We've spent a lot of time here on Cloud Coach talking about email organization, and ways that you can better embrace technology to make it easier to learn. But in the comments section of last week's post, one comment made me realize that there are a lot of other areas that can trip people up and turn their technology world into the garbage dump scene from labyrinth.

Here's the scenario

You're working on a project where you have multiple websites that you need to open each and every time. For example, your wordpress site, a google document, and two how-to articles. You probably already know that you can bookmark them, but a feature in my favorite browser (Google Chrome) will allow you to do it better.

Step 1

Open all of the related links in one Google Chrome window. You can add a new tabs by clicking the button or pressing command/control + t. You should have something that looks like this:

Step 2

Now we're going to get crazy. Right click one of your open tabs and choose bookmark all tabs.

Now here's the tricky part- Google Chrome will put all these tabs into a folder for you. This is what you want, but you have to put the folder in the right place for it to be useful for our next step.  Make sure you choose a location that is within the Bookmarks Bar folder.

Click OK and you should see your new folder in the bookmarks bar in Google Chrome.

Step 3

Let's recap: So far we've opened up a bunch of related websites, and bookmarked them all with one click into a folder. Here's the real trick- you can open them all back up with one click, too.

Simply click the folder with your middle mouse button, or if you don't have a middle mouse button, right click the folder and choose open all bookmarks.

All of your bookmarks will now cascade open in Tabs.

Extending Functionality

“Okay, boring.. browser tabs have been around for 10 years now”. True, and though there are new tab innovations coming out every day, I can understand if this is old news for you. So, let's take it a couple notches up using browser extensions.

Does your browser frequently look like this?

Then you need to install Tabs Plus for Chrome. I love it because it lets you search and group tabs. For example, say you have a bunch of tabs open about your upcoming vacation to Hawaii mixed in with a bunch of other stuff.

Open tabs plus by clicking the  button. Now you can search through your tabs. In this case, type Hawaii. You'll notice that tabs start disappearing as you type.

Now click the group button. This will move all the Hawaii tabs next to one another.

You can even go one step further (my favorite)- Click the Send to New Window button and all your Hawaii tabs will be grouped together in a new Google Chrome window, where you can bookmark them for later browsing (using the technique above.

What are your favorite browser extensions?

There are literally thousands of browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and others. I have about 10 installed for chrome. They are:

AdBlock

Bitly

Buffer

PasteFire

Evernote Web Clipper

WiseStamp

Readability

HUDTube

CraigslistPeek

Keyrocket

LastPass

I encourage you to click through and explore them. I couldn't imagine browsing the internet without them (especially LastPass)!

Have you ever played around with browser extensions? What are your favorites?

 

 

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