive/2004/09/09/227502.aspx
In the german Firefox version ALT+D will open the File Menu (File = Datei in German) … Ctrl+L seems to be working on english and german Firefox.
Ctrl+K and Ctrl+E do work both on german Firefox.
Oh wooow! I didn’t know the one about middle-clicking, it’s fantastiterrific! I’m so excited that you shared this, I kept having to download plugins for automatic opening in a new tab and I never once saw someone mention this!
Thanks, Jeff! This is a real timesaver!
In Windows, you press Win+R to open the “Launch Program” dialog and type the address of the site — and it will be opened in the default browser. The same for Alt-F2 or whatever-your-key in Linux
As for shortcuts 2-4 — you actually don’t need them in Opera. When you open a new tab, your focus is always in the address bar, you don’t need to press anything. If you want to search with Google, you type “g something” in the address bar. And you can set an option to always open in new window, if you press enter (or you can just open new tab with ctrl-t — focus will be at address bar, remember?)
So, primary shortcuts in Opera:
Ctrl-T - new tab
Ctrl-N — new browser window
Ctrl-B (or Ctrl-Shift-V) — paste and go
As for middle-click — I used it like that in Opera for ages, before IE7 came out. Nya-nya-nya 
Another very usabe shortcut in Opera and Firefox — right-click+left-click for Back and left-click+right-click for forward