Maria’s Guides

A Firefox (and perhaps other tabbed browser?) quick tip.

I’m pretty sold on Firefox and absolutely dependent on its tabbed browsing feature. For those of you who don’t know what tabbed browsing is, it’s a feature that enables you to open multiple Web pages in the same Web browser window. Each window is opened in its own “tab” which is accessible with a simple click.

Firefox has supported tabbed browsing for some time now. Safari on the Mac does, too. And Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows has finally caught up, adding this feature in version 7.

Today, while trying desperately to catch up with the few RSS feeds that I follow, I ran across an article on LifeHacker by Adam Pash titled “Firefox Quick Tip: Drag and Drop URL Text.” In it Adam explains how to open a URL displayed on a Web page by dragging it to the address bar. Pretty simple stuff, but probably a revelation for someone who didn’t know they could do this.

With tabbed browsing, you can do something similar — but better. Say you’re reading a blog article that includes a lot of links. You want to follow the links, but you want to finish reading the article first. If you’re like me, you know you’ll forget to go back and click the links.

If you already know this trick, you’re probably saying, “Pretty simple stuff.” If so, stop reading and get on with your life. But if this is all new to you, read on.

Here’s what you do: drag the link you want to read to a blank part of the tab bar (the close button at the end of the tab bar works, too) — or to a tab you don’t mind overwriting with other content. Firefox will load that page in the background while you continue to read the page that link was on.

Another way to do this is to Control-click (Mac OS) or right-click on a link and choose the Open Link in New Tab command on the contextual menu that appears.

This is especially useful if you have a really slow Internet connection (like I do at home) and don’t like to wait for pages to load. It enables you to keep busy doing something else while your computer gets the page you want to see. Then, when you’re ready to read the page, it’s ready and waiting for you.

Of course, to take advantage of tabbed browsing, it must be enabled and the tab bar must be displayed. In Mac OS, choose Firefox > Preferences, click the Tabs button, and turn off the option labeled “Hide the tab bar when only one web site is open.” Click the close button to close the preferences window and save your settings.

Make pocket-sized books.

I stumbled upon PagePacker from the Big Nerd Ranch while trying to catch up on my Web browsing. It’s a nice little Mac OS X (universal binary app) that enables you to create tiny 8-page booklets. You can either add pages from a library of predefined GTD-inspired planning pages or drag in your own PDFs (which you can create using the Print command from any application). The resulting folding book is small enough to fit in a pocket, wallet, or purse, making it possible to take all kinds of information with you.

I tried out the software and like it a lot. My only problem: I’ve got those middle age eyes and have trouble reading the tiny print. But with a little tweaking on the font size of original documents, I think I can resolve that problem sufficiently enough to make PagePacker a good productivity tool for me.

More reference information for Mac OS users.

A week or so ago, I published a quick blog entry with a link to an Apple Tech Note document about Mac OS X builds. Here’s another article with the same kind of information for Intel-based Macs: Mac OS: Versions, builds included with Intel-based Macs.

The article includes some basic information on how to find the build number and a table of Macintosh models and the Mac OS versions/builds that came with them. You might find this information useful if you ever need to boot your computer from an OS X CD or DVD or if you’re interested in running a build of Mac OS other than the build that came with your computer.

Getting back some screen real estate.

One of the things that you might find bothersome about Excel 2007’s Ribbon is the amount of space it takes up at the top of the workbook window. Fortunately, you can get it out of the way and recover that space. Here’s how.

1. Right click on any button on the Ribbon. A contextual menu appears:
   
2. Choose Minimize the Ribbon. The Ribbon shrinks so it looks a lot like a good, old fashioned menu bar.
   

From that point on, to access the Ribbon, click the tab you want to expand and display it. It will overlap the top of the document window, as shown here:

When you continue working in the worksheet window, the Ribbon collapses again.

To get the Ribbon back to normal, right-click on any Ribbon tab and choose Minimize the Ribbon from the contextual menu that appears. That will toggle the feature to “off.”