I have a couple of tricks for your browsers today. These questions came in emails from Ivan and a couple of other readers recently. Today we will look at some of them. Please remember to send me your questions because I like to write about some of them from time-to-time.
First, Ivan asked about putting website links on his desktop. I know many people use bookmarks in their browsers but apparently some like Ivan and me enjoy a few on our desktops. There are several ways to do this; however, I like the easy way so here it is…
Open your browser and go to the site you would like to save to your desktop. Make sure your browser is sized so that you can see your desktop (best to the left of the browser window).
Directly to the left of "http://" in the URL you will see a small icon for the site, a globe or some other small placeholder. Left click on that icon and drag it to your desktop. There you go; you now have an icon on your desktop for that site. Close your browser and double click on the icon to test it out. You should go directly to the page you were on.
For the more adventurous of you try right clicking on the icon and select properties. Click on the tabs and look around. You will find a place to change the icon, (graphic) the web address, the text on the link and a couple of other items. Go ahead and try. If you really mess it up you can just delete it and create it all over again.
Next is one that I just found out about a week or so ago and have been using very often. I might call this one, "The Super Browser Trick."
Have you ever been browsing the web and just wanted to take a quick note? You may open Notepad, WordPad or even Word to type it in. This could take a lot of time – minimizing and clicking, so it would be neat if you could just type a note in your browser and save it for later. Well, you can!
Copy this exactly, "data:text/html, <html contenteditable>" except DO NOT include the quote marks. Do include all of the other characters and symbols. Paste the text you copied into your browser’s address bar and press the, "Enter" key on your keyboard.
You will now be presented with an empty white page. Click on the page and start typing all the notes you like. Hopefully you are using a tabbed browser and can click back and forth from one page and back to this one to write ideas. You can also copy text from another site and go back and paste it in this page. Once you are done and want to save the notes, you can. Depending on which browser you use, find the "Save" command in its menu and save the file. You cannot save it by dragging the icon to the desktop as we discussed before.
This was created by a developer named Jose Jesus Perez Aguinaga. Finally, I have read it works in all browsers except Microsoft Internet Explorer. I have found it very useful in Firefox and Google Chrome; however, like they say, it will not work in MSIE for me.
