Multiple Tabs in Your Browser

I had to write last week’s post nearly a week early and totally forgot we were supposed to be talking about Internet resources! Eek! Sorry! LOL! So I’m going to make it up to you by giving you some tricks I think you can use.

I find the Internet and blogs and blogging incredibly distracting. I often won’t open up my browser just so I won’t be sucked into a hole in the space-time continuum. On the other hand, I believe there is much to be gained from reading a lot of the author, agent and editor blogs, and I hate to miss my favorites. The way my brain seems to work, if I have to remember a bunch of stuff, it uses up valuable RAM that can’t be used until it’s freed up again. So I found a way to have my computer “remember” what I want to see every day without me having to think about it.

You all know how to change your home page, right? You go to whatever page you want to be your home page and, for most browsers, you go into Preferences or Tools/Options and choose to use the current page as your home page. (On some web sites, there is a button on the site that you can click to make it your home page.) But what if you want to see several web sites every day? For instance, I want to see my Facebook page, Twitter page, the breast cancer page where you click to give a free mammogram, three news sites, and a few blogs. If I have to remember to open each one of them every day, I’ll forget. So I set ALL of them to be my home pages. How? By having multiple tabs open at the same time, each with a different site.

Mozilla Firefox on a PC

1. To open a new tab in the browser, go to File and choose New Tab, or press Ctrl-T. Type in the web site address you want or use your bookmarks or click on one of the sites you saved on your toolbar to choose the one you’re looking for. You now have two tabs open with two different web sites up. Do this as many times as you want until you have everything up you want to see each day.

2. Wish you’d opened them in a different order? (I have my breast cancer click page as the first page so I can click, then close it.) Click on the tab you want to move and drag it to where you want it.

3. To save your pages so they all open every time you open your browser, go to Tools, Options, make sure you’re on the “Main” tab there, then click on Use Current Pages. These are now all your home pages.

Mozilla Firefox on a Mac

1. The same – File, New Tab, or the Apple key and T. Repeat as many times as you like.

2. The same – click and drag to the order you want.

3. To save your current pages as your home page, go to Firefox, Preferences, make sure you’re on the “Main” tab, and click on Use Current Pages.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Steps 1 and 2 are probably the same. If step 3 doesn’t give you the screen you want, look around and see if “Use Current Pages” is under Preferences or in another area. (Or leave a comment that you can’t find it and I’ll find out for you and leave my comment back.)

As far as I can tell by playing around with it, Safari for Mac is not yet able to have multiple tabs open when the browser starts.

Things to Remember

1. If you hit the home button, ALL of your tabs will open again and you’ll have to click on each tab’s “x” to close them. (Or maybe hit Ctrl-W. On my Mac, I hit Apple-W to close a tab.)

2. If you decide to stop following a site, open your browser, close that one tab, and repeat step 3. Or if you want to add a site, or move around the order, make your changes and repeat step 3.

3. When you close the browser, you may be asked if you are sure you want to close it because there are multiple tabs open. This can be great if it keeps you from forgetting you were in the middle of something on another tab, or it can be annoying. There is usually a way to stop that message from appearing if you don’t like it.

I think that’s everything. If you’re a list-maker who writes things down so you won’t forget, I think you’ll like this. Now I never have to worry about forgetting to check the news or an agent’s blog. Yay!  LOL! Let me know if you have any questions or problems, and I’ll try to help.