No, this isn’t a program you download that pretends to make your internet faster (and installs some malware as a bonus). I’m talking about using a button on your mouse to make your browsing many times faster.

All (I hope) computer mice these days come with a scroll wheel. Of course that scroll wheel is also a button. If you installed mouse drivers, this middle button can be configured to do anything you want, almost. So if you do have drivers installed, set the middle click to the “middle click” or “standard” (it will be different for different mice) option. If you don’t have drivers installed, you don’t need to change this.

So what is this all about? If you’re doing heavy web browsing, you can set your middle mouse button to open links in a background tab. How does this help with speed? The new pages you open load in the background, so when you’re done reading a page, you can just switch to the next tab and continue reading whatever you clicked on, without having to wait for it to load. Genius? I think so.

To do this in Firefox, simply click Tools > Options, click on the Tabs tab, and uncheck When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately.

This will make new links open in background tabs, which also means they’re loading in the background. As for your middle mouse button, the default action for Firefox to take when you click a link with the middle mouse button is to open it in a new tab.

So now when you click a link with your middle mouse button, it will load in the background. This comes in really handy when browsing sites like Digg or just browsing forums. New pages or threads will load in the background as you are uninterruptedly browsing the home page, looking for more stuff to open.

Be sure to comment with any other quick and easy browsing tips.

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