Firefox 3 is, for many people, the Web browser of choice. It’s multi-platform, hugely extendable, and is rapidly stealing market share from Safari and Internet Explorer.

Though it’s simple and easy to use without any advanced know-how, Firefox has also got some tricks up its sleeve that make browsing with Firefox even better.

Here are 5 little-known, endlessly useful Firefox tips to make browsing even better:

1. Search any Box Do you use one particular site’s search a lot? Right-click in the search bar (where you would type), and select “Add a Keyword for This Search.” In the bookmark page, name it something you want to remember (maybe “imdb“). In the future, to search from that bar, type “imdb” (or whatever) and then your query into the address bar, and it’ll bring results up for you.

2. Get Moving Control-L will take your cursor straight to the Firefox Address bar, letting you switch pages without moving your mouse. Control-K takes your cursor to the search bar.

3. Mousing Around If you like using your mouse, there are four great things you can do in Firefox: Middle click to open a link in a new tab; Control-scroll to make text bigger or smaller; Middle Click on a tab to close it; Shift-scroll to scroll through a site by pages.

4. Buttons & Buttons On the top line of the Firefox toolbar (where the file, edit, etc. menus are), right-click and select customize. In that menu, you can change the buttons on your toolbars, which toolbars are shown, and even choose smaller buttons to give yourself more screen room.

5. File Snagging Right-click on any page and select “View Page Info.” Once the page opens, select the “media” tab. From this page, you can download just about any file on a webpage, without hunting for a “download” link.

6. (A Bonus, stolen from Stepcase Lifehack): Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):

• Spacebar (page down)
• Shift-Spacebar (page up)
• Ctrl+F (find)
• Alt-N (find next)
• Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
• Ctrl+T (new tab)
• Ctrl+K (go to search box)
• Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
• Ctrl+= (increase text size)
• Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
• Ctrl-W (close tab)
• F5 (reload)
• Alt-Home (go to home page)

Do you use Firefox? Are there any cool secrets under its hood that you use? Share them in the comments.