More BlackBerry 10 Browser tips to help your surf the mobile web like a pro

We took a look at 10 BlackBerry 10 Browser tips to help you browse the mobile web more efficiently. At the same time we asked, you the reader, to share other tips you have. There was a nice handful of things suggested so we thought we'd bring you another post with more browser tips. 

We've got some specific QWERTY keyboard tips but there are some other tips for other device users, too. Without further ado, here are more BlackBerry 10 Browser tips to help you surf the mobile web like a pro.

 

Keyboard shortcuts

Q10 keyboard

This one is targeted at QWERTY keyboard users, however, they do work on full touchscreen devices too, you just have to bring up the virtual keyboard - use two fingers and swipe up from the bottom bezel.

  • Refresh page - L
  • Activate Reader Mode - R
  • Find/Search page - S
  • Show history - H
  • Show bookmarks - K
  • Jump to the top - T
  • Jump to the bottom - B
  • Scroll down page - Spacebar
  • Scroll up page - Shift + Spacebar

I do wish there was a shortcut for a New Tab.

 

Gestures

Pinch gestures

There are some gestures that you can perform to carry out tasks too. The following zoom gestures work in other areas too, like when viewing photos.

  • Zoom into page - use two fingers and drag them apart (or double tap screen)
  • Zoom out of page - use two fingers and pinch them together (or double tap screen)
  • Jump to top - Swipe down from the top and tap webpage bar that appears

 

Add other search engines

Browser Add Search option

This was a tip left by a reader in the comments of the original browser tips post and is very helpful. By default, Bing is the selected search engine on the BlackBerry 10 browser. You can change this but by default, there are only three search engines to choose from in all - Bing, Google, Yahoo. If none of them tickle your fancy. There is a way to add more.

To add your preferred search engine, just navigate to the website and once it has loaded, tap the overflow menu and then hit + Add Search. It will then be added to the list of search engines. 

There is also an alternative and that's by visiting a website called MyCroft Project which allows you add many more search engines to the list. Just head over to www.mycroftproject.com, search for your preferred search engine, then tap the link and it will prompt you to add the Search Provider. Hit Add and you're good to go.

To make this newly added Search Provider your default preference, start typing a search (or anyting for that matter) into the address bar, you'll then see a dropdown menu in the top right corner of the screen, tap it and select your search provider. Since this dropdown menu appears everytime you enter something into the address bar, you can add search providers such as IMDb to your list and just pick that from the dropdown when you want to search anything movie related. Since finding this method, this is what I do.

 

Apps for icon creation

Shortcut Creator

In the original browser tips post I mentioned that you can save a website to the Homescreen as a shortcut so you don't have to even launch the browser to load it up. However, sometimes, when you save a website it doesn't have a icon and instead you get a tiny screen cap like icon of the webpage you saved. This makes it unsighlty on your Homescreen as it doesn't quite blend in. All is not lost though, as there are some apps that will allow you to create icons that you can assign to your web shortcuts to make them fit in with the rest of the icons on your Homescreen.

  • Shortcut Creator ($2.99)
  • Homescreen Shortcutter ($0.75)

 

If you missed our first post containing 10 browser tips for BlackBerry 10, you should head on over there now. Have we missed anymore tips? Hit up the comments and share them.

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