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I'm looking for a feature / shortcut / add-on that makes the current Tab go back to its top at the very first page that was loaded on that tab (usually google.com on my FF).


  1. Clean the tab quickly and get ready to look for something else, without creating a new tab, and saving some history memory...
  2. When the tab was opened via another page, go back to its top quickly
  3. Also, depending on the site, sometimes the Firefox Back button cannot go back, or it takes a huge amount of time (because that page header requires a refresh).

(If you know also how to override the previous page default to go Back quickly, without waiting for a refresh for that page... would be great.)

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

There are two ways an extension can do this....just opening window.history[0] and going back window.history.go(-(window.history.length - 1)) any preference? i would find this useful too and am thinking about putting together a simple button/js to do it

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thinking go(-) is more what you want –  hbdgaf Nov 24 '10 at 11:24
How do you create a bookmarklet while access to window.history[] is denied for JS access? –  ring0 Nov 24 '10 at 12:55
this will take some looking in to, but there must be a way. haven't sorted it out yet. may just have to use history[]. denying access to window.history could be an attempt to keep js from breaking out of a pane –  hbdgaf Nov 24 '10 at 13:09
@ring0, javascript:window.history.go(-(window.history.length - 1)) works fine for me! (Firefox on a Mac, using different sites while testing.) –  Arjan Nov 28 '10 at 8:32
Ok it works in a bookmarklet :-) Tried initially in the javascript area (Firebug) and got an error, access denied. Great, thanks! –  ring0 Nov 28 '10 at 14:35
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As a curiosity, with FF addons Pentadactyl and Vimperator going to the beginning of page history is just issuing a back command with enough pages, e.g. 100H.

To elaborate, these addons map Vim's movement commands to movements inside the page (i.e. l to move right and j to move down) and "nearest matches" of those to movements in page's history, so, uppercase H will go back and L forward. Like in Vim, movement commands take amount as a prefix, thus 100H will issue one hundred 'back' commands, effectively moving to the beginning of the page history, as the default FF's page history size is 50, IIRC.

The complete key cheat sheet can be read issuing :help keyboard-shortcuts (in Pentadactyl, at least, I don't have Vimperator on this machine).

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How do I use that? –  ring0 Nov 25 '10 at 14:25
These are extensions intended (mainly) for Vim users so first you would have to learn to use Vim... The good news is that knowing only the basics is enough to be sufficiently productive to browse around in circles of those using a mouse. –  Jawa Nov 25 '10 at 15:06
Sorry to insist, but what vim exact command should I use in FF (after installing the addon) to get the tab to jump to the very first entry in history? –  ring0 Nov 28 '10 at 4:55
Ah, OK, didn't realize that. Opened up the answer a bit to tackle the issue. –  Jawa Nov 28 '10 at 8:27
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