How-To Geek

If you use many search plugins for Firefox, you might be interested in a better way to organize them, rather than just choosing from a giant drop-down menu when you want to switch the search engine.

Have you ever tried to download more than 2 files from the same website and noticed the third download doesn’t start until one of the prior two are done? The reason for this is that the HTTP 1.1 spec says that only two connections may be allowed at a time, so your browser adheres to that limit.

If you are a frequent user of Microsoft Word, you’ve already spent incredible amounts of time moving pieces of your document around, often by using copy and paste. If you simply need to move items up or down, there’s a keyboard shortcut that should save you a lot of time.

So you followed some tutorial that told you to use msconfig.exe to modify your startup items… and now you keep getting an annoying message that says “Windows has blocked some startup programs”. How irritating is that?

When you spend a lot of time in front of your computer, many small actions performed repeatedly can add up to a lot of wasted time. The worst of these small offenders is the copy and paste… so how can we simplify this in Firefox?

Many people familiar with prior versions of Windows are curious what happened to the built-in Administrator account that was always created by default. Does this account still exist, and how can you access it?

I was also informed of another cool Freeware game the other day and thought I would share it.  The game is Hurrican which is a remake of the classic Turrican.    

If you often need to use Microsoft Word for writing documents, you’ve probably come across the situation where you needed to delete the beginning of each line in a list, especially if you are reformatting a document or dealing with text pasted from another source.

A friend of mine recently turned me on to a cool freeware game called Knytt Stories.  This is a very cool and well designed 2D game that I spent a few hours on last night.  The graphics are not fascinating and the control is relatively easy, but the design and power ups you get to complete each adventure is addictive.  Plus the developers included some very cool relaxing music playing in the background. 

Has it ever bothered you that you can’t change the size of the icons on your XP desktop? Thankfully they added this ability into Windows Vista, but what are your options in the meantime?

This article was written by MysticGeek, a tech blogger at the How-To Geek Blogs.

I’m sure many of you are thinking… can’t I just make a shortcut? You are correct, that’s the simplest way to do it… but the icon we’re talking about today isn’t a shortcut… it’s the actual IE icon that used to exist in prior versions of Windows.

This article was written by MysticGeek, a tech blogger at the How-To Geek Blogs.

There’s an updated version of this article here:

Everybody makes New Year’s resolutions, and I wonder how many of you made the resolution to waste less time browsing the internet? If so, here’s an easy way to track the amount of time you spend online.

Yes, I’m stooping to the pathetic level of writing a post with stats about how well the site has done. You shouldn’t bother to read further unless you have an unhealthy love for numbers.

If you are working on editing a bunch of bookmarks at the same time, you’ve already noticed the pain of having to click on a bookmark and then click Properties, and then edit the details in a popup dialog… and then close that and repeat for the next bookmark.

You’ve already seen them… links to tinyurl.com left in comments, on blog posts and especially on Twitter. But doesn’t it make you slightly uneasy to click on a link without knowing where it’s going to take you?

Have you ever tried to email or IM somebody a link from a site that has ridiculously long URLs, only to have the link break because it was too long or got cut off? The solution to this problem is to use a service like TinyUrl that turns a really long link into a really short link.

I have been very impressed by the ZOHO Online Office Suite.  Yesterday we checked out ZOHO Sheets and Writer.  Today we will go more in depth and explore the other applications.

For the regular readers of my Blog you know that I am a huge music enthusiast. After my Rant Against iTunes I tried out several players before finally sticking with Spider Player as my primary music listening application. The unfortunate thing about Spider is it doesn’t include a burning feature. I have added it to the Wishlist in their forum and hopefully in the future that feature will be added. So for the time being I am using a program that a buddy of mine suggested called CDBurnerXP.

Continuing with this weeks M$ Office alternatives theme I thought today we could take a look at ZOHO. Right off the bat I am already MUCH more impressed with this over ThinkFree which I reviewed earlier. ZOHO offers Online spreadsheets, presentations, note taking, organizational tools, web conferencing, word processor, Database and Reporting, web applications creator, Instant Messaging, and an online public or private Wiki.

One of my favorite features in Windows Vista is the taskbar thumbnail previews, especially now that they can be resized. If you would like this functionality for Firefox’s tabs, you can use the Tab Scope extension to give you a similar feature.

I have decided to try out the various alternatives to M$ Office that are out there.  Although I do think M$ Office 2007 is quite an improvement to 2003, it is always cool and geeky to check out everything.  Today I am going to cover ThinkFree Online which claims to be “The Best Online Office On Earth”.  Well … let’s see.  Here I am just going to go through creating a new “Word” document.

For whatever reason, many Windows XP users are obsessed with making their desktop look like a Mac. It’s not a new phenomenon, but the enterprising people over at FlyakiteOSX created a really easy way to transform your desktop into an OS X look & feel without a lot of trouble.