We were impressed inside and out; Mozilla's under-the-hood upgrades shined through in our lab tests and we were positively smitten with the browser's stylish new layout (if you've been lured away by other browsers in recent years, Firefox is a far sexier beast than the one you may remember).

Your choice of browser is an important one. First, there's a matter of security—you don't want all your digital eggs in one basket should that basket be compromised in some way. It's just a bad idea to be too fully engrained in any one corporation's ecosystem. (Get what I'm saying, users of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome?)

And second, browsers have been at the center of our Internet lives for at least 20 years, but now they're at the center of our actual lives. As technology continues to evaporate into the cloud, the Web has been transformed from a mere repository of websites into a boundless communal OS—and your browser is your key to the kingdom.

Should you choose to do so, you could easily run your entire virtual life through your browser, never opening a native app. Some machines are even being built with this paradigm in mind.

While all browsers share certain functionality and indeed learn from one another, there are certain quirks and functions that are unique to each. And Firefox is no different. You may be familiar with the many third-party extensions and add-ons that can amplify Firefox's functionality, however there are a lot of little tricks already baked in to the software that you may not be using.

Click through our slideshow to see 18 hidden Firefox functions.