This obviously only works if you have added the website to the bookmarks in either Firefox or Opera. When doing so you can add a keyword or nickname for that url which in turn makes it possible to access the website by typing in that keyword in the address bar.

Instead of accessing the website http://www.windows7news.com/ I simply type w7 and hit enter. The website loads just fine. Now, I do not recommend to add keywords for every bookmark that you have. This would surely lead to problems remembering the keywords for those urls unless you have a photographic memory.

I have about ten keywords for domains that I access regularly to speed up access. I do not add keywords for very short urls like cnn.com for instance but everything with 5+ chars makes sense. (it’s enough to enter cnn for cnn to enter the website in Firefox because Firefox will automatically load the first website in the Google results if no matching keyword was found.

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This Firefox tip does not require a plugin, add-on or Greasemonkey script. All you need to do is create a new bookmark of the url: http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=ping&host=%s. Now all that is left to do is to add the keyword ping to the service when you add it as a bookmark.

The keyword command is a way to access an url without typing it. The good thing about is that you can pass parameters. If you want to ping a server you enter ping url in the address bar of Firefox, e.g. ping ghacks.net.

Firefox will recognize the ping keyword and load the url http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=ping&host=ghacks.net which displays the ping on the website.

You can do the same in Opera. The keywords are named nicknames there but are basically the same. I have not tested it but it should work fine. Let me know if you try that out.

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The feature is available right in the location bar of Opera 9.5. Hits begin to appear with the first key that is entered. This is in my opinion a great way of finding websites that you have visited but can’t remember the url of because it is sufficient to enter any term that you can remember that was mentioned on the website as long as it was textual.

The data that is needed is stored in the Opera profile folder and deleted once you clear the cache and addresses in the preferences. The Opera Preference Editor contains a setting called Max Visited Pages Index Size which defines the maximum size of the pages that are stored in the profile directory.

The default value is unlimited (-1). You can change the value to 0 if you want to disable that feature or to another value if you want to limit the size on the hard drive. I think it’s Kilobytes and not Megabytes that you have to enter there just like in the Cache setting.

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Let’s take a look at how we can easily change default lightweight appearance of Opera’s progress bar to a “heavy-armed” one which provides us with more information at the same time. Either right-click anywhere around the active tab in your browser (on any panel) and choose Customize from the menu or select Appearance from the Tools menu or again use a keyboard shortcut for it by pressing Shift+F12 (neat how many ways there are in Opera to achieve a simple task, ain’t it ;) ). After selecting the Toolbars tab in “Appearance” window, focus your sight on a drop-down list near …you guessed it… the Progress Bar label.

Here you can choose one of 2 options (excluding the default and Off ones), depending on your personal preferences. Selecting “Show inside address bar” option will make the progress bar appear inside of the address bar which seems a bit impractical to me because it blocks the address bar preventing you from accessing it directly. Though, someone might like it being displayed this way. I personally prefer the other “Pop-up at bottom” option which makes the progress bar appear at the bottom of your browser, just above the status bar (if enabled).

Either way, you come to a state where your progress bar reveals lots of information at once. You get a graphical and percentile view of document/code loading state as well as loaded/total number of pictures in the site along with the info of how much KBs were downloaded so far in total, the current speed of downloading (KB/s), time consumed by loading the page.

Last but not least, you obtain overall information about what the core is doing at the moment (requesting connections, sending/receiving data, looking up hostnames) so that you can easily determine what causes the problem when a website stops loading or doesn’t start to load at all.

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All three ways to display the source are not really comfortable although both Firefox and Opera use colors to mark certain elements. I prefer to use a software like Notepad++ or a real source viewer to display the sources of websites. This default source viewer can be changed in all three browsers, here is how you would do that.

Two changes have to be made to the Firefox configuration to add an external source viewer. Load about:config in the address bar and filter the results for view_source.

view_source.editor.path is the first setting. Enter the full path to the source viewer that you want to use, for example “c:\apps\notepad++.exe”. Double-click view_source.editor.external afterwards to set this value to true. The new source viewer will be available after the next restart.

Opera makes it a little bit easier. Click on Tools > Preferences. In the new menu on the Advanced tab and there on Programs in the left menu. Click on the Edit button next to “Choose Application for viewing source”. Check “Open with another application” and browse to that application on your hard drive. Changes take effect immediately.

Changing the default source viewer in Internet Explorer is only possible in the Registry. Open the Registry by pressing Windows R. Type regedit in the run box and hit enter. Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer and create a new key called “View Source Editor”.

Create another key below View Source Editor and name it “Editor Name”. Now change the default value to the path to the source editor that you want to use from now on. Changes will become active after a restart of Windows.

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Fortunately, Opera is clever enough to handle this in most cases by applying a disguise against the web server, it just needs to be triggered the right way. To make it identify as another browser however, you need to press F12 and go to “Network” tab in the “Site preferences” menu first and select “Identify as Opera (IE, Firefox)”, which is rather impractical. How lucky we are to have another, much simpler solution to this.

The solution starts with enabling the Status bar through View > Toolbars menu if you haven’t done so earlier. After that, either press Shift + F12 or select Customize after right-clicking the Status bar (at the bottom of the screen) to get to the Appearance window and then choose Buttons tab in the opened window.

After selecting the Status category, you’ll see “Identify as” button among several others. Drag this button, drop it over your Status bar, align it anywhere you want and don’t forget to confirm the actions by clicking OK in the Appearance window. Since now, you can switch your browsers identification by a single click on the “Identify as” button sitting in Status bar. Simple enough, huh?

Of course, thanks to Opera’s flexibility, you can locate this or any other button (Clock, Progress bar) to a different place besides Status bar. Yet, Status bar appears to be the best place for it.

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Opera, unlike other browsers, can be configured to have custom download locations for every filet ype. Go to Tools > Preferences and click on the Advanced tab of the menu that pops up. Select Downloads from the left menu, uncheck “Hide File Types opened with Opera” and double-click on the file type that you want to customize.

You will notice that the “Show Download Dialog” option is the default action for most file types. To change that you simply check the boxes “Save to disk” and “Do not ask for folder, but save directly to”. Click on Choose afterwards to select a location where files of this type should be automatically saved to from now on.

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I have been using Opera for a very long time but did not know what the so called Nickname feature for Bookmarks was all about. I’ve been ignoring them or filling them with nonsenses until I understood what they are for and how useful they can be. I wouldn’t mention it if I wasn’t concerned there’re still many of you who have never taken advantage of this feature, especially if you are new to using Opera.

A nickname can either be one char or a string of your choice. By choosing unique nicknames wisely you can assign a shortcut to each of your bookmarks or only to the ones you use most often.

Then it’s really easy to access them with few keystrokes. For example, I have assigned the “tv” nickname to a TV guide website and now when I need to know what’s on I press F2 type tv and that’s it. Pressing F2 gives focus to Opera’s “commandline” but you can also use Ctrl+T, F8 or whatever else for it. It’s like using Launchy for URLs.

It is also possible to simple enter the nickname in the address bar and load it that way. The same feature is available in firefox as well only named keyword in there.

Don’t underestimate the power of shortcuts and avoid typing long URLs. It’s also useful for people who want to use keyboard for surfing more than mouse.

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