I’m sure I’ve included this tip in my past browser related tips, but I decided to pull it out and make it its own tip today. Bookmarking favorite or often used sites is important and recommended. However, with Firefox or Chrome, you no longer need to remember the entire name or folder where you stored it. Instead, use the browser’s… Read More »Use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to browse your bookmarks…FAST – Video Tip
This is a reintroduction and retitling of a previous video/tip because of a copyright infringement complaint from Franklin Covey. Hopefully, the new title and verbiage will satisfy their legal staff.
All week long I help computer users of all ages and experience levels. Too often, I see that many computer users (beginners and experienced alike) do not utilize or know about some basic web browsing skills that will speed their work and give them less problems when using the Internet.
In this week’s tip, I will highlight the inefficient habits computer users use and replace them with tips that will make YOU a quicker and more profecient web user.
1. Using an old browser
No matter how old your computer is or what operating system you are using, DO NOT USE INTERNET EXPLORER 6 (IE 6). IE 6 is late 20th century technology and is not compatible with much of the web today and it also poses the greatest security risks.
Google acquired a CIA funded mapping and satellite company in 2004 and released Google Earth less than a year later. Most images that make up Google Earth are 1-3 years old and taken from a variety of public and private satellite imaging systems. Google Earth imagery is not live and has never been live. Google offers Google Earth for free… Read More »Google Earth & Internet Maps
Although we now have 19″ and larger monitors on most new desktop computers, the text seems to shrink. Why is that? It has to do with screen resolution (how much information can be displayed). Screen resolutions on today’s monitors are up to 3X that of monitors we used just 6-8 years ago. We can see a lot more information, but often the text is too small to view for some computer users.
Never fear. Using this week’s tip, you can easily and quickly enlarge the text of any web page using only your keyboard and mouse. This tip will work with any web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc) and any operating system (Windows, Ubuntu, Mac OS X).
All you need is a mouse with a scroll wheel and your keyboard. This tip can be performed without the mouse as well, but I’ll touch on that later. First, when you are reading a web site, particularly news web sites and blog type sites like mine, look for an indication of a printer friendly page. Often designated as Printer Friendly, Print this article, or simply Print, clicking this link brings up a version of the article you are reading that is much less busy and cleaner than how the article presents on the web page itself. This alone may make enough difference for readability.
However, you can quickly increase the size of the text you are reading by holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and spinning your mouse scroll wheel away from your body (towards the computer monitor). Amazing, no? Holding down the Ctrl key and spinning towards your body (away from the monitor) will shrink the text again.
The same result can be achieved by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the “+” or “-” keys as well. I think the mouse method is a little more intuitive and elegant.
Watch the short video below to see this tip in action and see the web as never before!
I created these notes for a client today who visits many sites with text that prints small. She knows how to make the screen text larger, and I referred to the tips (below) about printing from the web, but sometimes good ol’ copy and paste is necessary to truly get the look you want on paper. Learn how to use… Read More »How to print stuff from the web the way YOU want it – Notes
The web and email were not meant to be printed. However, many computer users love to print many things we receive via email or the web. In this tip, I’m going to teach you how to use less paper and ink when printing AND get better looking printouts for things you do want to print. If you combine this new… Read More »How to save time & money when printing from the web – Video Tip
Please DO NOT use the address bar as a repository to return to sites you use all the time…eventually they will get lost. The address bar history maintains a small amount of your recently visited site and can easily be wiped out via an update or disk cleaning and maintenance tools.
Instead, use the Favorites (Internet Explorer) or Bookmarks (Firefox and every other browser). Favorites/Bookmarks are designed to save and give you quick access to your most used sites and sites you just want to keep track of for later use. Also, you can back them up easily.
If you are like me, you visit a handful of web sites every single day and sometimes multiple times per day. Having bookmarks to these sites works fine, but that requires a minimum of three clicks to reach your favorite sites.
In this video, I describe how to get 1-click access to your favorites using the extremely underutilized Links toolbar (Internet Explorer) and the Bookmarks toolbar (Mozilla Firefox).
This tip requires no downloading and no installation of extra software. Everything is built-in to the browser and available to you right now. So watch the video and learn how to take charge of these extremely useful tools you never knew how to use!
One common problem I help solve every day is the recovery of passwords. For some reason, tracking passwords and usernames becomes a daunting task for most computer users. The advice I dispense most often when asked how to track all of the usernames and passwords we accumulate these days is to simply write it down. Not just anywhere, however, but… Read More »Start your password tracking system today!
One of the most useful search tweaks you can employ to limit results is time. Google offers a quick way to access this option in the Search tools menu. Watch and learn how to do this in the short video below!
This tip falls in the category of “wow, that’s easy to do, I wish I would have known about it long ago!”
When you are on a particularly long web page and need to find a term or phrase, click on Edit from your menus, then Find (or Find in page on some browsers). The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + F. You will be presented with a small window that allows you to enter a word or phrase and then the computer will look for that word on the page and bring you right to it.
As with many other features, Mozilla Firefox’s implementation of this feature is superior to all other browsers, as it gives you helpful extras like find the next or previous occurrence of the word or phrase you are looking for and even has an option to highlight all the occurrences on the page. (See the accompanying picture).
This tip is especially helpful for genealogy researchers. Sometimes your eyes can become crossed looking for a surname in a sea of text. Use the find function instead and cut your work and eye strain in half!
If you need to look for the same term again on the same page, you will notice that the function gives you the option to find again without retyping.
This type of search works best with single words, but you can experiment with phrases as well.
You can also use the Find function in Word Processing documents, email, spreadsheets, and PDF files as well.
Watch the short video below to see this tip in action in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
