Tip of the Week: 5 Simple Browser Tricks

We all know how to use the Internet (you’re here now, after all), but there are a lot of hidden secrets to it that far fewer people know. Today, we’ll let you in on five of them to try and make some basics a little easier.

Close a Tab
We told you these were basics. Yes, you close a tab by clicking the little ‘x’ along the edge. However, you can also close a tab by middle-clicking on it with the mouse wheel. While this may not make much difference when you’re only contending with two or three tabs, this is a much faster method than trying to line up your cursor with that ‘x’ for fourteen tabs.

Quick Address Bar
When you want to go to a different website (or run something through a search engine), you have to type something in the address bar at the top of your browser window. Sure, you could click on the address bar, but you have other options as well. Try pressing F6, Alt+D, or Ctrl+L… any of them will bring you to the address bar and highlight its contents, leaving you in the position to just continue typing.

Viewing Slideshows or Multi-Page Articles
We’ve all been online, trying to read an article, only to find that it’s been split up across multiple pages or turned into a slideshow. Instead of fighting with the controls to view your content, there’s an easier way to read it all in one place. All you have to do is start to print it.

By clicking Print or pressing Ctrl+P, you’ll be given a print preview of the complete article. From there, you can read it without interruption. Alternatively, you could also print it out to read without interruption later, whichever you prefer. The important thing is that you are able to read the content you want to read, without jumping through hoops.

Highlighting More Accurately
Have you ever tried to highlight text online by clicking and dragging from the starting point to the end? If you’re like many, you’ll have found doing so with any accuracy to be challenging, frustrating, and ineffective. It’s just too easy to snag too much and/or too little, images and sentence fragments being highlighted instead of the content you were trying to select. Next time, instead of relying on click-and-drag, try clicking on the starting point of your selection, and shift-clicking the end point. This will select just what is included between these points.

Toggle Fullscreen
Sometimes, productivity requires blocking out any and all distractions, even including those on our workstation displays. Setting the window you are working in to fullscreen mode helps to do this, and is as easy as pressing F11 to toggle it on and off.

What are your favorite keyboard shortcuts to use in a browser? Share them in the comments!