Archive of entries posted on January 2008

FireFox Quickie: use keywords for quick access to websites

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If you use the FireFox browser, there’s an easy way to quickly browse to a website that you use often. After bookmarking the site, right-click the bookmark in your Bookmarks menu and select Properties. In the Keyword field, add a word that you want to use as shortcut for the website.
After doing that, getting to the website is as easy as typing that keyword in the address bar and pressing ENTER.

For example, I regularly have a look at the Spry Framework page of Adobe. Instead of trying to remember the URL or even selecting the bookmark, I added the keyword spry to the Properties of that bookmark:Now, the only thing I have to do is to type spry in the address bar of FireFox and press ENTER.
This will load the bookmark URL. Cool!

Recommended Tool: PureText

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There are a few tools that I use so often, that I can imagine some of you might be interested in them as well. The first one is PureText.

It’s a small nifty application that will simply remove any text formatting from the contents in the Clipboard. You can assign a hot-key to paste the text (without the formatting). I use the default setting of the Windows Key+V. When I want to paste everything with formatting, I use CTRL+V, otherwise, WINDOWS+V. Really cool!

As the Author (Steve Miller) says “PureText is basically equivalent to opening Notepad, doing a PASTE, followed by a SELECT-ALL, and then a COPY. The benefit of PureText is performing all these actions with a single Hot-Key and having the result pasted into the current window automatically.“

Best of all, the tool is absolutely free. Highly recommended: http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/

SharePoint 2007 Quickie: Adding Lists to a Meeting WorkSpace

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In a previous post, I complained about the fact that SharePoint 2007 is not intuitive enough. With this Quickie, I want to share the best way to add a List to a Meeting Workspace:

  • The way not to do it: I thought you needed to select Site Actions > Edit Page and then Add a Web Part to add a Custom List to a Meeting Workspace.However, if you do that, you get a list of Web Parts that you can add, but not the list you would expect (or at least, the list I expected). I was looking for a way to add a Custom List, but just a few predefined Lists (Attendees, Directions, Discussion Board, …) appeared. There was no way to add a Custom List:
  • The way to do it: Simply select Site Actions > Create to add a Custom List to the Meeting Workspace. If you do that, you get the full list of things you can add:The List will be added to the left hand side at the bottom, but after creating it, you can select Site Actions > Edit Page to move the List somewhere.

OK, I have to admit that it isn’t that illogical after all to use Create for adding a list, but then again, it would have been nice if you could do the same when using Add a Web Part.