Pasting Text Without Formatting In Google Chrome
As part of my regular use of Gmail, I often find myself pasting text from web into my e-mails. Since the Gmail editor supports rich-text, pasting generally includes the formating, which, most of the time, simply does not make sense within the e-mail. For years, I have been using a trick to get around this - one which involved using the almighty Windows Notepad. By simply pasting the text into Notepad, and then copying it from there, I make sure the formating is not brought over. This works because Notepad itself does not support formating. As useful as this trick is, I often found myself wondering whether there were better options available.
A few days ago, as I was writing an e-mail to a prospective client, I made the mistake of writing it in Google Docs, and then copying it over to Gmail. With the Notepad trick applied, I would have been fine – but it slipped my mind in this occasion. Copying text from Google Docs had one immediate effect – it meant the Google Docs font would be used in the Gmail Editor. In itself, not a problem – but as I continued working on the e-mail, I found myself copying another specific subset of the Google Doc, and pasting it in the middle of the e-mail. All looked fine within the editor, but after it was sent, one flaw was made immediately apparent:
Notice the unnecessary extra spacing? It appeared immediately after the content I pasted from Google Docs. To make matters worse, part of my e-mail explained how I put emphasis on perfecting the content I produce. Words cannot express how infuriating it is for a perfectionist to express his perfectionism, only to realize he sent an obviously imperfect e-mail.
I immediately sought to find a solution, once and for all, to ensure I never make such a mistake again. After some searching, I discovered that the good folks at Google already took steps to fix this browser “feature”. While using Google Chrome, one can simply press CTRL + SHIFT + V to paste without formating. Since Google Chrome is my browser of choice, this covers 90% of my use cases, making it a solid solution. Hopefully other browsers will start implementing similar features, permanently resolving the issue.
Working with Tab Stacks in Opera 11
Long ago, Opera used to be my browser of choice. I eventually migrated to Firefox, and now Google Chrome. It was always obvious to me that some of Chrome’s features were highly influenced by Opera. Since Opera 11 was recently released with an intriguing new feature called “tab stacking”, I thought I’d go over how it works.
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?
Tab Management Shortcuts in Google Chrome
When I use a browser, I typically focus on using keyboard shortcuts, rather than the user interface. Since I’ve been using Google Chrome so often, I thought I would reveal the shortcuts that I’ve been using. Most of these shortcuts should work in other browsers as well, whether natively, or through the use of extensions.
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.
Drag-and-Drop Downloads in Google Chrome
Here’s a tip for all Google Chrome users out there. By now, you’ve probably all seen how Chrome treats downloads differently than other browsers. As soon as you download a file, a bar will appear at the bottom of that particular tab, allowing easy access to the file. In doing so, it also saves space by only showing what is immediately relevant for each individual tab.
You can use controls in that bar to locate the file in Windows, or even view your full list of downloads. I’ve personally always used the “Show in folder” option, as this brings me exactly to the file, allowing me to move it elsewhere. Usually, I end up moving it to my desktop, as I like having the files right in front of me, allowing for easy disposal whenever necessary.
After using that approach for long time, I found an easier way. It seems that Chrome actually lets you drag any file from the bottom bar to your desktop, or anywhere else for that matter. It will automatically copy the file to where you drop it. I find this particularly useful when I just want to copy to the desktop, as it is usually always visible when I’m browsing.
Once I figured that out, I started to play around with drag-and-drop in general. In most cases, dragging something from a webpage to your desktop will simply create a shortcut, which isn’t particularly useful. Thankfully, I found one main exception to this: when you drag an image from a webpage into Windows, Chrome actually downloads the image, and places it wherever you dropped it. This is a feature I seem to recall Opera having many years ago, and I eventually forgot about it when I switched to another browser. I’m pleased to see it in Chrome, and will likely figure out more drag-and-drop exploits as I experiment.