Tip #31: Custom searches from the Google Chrome address bar

If you are using Google Chrome, then by now you should have probably noticed that you can immediately begin a Google search by typing directly into the address bar (aka "Omnibox"), instead of going to www.google.com and searching from there. But did you also know that you can perform custom searches, i.e. search using other search engines or websites, from the address bar too?

For instance, I can search for an article on Wikipedia, just by typing "wiki", followed by the search terms into my address bar and pressing Enter, like this.

Tip #28: Custom keyboard shortcuts in Windows

In Windows, you can create your own keyboard shortcuts to launch frequently used programs or to open commonly used files and folders, as long as there is already a shortcut icon to it.

If you are not sure what a shortcut is, a shortcut is an icon which links to a program, file or folder on your hard disk. Windows differentiates shortcuts from the actual files by adding a small arrow in the corner of shortcut icons (exception: most, if not all icons in the Start menu are shortcuts, however they do not have the small arrow). In this picture on the right, the icon on the left is the actual Photos folder, whereas the icon on the right is a shortcut to the Photos folder on the left. Double-clicking on either icon will open the Photos folder. Deleting the shortcut will not delete the Photos folder; deleting the Photos folder will break the shortcut (there is nowhere for the shortcut to point to). Also you can rename the shortcut to anything you like, say "Open Photos folder", but if you rename the original Photos folder, the shortcut will break too.

With that in mind, let's get to the part where we create the keyboard shortcuts:

Tip #20: Managing files in Windows quickly

This is how it's usually done with right-click.

Things you can do with files in Windows: open, save, delete, rename, move, copy, etc. There are many ways to do these, the easiest is to right click on any file or folder, then choose an action to apply onto it.

Working with both hands on the keyboard lets you work faster. However, when you have tens and hundreds of files to organise, using the arrow keys to paddle around the folder may not be the ideal thing to do. Using the mouse to point-and-click would be faster, then to quickly apply an action on the selected item(s) we can use keyboard shortcuts so that the mouse isn't doing all the work.

Tip #17: Become a tabmaster

Remember the old times when you had to do this?

Now that you can handle forms easily, today I'll show you how to master tabbed browsing. Back in the days of Internet Explorer 6, we would have to open one window for every single webpage, unless if you were using Firefox, Opera or Safari then. With the introduction of IE7 a few years back, tabbed browsing became mainstream. Yet, there are still some people around me who don't know how to use tabbed browsing!

Just in case anyone here is still not aware of what tabs do, tabs let you open multiple pages in a single browser window, so that you don't clutter your taskbar (the long bar with the Start button below) with lots of instances of your web browser. Having multiple instances of your browser open slows down your computer during heavy browsing. Of course, this doesn't quite apply in Mac OS X, since there is only one icon of the running program shown, but still you would have to right-click on the dock icon to pick which Safari window to show, like how Windows XP grouped similar taskbar items together.

Tip #16: Master the art of filling up forms

What if you could jump from field to field?

We spend most of our time on the Internet, and often we need to fill up forms online, especially when logging in to websites. Some websites' registration forms have tens, if not more fields for you to fill up. As mentioned in this previous tip, shifting one hand back and forth between the mouse and keyboard slows you down. To be able to fill forms more quickly, we will need to eliminate this inter-keyboard-and-mouse switching.

This tip should apply to any browser on any operating system. If something doesn't work for you, please let me know so I can help you find a solution for it.

For you to follow along, I have created a dummy form right here for you to try out the keyboard shortcuts as you read!