Glad we don’t have to deal with that anymore.

If, by some chance, you are still using Internet Explorer 6, I highly suggest visiting this browser ballot screen. From there, you can install the latest versions of many popular browsers, including Internet Explorer 8.

Consider this scenario:

I have five tabs open. Let’s assume I was working on a research project that somehow involved Beluga whales, sharks, and trout.  At the same time, the two remaining tabs have both my webpage, and my blog loaded. The underwater project has nothing to do with my personal website or blog, so I will use tab stacking to merge those three related tabs into one. To do this, all I need to do is drag the tabs onto each other. To better illustrate what I mean, see the following video:

So, once I’ve stacked those three tabs into one, here’s what I have:

The Shark tab is now surrounded by a gray border, and an arrow button can be seen on the right of it. If I want to see the tabs contained within the tab stack, I can either click on the arrow button, or double-click the Shark tab. When I do this, the tab stack expands, revealing its contents:

Once expanded, the tabs function exactly as one would expect. They are just logically grouped together, and can be collapsed again to gain space for other tabs. To collapse, simply either click on the arrow button, or double-click any tab within that stack.

When a stack is collapsed, it isn’t necessary to expand it to take a look at the contents. Even before tab stacking was created, Opera allowed users view a thumbnail of the tab contents just by hovering the mouse cursor over any tab. With tab stacking, they extended this feature, allowing users to hover over a stack, and see thumbnails of all tabs within.

Once those thumbnails are visible, you can click on any one of them to bring it into focus. It reminds of me of how the Windows 7 taskbar works, though it isn’t exactly the same.

If you’re wondering how CTRL+TAB will work in conjunction with this, don’t worry. Opera has a different approach when it comes to CTRL+TAB; it will actually bring up a list of tabs, and allow you to step through them. You will see a thumbnail as you’re doing this, facilitating the task. Let’s say the tab stack was collapsed, and the tab you were currently viewing was the Shark tab. When you CTRL+TAB to the Beluga tab, it will actually make Beluga the active tab, but will maintain the collapsed state of the tab stack.

So, all-in-all, I think this is a great step for a browser. If I were working on a desk with multiple sheets of paper, I’d certainly aim to organize them into stacks. The feature is therefore fairly intuitive, at least in concept. Still, I’m left wondering how much better the feature would be with intelligence, rather than relying on manual user actions. Is there a way it could automatically create stacks whenever it made sense? Internet Explorer 8 actually does something like that: If you launch tab B from clicking on a link found within tab A, it assumes tab A and tab B are related, and gives them the same color. What if that intelligence were combined with tab stacking?

CTRL + T

Opens a new tab in the current window.

CTRL + SHIFT + T

Opens the most recently closed tab. Chrome will actually remember the last ten tabs you closed, and work its way back in time with repeated keypresses.

CTRL + W or CTRL + F4

Closes a tab in the current window. If you close the last remaining tab, the window will close as well.

CTRL + 1, CTRL + 2, CTRL + 3, etc

Allows you to switch to a specific tab within a given window. To better illustrate this, see the following image:

Pressing CTRL+1 will do nothing, because in the image I’m already on tab 1. Pressing CTRL+2 will switch to Wikipedia, and CTRL+3 will switch to Microsoft.

CTRL+9 is a special shortcut that will actually move you to the last tab, regardless of the number of tabs. In the example above, pressing CTRL+9 would bring me to tab 3.

CTRL + TAB

Switches to the next tab.

CTRL + SHIFT + TAB

Switches to the previous tab.

CTRL + N

Opens a new window.

CTRL + SHIFT + N

Opens a new incognito window. I use this shortcut whenever I access my e-mail from a shared computer, to help protect my account.

ALT + F4

Close the current window, regardless of how many tabs are open.

ALT + HOME

Loads your homepage in the current tab.

For a full list of shortcuts in Windows, see the Google Chrome Keyboard and mouse shortcuts page.

When you close Chrome, and re-open it, tabs who have been pinned will load automatically. While you could achieve a similar result by adding numerous websites to your home page list, the tab pinning approach seems better, to me.  I feel it truly reflects the minimalistic nature of Google Chrome, a trait that has been a big influence in its adoption. By simply showing a favicon, they are helping support the idea that an icon should be enough to represent an application a person uses often. Windows 7, for example, took a huge step in that direction with the task bar re-design. I’m happy to see that Google is doing similar, as it optimizes how the space is used within a window, and helps organize information.

If you find that your pinned tabs are becoming too numerous, consider moving some of them to the bookmark bar. It is possible to have the bookmarks appear with only a favicons as well. To do this, simply edit an existing bookmark, and delete the name. Chrome will still allow you to use the bookmark without a name, as it still has an icon to represent it.

http://mattrefghi.com/wordpress/sitemap.xml

My browser doesn’t download the file, it merely displays it. This happens because browsers know how to display XML, and they figure it makes more sense to show you the content – rather than initiate a download. The behavior is different with “.zip” files, for example. Browsers usually initiate a download when they are pointed to a URL that ends in “.zip”. Downloading the physical XML is therefore slightly trickier. In Opera, I can just paste that exact URL into to the Quick Download box at the top of the Downloads page. When I press ENTER, it automatically downloads the physical XML file – rather than trying to display it.

I’ve used this countless times over the years. The same is possible in other browsers, but it usually isn’t as quick as Opera’s implementation. For example, in Google Chrome, I’d first have to view the page, click “Control The Current Page” button, and then “Save Page As”. I would then get a” File Save” dialog, which allows me to change the name, or simply press OK to save the file.

Certainly not as quick as Opera… and what if the XML file was massive? I’d have to wait for the browser to first display it, then I’d be able to download the physical file.

One more reason to keep Opera installed on my computer.

Windows features a special file simply called “hosts”, without an extension. This file allows users to map hostnames to IP addresses. More importantly, however, is that when Windows tries to locate nodes on any given network, it will take the hosts file into consideration. It will actually consider the hosts file prior to querying DNS server, and any mappings found within will override those in the DNS. This effectively allows us to write custom redirections that affect the entire system – this was the key to blocking the website. To demonstrate how I used this to my advantage,  here’s what the default HOSTS file looks like in Windows 7:

#def Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

If I wanted to permanently block:

I would add the following entries to the file, in bold:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost
127.0.0.1 kanyeuniversecity.com
127.0.0.1 www.kanyeuniversecity.com
127.0.0.1 kanyewest.com
127.0.0.1 www.kanyewest.com

By doing this, I’m telling Windows that whenever it encounters one of those domains, it should immediately resolve them to the IP 127.0.0.1, rather than querying the DNS server for the IP. The IP 127.0.0.1 is a special “loopback” IP – it pretty much points to whatever machine you are currently using. That’s how these domains are blocked – Windows will actually be told to use 127.0.0.1, which will definitely not work (since the local machine is not a web server, and is not configured to serve such content). This exact technique is used by Spybot Search & Destroy‘s Immunize feature – so when you open your HOSTS file, you might already see a bunch of entries blocked.

Notice, also,  how I added two entries per website I want to block – one with “www.”, and one without it. I considered this necessary because of the following: from the point of view of a DNS server, “www.websitenamehere.com” and “websitenamehere.com” are two completely different domains; however, in most cases, on the Internet, they tend to be configured to point to the same IP address, so we rarely see instances where they behave differently. Still, since they are different at the DNS level, both possibilities needed to be added to HOSTS file.

Ultimately, once configured, the end result is this: whenever you try to access a blocked site, you’ll get this type of error:

Error seen when attempting to visit a site that has been blocked via the Windows hosts file. This example showcases Firefox, but keep in mind that the block is system-wide. Other browsers will react similarly.

There you have it – a way to block websites in Windows, and a browser-independent one at that. As for the procedure for editing the HOSTS file, it differs depending on which version of Windows you are using. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, click here. For Windows XP and older versions of windows, click here. These links will simply trigger appropriate Google searches, as I don’t have articles that cover these steps yet.

As an example, consider the following screenshot:

Bing's wallpaper for July 5th, 2009.

Great image – the type of image that makes me want to know more. This brings us to the problem, though. Bing doesn’t actually tell you anything about what you’re seeing – other than the copyright information. They do give you more information if you are using the United States version of the site – but I’m Canadian. Not only that, but they don’t have the same images on the United States version of the site. Essentially, this means I’m stuck trying to figure out what the photo is depicting, by myself. I found a pretty simple, albeit manual solution: looking at the source code of the page. The background image filename is actually prefixed with some text, in this case, “CalabriaCoast”:

http://www.bing.com/fd/hpk2/CalabriaCoast_EN-CA1974044658.jpg

Once you have that name, you’re in business – search for that text on the web, and you’ll likely find some informative pages among the top results. Worse case, if you don’t have anything useful on the first few pages, at least you have a lead to work with. In my experience, once you have that name – you have it all. That is, of course, if the picture is of something unique, rather than yesterday’s photo: “Zebras”. If you were interested in where the zebras were, you’d have to guess based on the photo alone.

Now… as for how to actually find that name – I have a pretty quick process. I’ll explain how to do it here – covering the major browsers – but keep in mind, these methods aren’t very elegant – some of them require the use of developer tools. I hope Microsoft eventually makes this easier for regular users… and while they’re at it, people that don’t live in the United States.

How to Find the Bing Background Filename Using Your Browser

Google Chrome 2

Using Google Chrome

1) Right-click the background image.

2) Select “Inspect Element”.

A window appears with the element selected – notice on the right sidebar, you’ll see a URL that is partially cut off. Hover your mouse over this URL, and a tooltip will appear – revealing the whole thing. You can even right-click it, and copy it from there. See the screenshot.

Internet Explorer 8

1) Right-click the background image.

2) Select “Save Background As”.

A window pops up asking you to save the file. Take note of the name it is suggesting, as that is the name of the background image.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5

Using Mozilla Firefox

1) Right-click anywhere on the Bing page.

2) Select “View Page Info”.

3) Click the “Media” tab.

You’ll see the background listed along with other images. See the screenshot.

Safari 4

1) Right-click anywhere on the Bing page, and select “View Source”.

2) Click CTRL+F, and then type in “.jpg” as the search term.

Cycle through the search results – there should only be three. You will find that one of them is actually background image URL.