I don't too often just point to other blog entries, but this one is just too good to let slip by:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-be-more-productive-with-firefox-quick-searches/
If you ever find yourself frequently searching a site (like Amazon, or some knowledge base of a product you use or support, or a mailing list archive), this is a great way to do it in a single keyword.
As for the site (makeuseof.com), that's itself a site devoted to sharing lots of tips. I've written about it elsewhere:
http://carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2007/11/24/check_out_makeuseof
Most know that Amazon pages are very content rich, and sometimes you want to jump just to a specific section of the deep page. For instance, the URL for a book I've recently contributed to is http://www.amazon.com/dp/032151548X . But one might want to jump to the reviews for a book, or give out a link that goes to them, and that would be http://www.amazon.com/dp/032151548X#customerReviews .
Notice the difference? The #customerReviews jumps right to the reviews. That's an anchor, and the anchor is defined in that page using <a name="customerReviews"> right above the reviews section.
(PS If you like the book above and might want to buy it, could you consider using this link , instead, which while more complicated, will give me some small credit for your purchase. :-) And while we're at it, it gives me a chance to show you how to add an anchor in such a URL that has a query string (the stuff after the ?). You just add it to the end of the query string, in other words, the end URL.)
But I've sometimes found pages that had no link to such a section, and when I viewed the source, I saw no A NAME tag. I assumed that meant I could not offer anyone a link to a specific portion of the page. Now I know I can. A page author could have used any of a few alternatives, so we need to look for these as well when we want to know if a page has an internal link we could use.
If you're a long-time IE user who moves to Firefox, and you're a user of the Google Toolbar spell check feature, you may find that sometimes when a site opens a popup window, you don't see the Google toolbar in that popup window. An example is when making a comment in a blog that uses a popup window. You may feel that you can't spell check the comment you make.
Here's good news: as nice as the Google toolbar spellchecker is (which I've written about before), did you know that Firefox already automatically has a spellchecker? Pay attention next time you're typing in any textarea field (a multi-line text input field on a form). As you type words that may be typos, Firefox underlines them in red.
Now, you may ask, "ok, that's great for textareas, but what about for input (single line) text fields?". Here's good news: you can enable Firefox to check those as well:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/uncategorized/quick-tip-spell-check-firefox-text-input-fields/
BTW, if anyone knows how to solve the problem of the Google toolbar not showing in popups (even though the View>Toolbars>Google Toolbar is checked within the window), I'll welcome that insight.
Whether you're a presenter or just someone who struggles reading small type on a web page or within some tool on on your entire desktop, there are at least two useful (and easy) solutions you should know about. One solution is built into the latest browsers (Firefox 2, IE 7, and Safari), while another is a free lightweight tool useful for all apps.
With the browsers, just use Ctrl+ or Ctrl-. This works for me in IE7, Firefox 2.0.0.6, and Safari for Windows 3.0.3. Additionally, in IE 7, you'll even see a small magnifying glass and "%" indicator in the lower right corner, which offers a menu of settings. I don't use a mouse, but I've heard that at least in IE hold down the Ctrl key while you use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out.
But what about outside the browser? Well, again, I'm a windows guy, and I can recommend at least a free lightweight tool called ZoomIt, from the SysInternals team (now a part of Microsoft). Once you run it, you can set hotkeys to control zooming in/out. Where the browser approach zooms in the entire display of the page being viewed, ZoomIt instead zooms in on whatever area of the screen you're pointing at when you use it. It even adds a nifty Timer mode to show a countdown clock, as another help to presenters. Get it, and learn more, at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Miscellaneous/ZoomIt.mspx.
Of course, these tools can help those needing magnification due to sight impairment. Then, there are other tools that may better suit that requirement, such as the Windows Magnifier (Start>Programs>Accessories>Accessibility>Magnifier). That doesn't work quite as well (in my experience) for a presenter.
And I'm sure my Mac friends will tell me that all this has been built into that OS from day one and we Windows folks are just picking up scraps off their table. That's ok. I'm just one beggar helping other beggars, then. :-)

