At work I use the Internet for research; at home for computing information or recipes. Like most, I have to look through a lot of “wrong pages” to find what I want. I’ll share with you some tricks that will make you faster at surfing the Web even if you’re on a slow connection.
The Address bar via the keyboard
First, you’ve got to click in the Address Bar. (Hang in there, it gets better.) Just so there is no misunderstanding, below is Internet Explorer’s Address bar.
Other than clicking, there are 4 keyboard shortcuts you can use to access the Address Bar: Alt + D, Tab, F4 and Ctrl + O . Personally, I use Alt + D.
Tab really only works when you first open a page. Once you’ve clicked anywhere in the page, pressing Tab jumps from hyperlink to hyperlink.
F4 is pretty cool if you want to drop down the list of the last 25 Web addresses you typed.
Ctrl + O requires both hands, but is easy to remember.
My favorite IE tip: Ctrl + Enter
Once your cursor is in the Address bar, odds are you need to type a dot-com address. (If you type mostly dot-orgs or dot-nets, this tip’s not for you.) For a dot-com address, just type the name of the Web site ( canada), then press Ctrl + Enter. IE will attach http://www. to the front and .com to the end (http://www.canada.com ) saving you from typing 7 letters and 5 punctuation marks.
Multiple IEs
If I’m on a page that I don’t want to close and I need to go to another page, here are the steps I take:
1. Press Ctrl + N to open another IE window of the same page.
2. Press Esc to stop the page from coming in.
3. Press Alt + D to access the Address Bar.
4. Type the name of the site I want, then press Ctrl + Enter to append the www. and the .com.
It’s not as bad as it looks. It’s just Ctrl + N, Esc, Alt + D, type a name, Ctrl + Enter . Try it. You may never go back to clicking the IE icon again, clicking in the Address Bar, typing the full Web address, then pressing Enter.
Opening links in separate windows
Here’s a trick I use often, when I’m at home searching for the apparently top-secret recipe for ” Lentil And Chestnut Soup ” that I saw Nigella Lawson preparing on FoodTV last week. Once the recipe search results are in, I press Shift + click the recipe link I want. This opens the linked page in a separate window leaving the search results window open in the background.
While that page is slowly coming in, I Alt + Tab back to my search results window, then Shift + click another link. After I open 4 or 5 windows that way, I then Alt + Tab + Tab + Tab around until I find a page that has fully come in. As soon as I realize the page doesn’t have the recipe I’m looking for, I press Alt + F4 to close, then Alt + Tab to the next page
Draggin’ and dropping Web pages
Once you’ve found a site like www.LentilAndChestnutSoup .com, put it everywhere. Put it on IE’s Links toolbar, your Start menu, your Quick Launch toolbar and your Desktop. Here’s how you add it to the Links toolbar:
1. If your Links toolbar is hidden in IE, right-click the word Address , then select Links.
2. Click and drag the little (next to the Web address) onto the Links toolbar.
3. Since the sometimes ridiculously long page titles (like mine at imd20.ismckenzie.com) appear on the toolbar, right-click the new link, then select Rename . Type a short name, then press Enter.
To add the link to your Start menu, click and drag the little onto the Start button, hesitate, drag it to the top of the list, then let go. For the Quick Launch toolbar and the Desktop, just click and drag. You could try this with imd20.ismckenzie.com
Good stuff, speaking as another keyboard fan!
I’ve linked to your post at http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-speed-up-internet-explorer-7-ie6.html and also commented there about the use of ctrl-l and Searchy as “speed up” options too, for browsing and using search engines.
Cheers
Imp.