I’m a busy guy. I spend the most of the day obsessing about my websites and browse through my favorite blogs and bulletin boards. But it’s such a pain in the neck to have to type each and every URL every freakin’ time! I figured out a remarkably simple and easy solution: I created my own ‘startpage’ (or homepage) using Macromedia Dreamweaver. I began with a fresh blank HTML page, then created a table with 3 columns (80% width, cellpading=10, cellspacing=5):
Then, in each column, insert links to your most frequented websites. In the example below, I included Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Groups and Webmaster World:
If you own a blog, I highly recommend you do your link this way:
In the sample, My Blog points to the blog itself, Admin points to the administration panel that controls everything about your blog, and Stats refers you to the blog’s statistics page (if it has any). This is the ultimate timesaver!!
For my own startpage, I changed the background colors of each column to different shades of blue. It’s not really necessary, but it helps in my case because I have a ton of links that I visit:
When you’re done, save the HTML file in your My Documents folder as index.html or a filename that you prefer. Open the browser that you most often use. To set your startpage as your homepage in Firefox, click on File > Open File then browse for the startpage file. Once open, click Tools > Options > Homepage and click on the ‘Use Current Pages’ button. For Internet Explorer users, click File > Open and click Browse to choose the file. To set as homepage, click Tools > Internet Options > Use Current.
Now, when you open your browser your startpage will magically appear with all your favorite links listed! To open links into a new tab in Firefox, press the Ctrl button while clicking on the link.
Right now I just rely on my bookmarks. I agree, your tip is much better to organize links. I just thought, why not make it a page in your blog or website, and set that as your starting page. In that way, you can access it anywhere.
Glad to see you here Greg! I actually do have a separate site for that kind of thing but it’s still in development. So far, it’s very convenient since I surf the Internet a lot in different places.
One other suggestion: RSS feeds! No need to visit each and every site to find updates.
I use this interesting web site that recently Alpha’d to make general notes, including svaing http link.
http://www.posticky.com This is web based post it notes that is available anywhere anytime. Curious what other folks think of this site with repsect to being a productive online tool.