One of the conveniences of modern browsers is the URL suggestions that appear from your browser history as you type URLs into your address bar. But what if one of those historical URLs is incorrect? There is a way to delete a single URL without deleting all your history. In Firefox, it is simple. In your address bar drop down, highlight the errant URL, and press Shift+Delete. In Internet Explorer, you’ll need to edit the Windows registry. Learn how from Raymond.cc.
Ever needed to share large files with friends and family? Many sites, such Dropbox offer free space on their servers, but the Opera browser offers a different approach that keeps the files on your own computer yet enables sharing. The feature is called Opera Unite, and the behind-the-scenes magic will stream shared content such as music and photo galleries, or even let you host a Web page. Learn more from Opera or Lifehacker.
Now that Google has released beta versions of its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux, they’ve opened the doors to their Chrome extensions directory. Naturally, top ten lists are cropping up everywhere. Here are two, one from Computerworld and one from Download Squad.
The official Firefox Add-Ons page lists thousands of browser extensions, sorted by category and organized into collections, for customizing your browsing experience. The Reference Desk is one such collection that includes thirteen add-ons to help students and researches sort and organize data.
If you’ve never tried mind mapping as a brainstorming tool, the free version of Mind Meister is a great place to start. Mind Meister is an online tool used in a browser, but your maps can be published to any website or exported as an image or PDF. Although you are limited to just six mind maps in the free version, teachers and students can upgrade to the Academic version for just $15 a year.
When first released, one of Firefox’s defining features was tabs, so multiple websites can be viewed in multiple tabs instead of multiple windows. When you right-click on a link in Firefox, however, the Open Link in New Window option is still there right above the Open Link in New Tab. For users speed clicking their way through the options, one small slip of the mouse can give you a new window instead of a new tab. But for die-hard tab users, there is a way to remove the New Window option from the Firefox right click. Mark O’Neill of MakeUseOf.com explains how.
If you are using a modern browser such as Firefox 2.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, or Safari you might have noticed an orange (or blue) RSS icon in the upper right-hand corner of many websites, such as my Jokes By Kidssite. If the site owner has added the appropriate RSS autodiscovery code to their site, you can quickly add their RSS feed to your favorite feed reader by clicking on the RSS icon in the address bar. This saves you the trouble of searching through their site for an RSS link. If you have a website, learn how to add this special code to your own site at PeteFrietag.com.
Chrome is a new browser from Google, built to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox. Why bother with a new browser if you already have one that works? Google explains that Chrome was built from the ground up to be faster, more secure, more stable and better equipped to handle today’s demanding web-based applications. Learn more with this official Google Chrome comic book.
Because it is so much more efficient to keep your hands on the computer keyboard (and skip any extraneous mouse usage), any time you spend memorizing a few keyboard shortcuts will end up saving you a lot of time. This About.com page has a nice collection of Firefox shortcuts. For example, use ALT-D to jump to the address bar and highlight the current contents. Simply start typing to overwrite the existing location.
Although the history functions of Firefox and Internet Explorer are not perfect, they do offer some settings to allow customization. Firefox lets you tweak the number of days history is kept, whether to remember data entered in forms, and whether to track downloads. Internet Explorer also lets you set the days history is kept, and how much disk space is allocated to history. For more details on how to change these options, read CNET’s Worker’s Edge.
