A Better Browsing Experience

A Better Browsing Experience

This simple tip which some I am sure would say is useless and also that that's why the Favorites are for, I guarantee you this would make accessing your truly favorite sites or those that you must mandatorily check (such as your banking sites), much easier and quicker.

Now, I have noticed that many people do not use the Links folder in their Favorites, as I previously didn't either. This folder comes with IE (Internet Explorer), and with some links already in there. Well, this folder can also be used as a toolbar in IE. To verify it, go to View > Toolbars > Links. Now, more than likely, the sites that are in there are of no interest to you. Why not put files and folders in there of your "truly" favorite sites. If you are like me, you have added hundreds of things to your Favorites list because you would like to access them in a few days, weeks, or even years. However, of those hundreds, there are probably about 5 to 15 that you access regularly--2 to 3 times a day, week, or month, such as news sites, banking sites, credit card sites, email, blogs, etc. You can organize related sites into folders to make things easier and to be able to fit more on the toolbar at an instant glance.

O.k. Hopefully you get how cool this is and not only how much time can be saved accessing websites that you visit frequently, but more importantly, how easy and pleasurable it is to access those sites, so here are the exact instructions, which you most likely already know how to do, but I will explain it anyway.

1) Go to Start or to your Desktop and Open up my computer and navigate to the Favorites folder, which will most likely be in this location:

C:\Documents and Settings\your_name\Favorites\

2) Locate the folder called Links. Now, if you are like me, you like to keep everything, so if this is the case and you are not interested in any of the items in the folder but don't want to delete it, simply rename the folder and create a new folder called Links. If you do want some of the things in that folder, delete what you don't want to keep or move them to some other folder.

3) Go to several sites and add them to favorites and inside that folder. For demonstration purposes, you can do the following. Go the cnn's website (CNN), click favorites, then add to favorites. Click on the Links Folder, then click on New Folder, give that folder a name such as News, and then click ok. Now go to the abc news website (ABC News), and add it to this same News folder. After this go to several other sites and add them to the Links folder. Arrange the items in this folder in the order that you would want to access them, though it may not stay in that order and you will need to arrange them in IE so that they then stay in order. Tip #1: To try to keep Name of the sites you add very short, so that you can have more websites at a glance available to you in the toolbar. For example, instead of having the name World Wrestling Entertainment, simply put WWE. Tip #2: To force the items you placed in the folders in the Links folder to stay in order, for example as we did with the news websites of CNN and ABC News, place a number in front of the name. So, if you wanted CNN to be listed first, you would name it 1-CNN, and for ABC News you would have 2-ABC News. If you would like to rename anything, right click on the site you added in the Links folder and choose rename, or go to the Links folder in the Favorites folder-- C:\Documents and Settings\your_name\Favorites\Links\ , whichever you find easier and faster.

4) Make certain that you have the Links toolbar enabled. Go to View>Toolbars>Links. There should be a checkmark in front of the word Links. Please do have only one browser window open as you are working on doing this. Now, arrange the items in the toolbar in the order you want by simply dragging them left or right on the toolbar before or after other links you have there. For those in folders, drag them up or down or out of the folder. Note: Extra links/sites will be to the right hand side of the toolbar, which you will be able to access by clicking on the double arrows that would appear if you have exceeded the toolbar space.

5) After you have the sites arranged in the exact order you want, press CTRL and N to open up two or three more browsers and observe the order of the sites in the toolbar. If the links/sites are not still in the same order that you arranged them, close all browsers, including the one you were working with, and try arranging them in order again and then press CTRL and N. This order will get messed up sometimes when you play around with other toolbars and in other rare cases, which will be annoying to you after you have setup your perfect order and used it that way for such a long time, but nonetheless, this rarely occurs.

6) Enjoy a better browsing experience.