Category: Safari

Posted on

Use a bookmark to resize your browser window

I found this tip via Macworld a while ago, but it was meant for use in Safari. However, in making my switch to Firefox, this was a feature that made the jump all the more interesting because it works in this browser as well. Here’s how it breaks down from Macworld.

Launch Safari (or your favorite browser) and create a new bookmark. Most browsers will require that you bookmark a specific site. In Safari, open a site and then choose Bookmarks: Add Bookmark. Give the bookmark a name that will help you remember the screen size, such as 800×600 or 1024×768. Next, edit the address of the bookmark—in Safari, go to Bookmarks: Show All Bookmarks and navigate to your newly created bookmark. Change the Address portion of the bookmark to:

javascript:self .moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(800,600);

Open any page in Safari and select the bookmark. You’ll see that page in an 800-by-600-pixel browser window. You can then duplicate this bookmark and create other sizes as needed; just change the name and the relevant code. When you’re done, move your new bookmarks to a convenient location; then click on them when you want to test your pages at different resolutions. [macworld]

I like to have three of these bookmarks in my toolbar. From small, medium, to large, it gets very useful. I’ve even gone as far as making them slightly button-like, naming them “-“, “+”, and “++”. You can minimize and maximize windows all you want, but to make it quick and simple, just hit your bookmark and you’re done.

This might not be too handy for those folks out there that don’t have a lot of real estate on their monitor. If you run a monitor at the screen size of 1024-by-768, then you might not see the advantage. I can’t be sure if this works in the world of PC’s, but it stands to reason that it should. It’s great for previewing how websites you are working on look, but I just like it for the simple reason of keeping everything on my screen in a more controlled state of chaos.

Posted on

Making a switch over to Firefox

Screenshot of my Firefox setup Being the Apple fan that I publicly am, I’ve also been very partial to Safari.  That changed the other day when I launched Firefox while just being curious about how it stacks up to my “usual” browser.

I really like Safari.  That being said, in the past few days, I am not longer using it as my default browser.  The element I really liked about Safari was the RSS feature.  After numerous, spinning beach balls(Apple users will know what I’m talking about), I grew tired of how it behaved.

It’s annoying and time wasting to have that happen.  RSS was made to make getting info more simple and quick.  On top of that, Safari does not fully support WordPress.  So for creating my posts, I ran Camino along side Safari in order to use the “quicktags” feature in WP.  You can’t use that in Safari, so posting with that browser reverts back to manually typing up HTML code as well as your text. Can you see the headache going on here?

I also experimented, briefly, with making Flock my standard browser, if not something to use in conjuntion with Safari and replacing Camino.  I can’t say that I was overly happy with its performance, RSS interface, and overall feel.  I still think that it’s a great browser, but the development needs to keep going on it until I would be comfortable using it full time.  Maybe it’s something to keep revisiting as the built-in blogging and photo sharing support is pretty cool.

That being said, I think I am 80% with being fully converted into using Firefox.  The ability of using plugins has already found me pretty happy.  Using Tab Mix Plus and Wizz RSS News Reader has me feeling even more efficient than I did with Safari.  Additionally, I’ve changed the theme to make it look more like Safari.  That might sound sad to some folks, but having it look like how I’m used to made the change all the more easier.

Pages load quicker than before, and I mean that by being more snappy.  Clicking on a RSS article has the page load in a few seconds.  And if I want to blog about something I read, I open a new tab and make a post.  Even publishing a podcast gets easier because if I need to search for info to add a link into the show notes, eveything is all in one.

These are just some preliminary thoughts about the switch.  I have to say that I’m pleased with how easy it was, but my experience with doing these things might be more than the average user.  For now, I’m sticking with Firefox.