First, may I say: forgive me if these are too obvious. But judging by the number of frequent web users whom I encounter regularly that don’t yet enjoy the freedoms of the tips below, I’ll risk being mundane.
I like browsing to be both elegant and efficient. I’ve noticed as I switch environments, I come back to some basic adjustments that make me feel more “at home” in a browser interface. Each saves either keystrokes or screen real estate. Here they are, ordered by increasing complexity and decreasing importance:
1. Shut off text labels on the navigation bar. Do you really need a reminder that the left arrow means back, and the big red stop sign or X means stop? Icons are less distracting and easier to scan for visually than text only, and accessibility is the only reason to retain the labels at all. Here’s how:
Firefox: View > Toolbars — Set “Show” drop-down to “Icons” and select “Use small icons”
Safari: This is the default behavior, so Safari gets bonus points from me here (they’ll give ‘em back elsewhere, I promise).
IE: View > Toolbars > Customize… — Set “Text options:” to “No text labels” and “Icon options:” to “Small icons”
2. Having converted to del.icio.us for most of my permalink archiving needs, I still use the Links/Bookmarks/Favorites bar for my most common destinations. I used to abbreviate the labels to mazimize the capacity of the bar, but now it’s strictly favicons sans text labels. Here’s the approach I favor:
Firefox: visit site, drag-drop link from Navigation toolbar to Bookmarks toolbar, right-click the new bookmark > Properties, blank out the name. Presto. I sometimes find I have to visit the link again to get the favicon to correctly appear.
Safari: only supports favicon in Address bar, Bookmarks menu, and Bookmarks window, not in tabs or in Bookmarks Bar. (boooo!)
IE: visit site, drag-drop link from Address bar to Links toolbar, right-click the new Favorite > Rename to “-” (blank isn’t allowed, sadly). IE has quirks with regard to treatment of favicons and won’t always display them, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.
3. While you’re busy stripping your bookmarks of their names, don’t forget to add keywords or keyboard shortcuts if you’re feeling truly ambitious about saving time down the road. Here’s the upshot:
IE: Keyboard shortcuts (like ALT+G for Google) can be set under the Properties of any Favorite.
Safari: doesn’t support anything similar that I can see (booo again, I told you points would be relinquished! But I guess there’s a case to be made for simplicity of interface.)
Firefox: Bookmark properties, set the keyword, which can later be typed into the address bar to quickly retrieve the link. Hint: use 1-3 letter keywords to save keystrokes. BONUS HACK: Firefox uses “%s” as a special token for text typed after the keyword. This is easier to try than it is to explain, so here’s an example:
Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
Keyword: w
…now, type “w Cool Stuff” in the address bar and you’ll go direct to the search results for “Cool Stuff” on Wikipedia. This hack can allow you to drop the search dialog from your browser altogether, if you so choose!
I may make other UI tweaks, but these are at the top of my list when I first encounter a new browsing environment. Not surprisingly, with the value I place on these, I strongly prefer Firefox to the others mentioned, but I spend significant time in at least these three. I’d love to hear from Opera, OmniWeb, lynx (etc.) users on their favorite tweaks as well!
