Tabbed browsing

September 30, 2008 By

Here’s a tip that falls into the category of “stuff I take for granted because I do it automatically every day, and only recently realized that explaining it could help other people.”

This is a great category, by the way — seriously, you should check your own version. You might find a fantastic business idea or just something cool to talk to your friends about. But I digress. Back to my main point, which is:

Tabbed browsing. If you already know what this is and how to use it, good for you and congratulations, feel free to skip ahead to the next entry. If not, here’s the scoop:

When you’re browsing or surfing the web, you look at pages one at a time in your web browser (most people have Internet Explorer or Firefox). But what if you want to look at another page without losing your place on the page you’re currently reading?

You have at least three options:

  1. You could bookmark the page you’re on, intending to return to it later. This won’t work if you’re logged in to your bank or halfway down a long page, though, because the bookmark will return you to the login screen or the top of the page).
  2. You could also open a new window (click on New Window under the File menu, or press Ctrl+N — or ⌘-N on a Mac) on top of your existing one. You can manage multiple windows in your taskbar (Windows) or dock (Mac).
  3. Or, my preferred way and the simplest and easiest, you could open a new tab (Ctrl+T on a Windows computer, ⌘-T on a Mac). You can even click a link while pressing the Ctrl or ⌘ key, and the link will open in a new tab.

Opening links in tabs lets you manage multiple web pages in the same window. So if you’re logged into your bank and you want to go check the weather forecast without logging out (why? I don’t know… maybe you want to know if you’re going to get rained on on your way to the ATM), now it’s easy to do. Open a new tab, check the weather, and then when you’re done, close the tab (each tab has its own teeny little close button, usually marked with an “x”).

Firefox is even polite enough to warn you that you’re about to close multiple tabs when you close the program (and you can tell it to open the same set of tabs next time it opens!), and there’s even a menu item that lets you bookmark all your open tabs at once, a big timesaver.

This week’s heart of the matter: Put it on your tab! Using tabs to keep track of multiple windows may seem like a tiny step, but it can simplify your desktop, save time, and generally keep you slightly saner. And that’s huge.

Filed Under: Heart-Centered Tech Tips Tagged With: ,

Keeping the Wonder Alive

September 23, 2008 By

“You see, whenever I solve a problem on an electronic device I’m building, it’s like the biggest high ever. And that’s what drives me to keep doing it, even though you get frustrated, angry, depressed, and tired doing the same things over and over. Because at some point comes the Eureka moment. You solve it.”

–Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer,
writing about inventing the original Apple I
in his autobiography,iWoz

Well-said, Woz. I got to thinking about the concept of “the Eureka moment,” because it inspires me too, especially with technology tweaks. That moment is one of the things I like most about working with people who need technology help. Seeing those people light up with Eurekas of their own is the best reward I can get for my work.

Here’s a true story:

Two days ago I followed a link in someone’s email signature (that’s a Tip for a future installment!) to sign up for a free email series. And the sign-up form on this person’s web page wasn’t working. It gave me an error message every time I tried to submit it.

Most people would give up at this point. A few might email the person to tell her that her form wasn’t working. Me, the terminally curious techno-geek? I took a look at the HTML that made up her web page, found the line of code that was causing the error, and emailed her to tell her not only that she had a problem, but to give her the solution as well.

(Side note: She happened to be an AWeber user, which made it a little easier for me because I use AWeber too and know the details of how it works.)

This wasn’t a client, mind you. She wasn’t even someone I knew, really — we just had a brief email connection. The whole thing took me maybe 10 minutes, and she emailed me to thank me (and in fact used a slightly different solution, which is fine with me — I was just happy to see her form working again!). Point is, I got to have a fun diversion in my day, and she got a working form, simply because I indulged my curiosity (well, and because I have ninja coding skills). Everybody wins!

Just for fun, here’s another quote from a book I read recently, that sparked a “Yes! That’s ME!” reaction when I read it.

“With a new language or a new machine, it was always like having someone say, “Here’s this list of part numbers, and here’s a picture of a car you can build with the parts,” and at first I would think, ‘F*&$ this, I already know how to build a car with the old kind of parts I’ve been using,’ but then I would get curious and start trying to use the new parts, and they’d be shaped weird — the new parts would have their own unfamiliar logic that at first I couldn’t accept — but then I’d manage to build a wheel and it would roll, and then I’d get more curious and start seeing cool things to do with the new logic, and by then I’d be well into the flip-flop. The fact that I was willing and able to do this to myself so often was what made me a hacker.”

–from Rudy Rucker’s sci-fi novel The Hacker and the Ants

This week’s Heart of the Matter: Cultivate a sense of wonder. Unleash your natural curiosity in some area of your life. It will spill over into the others. And recognize that for every place you’re stuck (especially with technology), there are geeks like me who would love to delve into your problem and figure it out…maybe even help you learn the solution.

(photo found at BigStockPhoto)

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Are you smarter than a third-grader?

September 16, 2008 By

This week’s tip is brought to you by the most amazing third-grader on the planet: my daughter.

As I was checking over her math homework tonight, she told me that kindergarteners (remember, to a third-grader, they’re babies) don’t use UPSC. I said, “youpie-what?” and she patiently explained that UPSC stands for a four-step method of problem-solving, which I immediately realized was the answer to my dilemma (finding something fun to write about here), because you can apply it to pretty much anything. Here you go:

  1. Understand
  2. Plan
  3. Solve
  4. Check

I’d love to apply this to a word problem that begins “If a train leaves Cincinnati at 50 miles per hour carrying 150 pounds of grapefruit…” but I’m going to use a tech example I’ve been working with for several weeks: A clogged email inbox.

Step 1: Understand. What is the problem here? I’m buried under an avalanche of emails, that’s what.

Let’s examine this a little bit, though. If the burying were the only problem, I could solve that by closing my email account, or not using my computer — not viable solutions for me. So part of my problem is the sheer number of emails I get, and another part of my problem is locating and managing the emails I care about. A third part could be actually having the time to deal with these important emails.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Clarifying my goals, I want to:

  • receive fewer non-important emails
  • deal with the important ones as they arrive (keep my inbox as close to zero as possible)
  • not spend a lot of time on this process (I want to save time, not spend it)

Step 2: Plan. So let’s check out some options. Right now, I’m only going to address the first goal, which is reducing the sheer number of emails (specifically, non-urgent or non-important emails) I’m getting.

The most obvious type of non-important email is spam. And you can pour a huge amount of time and energy into avoiding spam, with marginal results. So the simplest thing to do about it is to immediately delete (marking as “spam” or “junk”) all spam emails, and not spend one more second thinking about it.

However, remember (as I wrote in this post) that you should not hit the spam button for email that’s not really spam. And I have two more posts about dealing with non-important, but non-spam, email. One is setting up email filters, and one is using RSS for things like newsletters to keep them from cluttering your inbox.

So my plan might look like this:

  1. When I check email, delete spam immediately and don’t think about it.
  2. Set up three email filters for the three most profligate senders (or categories)
  3. Set up an RSS reader and subscribe to three newsletters that I currently get by email

Step 3: Solve. I’ve got my plan. So now I can just do it. The spam-deletion thing is something I can do easily each time I check my email. The email filters and RSS do require a commitment of time and energy to set up, so let’s say I take half an hour for each of these tasks, and put that into my schedule.

This is where it’s tempting to say “Yay! I’m done!” While it’s great to celebrate these accomplishments, there’s one more step. The step that turns this process into a self-tuning path to constant improvement.

Step 4: Check. Now I get to ask myself the question: How is this system working for me so far? It’s been a couple of weeks since I set up those email filters. I can go check the folders and see what’s been filed there. If I notice that the filters weren’t picking up what I thought they would, I can tweak. The great opportunity is this: when I see that these folders are filling up with emails that I really didn’t need to read, I can give myself permission to just unsubscribe! And even if I want to keep them around just in case, they still won’t be cluttering my inbox.

Same with RSS. If you’ve found that you’re not checking your reader, that could mean that you need to make it a habit…but it could also mean that the stuff in your reader really isn’t that important, and you can drop the desperate need to keep up with that particular pile. Bam! You’ve just saved yourself a bundle of time.

And now you can go back to the Understand step, and see what problem you want to tackle next, or maybe you have a clarified understanding of the problem you’ve been working on, thanks to the Check step. Look how far you’ve come!

Lather, rinse, repeat. Tweak, play, and remember to give yourself a gold star at the top of your homework paper. Third grade can be so much fun!

This week’s heart of the matter: Take it from a third-grader. The same four-step process that helps solve those pesky word problems in the math book can be applied to nearly any problem, and in fact it’s great for technological stuff because it can shift the “help, I’m overwhelmed!” into taking one step at a time.

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Yes, dammit, technology is hard

September 9, 2008 By

This week I want to say I’m sorry.

I’ve been doing a lot of technology cheerleading–on this blog, in my classes, on Twitter. I talk a lot about how easy technology can be, once you take the first step or allow yourself the freedom to play.

Then I read this post, called “It’s not freaking easy, okay?” by the awesomely fabulous Havi Brooks (I had already signed up for a course, Non-Icky Self-Promotion for People Who Hate Self-Promotion, that Havi is doing with the equally fabulous Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz, and I’m both thrilled and terrified that it starts tomorrow).

And I realized that when I chirpily say that technology can be fun, and that setting up a website is easy, or emailing your contact list with AWeber is easy, or that it’s easy to have fun playing around with Blogger, there’s an instant response that a lot of people have: “No it’s $!@&* not!”

I get that in a way I didn’t get it before. After all, I’m very quick to get defensive when an expert in something I know nothing about, like a car mechanic or an electrician, assures me that the very expensive thing they’re about to do is “easy.” I completely admire folks with those skills, and I’m totally willing to pay a high hourly rate so I can benefit from those skills. But if they tell me how easy it is, I feel like a dope for having to pay them to do it! And I also worry that they’re secretly laughing at me for my dopiness. Yikes! These are people I want and need to trust!

Now I know that my enthusiastic gushing about how fun and easy technology is could easily be perceived that exact same way (even though I have the best of intentions and I want to be encouraging and welcoming and all that).

So I’m sorry. I know that technology can be very, very hard. I know what it feels like to be so frustrated that I could gnaw through my laptop’s power cord. You know how there are times when you’ve read the entire freaking user manual, and you still can’t figure out how to make your computer do the one very simple thing you need to do? I’ve totally been there.

Recently, in fact. Just yesterday my husband asked me a tech question. He wanted to bookmark a blog so he could see the recent post titles right in the bookmark list, which was something he’d done before, and he couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working.

I said, “You can do that? I didn’t even know that was possible!” and I felt like a bit of a moron, because, after all, I’m supposed to be an expert in technology. Web technology especially. And blog stuff most especially of all. And I call myself a web coach!

This week’s heart of the matter: I’ll make you a deal. I’m going to be more conscious about saying things are easy. I’m not going to stop cheerleading, or teaching, or encouraging all of you to try something new. But I am going to acknowledge that this stuff can be scary, hard, and intimidating, and do my best to meet you where you are. Your part of the deal? Just show up fully where you are. Tell me what you need, and let me know how I’m doing. Don’t say “I can’t” when what you really mean is “I’m afraid,” or “I’ve never done this before,” or “I don’t want to learn something new.” Together, we can go places and do things we could never do on our own. What do you say, is it a deal?

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