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.

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.

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.

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.

After reading it, I realized it was one of the most polite notices I’d ever read. It also had a sense a humor that I usually only expected to see in Google-authored pages and applications. Good job, Michael, and everyone else at AdBlock.

NOTE: As a web developer, I am very hesitant to use ad blockers, as ads are an important source of income for website owners. I usually only enable them when I reach a site that I feel is completely obnoxious with their placement and overall use of ads.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol that helps provide secure Internet communications for services like web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers. When you search over SSL, your search queries and search traffic are encrypted so they can’t be read by any intermediary party such as employers and internet service providers (ISPs).

Source: Google SSL Search Help

So, put simply, the announcement was great news for privacy and security enthusiasts everywhere. As one of these enthusiasts, I immediately switched to Google’s SSL search for all my web search needs. Sure, there were some drawbacks to switching – namely, a loss in performance – but in my mind, I rather wait a little longer, knowing I have increased security.  So, as a first step, I switched my homepage in Google Chrome. This was pretty straight forward, I simply had to press the Wrench icon, and then select Options.

The next step was to change the search provider – in Google Chrome, this is crucial – since it relies so heavily on one smart search/address bar. When I went to do that, I instinctively selected the existing search engine I was using: Google Canada, and attempted to edit it. Unfortunately, the URL field was grayed out, preventing me from making changes to the URL pattern.

I then figured out that some of these providers are built-in, and can’t be edited. You have to manually add a new search engine, which allows you to define all fields. Here’s what I entered for each field:

• Name: Google HTTPS
• Keyword: g
• URL: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%s

Once I selected the new engine as my as the default, I was ready to go. Google’s SSL search was my homepage, and my default search engine. Yet, I still had some flexibility: I chose keywords that would allow me to easily switch between engines. For example, by typing:

gc wikipedia ducks

Chrome understands that I want to search using Google Canada:

This allowed me to have a secure search engine by default, all the while making it easy for me to use others on-the-fly.

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.

This extension does nothing.

Right there among the top rated extensions, I found one that did nothing:

When I viewed the details about the extension, it became obvious that many people were fueling the joke by adding supportive comments. Still, you see glimmers of confusion every now and then.

The last comment is my favorite.