Surfing the Web

The following table summarizes the most commonly used navigation buttons every web browser possesses.

Table 9.1. Mozilla's Web Browser Toolbar Buttons

ButtonKeyboard ShortcutFunction
Alt-left_arrow

Go back. Returns to the page visited before the current one. By clicking on it more than once, you can go back more than one page, but some pages use automatic redirection so this might not always work. Keeping this button pressed (or clicking on the little black triangle at its right) will show you a list of all the pages you can access through this feature.

Alt-right_arrow

Go forward. Returns to the page visited after the current one being visited. The same back-button comments apply.

Ctrl-R

Reload. Reloads the current page. By default, Mozilla will first look for the page in the browser's cache (on-disk temporary storage space) and use the local copy. Press the Shift key while clicking on the reload button to force Mozilla to fetch the page from the Internet.

Esc

Stop. Stops transferring the currently requested object and will therefore cancel the page currently being loaded. Notice that we use the word “object” instead of “page”. This is due to the fact that web pages are not only HTML code but images and maybe other media too.