NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, January 2012
The Tip Corner
By Bill Sheff,
Novice SIG Coordinator, Lehigh Valley Computer Group, PA
April 2011 issue, The LVCG Journal
http://www.lvcg.org
nsheff (at) aol.com (click to email author)

Copy and Paste a Web Page into E-mail
While copy and paste can get info from a web page into your email, it loses most formatting and colors, etc. So if you want the formatting or artwork or video to be seen here is how to link a web page: Click once in your browser's address bar to highlight the Web address (this works in both Firefox and Internet Explorer), then press Ctrl-C to copy that address to the Windows clipboard. Now create a new e-mail message in whatever program or Web service you use, then press Ctrl-V to paste the address into the body of the e-mail. In Internet Explorer 8, it is even easier. Click Page, then select Send Link by E-mail. In Firefox, select File, Send Link.

If you want to send a hyperlinked text, but not the text just right click the link in IE and then choose Copy Shortcut. In Firefox, you right-click the link and then choose Copy Link Location. (Same deal for Chrome, Opera, and Safari, though the "copy link" wording might be slightly different.) Then head to your e-mail, word processor, or wherever and press Ctrl-V to paste in the link. You get the URL and not the hyperlinked text.

If your IE opens in a small window and you want it to open in a large window, here is what you do to make any program start maximized:

1. Right-click the program's shortcut, and then click Properties. If you're a Windows 7 user and the shortcut resides on your taskbar, there's an extra step. After you right-click the Taskbar icon, look for the program name in the pop-up menu that appears, and then right-click that. Then you'll see the Properties option, which you can left- or right-click.

2. You'll see the Properties window with the Shortcut tab already selected. Click the pull-down menu next to Run and choose Maximized. 3. Click OK, and you're done!

Just to clarify, the "program shortcut" is the icon you click (or double-click) to run the program in question. This icon might be on your desktop, in the Start menu, or on the Windows taskbar.

It’s good to know what kind of operating system (OS) you have on your computer, that way you’ll be able to download the appropriate kinds of drivers and programs that work best with your configuration. So, here is a tip within a tip. Not only are you going to find out which type of operating system you currently have, but I will even show you a quick way to get there!

For Windows XP users - Hold the Windows Key, and then press the Pause Key, which is located two keys to the right of the Print Screen key. The system properties window springs to life. This window shows all of the basic info about your computer like how much RAM you have and what-not, but it also can tell you what OS you're running. In XP if it doesn't specifically say Windows XP x64 Edition, then you're running a 32 bit operating system. Vista and Win7 users will see a specific field that says “System Type”, which has your OS type listed after it. Vista will actually tell you 32 bit or 64 bit.

Recently, Google has allowed users to sign in with multiple Gmail accounts. This is good since it can allow you to have one email address for personal use, and another which can be used when you register for a website. This keeps your personal account basically spam free. To enable multiple account sign-in, log in at http://google.com/accounts and under "profile" select "Multiple sign-in". At the moment, this feature is only available for desktop browsers and not all Google Services currently support multiple account sign-in.

Creating bookmarks in Firefox is easy, and can be rearranged just about any way you want them. We all have a lot of favorites which means a lot of bookmark. In Firefox you can add a folder for each of your favorites and group them all together.

Open Firefox if you don’t have it open and click on Bookmarks then Organize bookmarks. Choose where you want to add the folder. If you want to see the folder when you click Bookmarks in Firefox click once on Bookmark Menu. Right-click and select New Folder. Name the folder and give it a description if you want, then click Add. The description is only for you to see and is good to use when you have a lot of sites and can’t remember exactly what you liked about it.

The folder you created is now listed under Bookmarks. To add a new bookmark to your newly created folder right click on the folder and choose New Bookmark. Put the name of the website in the Name field. Type the web address in the Location field. In the Keyword you could put “ws” for example for Worldstart. In the address bar in Firefox you can just put “ws” (without the quotes) and press enter and it will take you to that site. Just a little shortcut if you want to save a few keystrokes. Add a description of the bookmark if you want and click Add. If you check the box, Load this bookmark in the sidebar that means if you click on View – Sidebar – Bookmarks this folder will be listed.

Now to add bookmarks to the folder for sites you already bookmarked. Click Bookmarks and Organize Bookmarks. Click on the correct folder on the left holds your bookmarks. Simply drag and drop the bookmark into the new folder. To drag and drop, click once on the bookmark with the left mouse button and hold it down. Drag it to the folder and then let the button go. The new bookmark will be in the folder you created. If you want to add more than one bookmark at a time, you can hold down the CTRL key and click on each bookmark then drag them to the new folder.

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