Be Quicker

Google Translate has brought out a list of “Translation Browser Button” which you can drag and drop onto your browser’s Links/Bookmarks toolbar. Then, whenever you’re on a page that needs translating, you can just click one of these bookmarks, and it will automatically use Google’s translation tool to translate the page.

But, if you’re like me, and you want easy access to all the Google translation links, then you’ll want them all on your toolbar. To facilitate this, I’ve created a FireFox bookmarks file that you can easily import into FireFox, and all the links will be in your Bookmarks.

Here’s how to do it.

1 - Download the file from here: translation.html (you might have right-click and “Save Link As”, or download the zipped version - translation.zip)
2 - Save it to a location you will remember, like your desktop
3 - In FireFox, click on the following menu options: “Bookmarks” => “Organize Bookmarks…”
4 - Once FireFox has opened up the “Bookmarks Manager”, click on the following menu options: “File” => “Import…”
5 - Select “From File” and click next
6 - Browse to where you saved the file “translation.html”, select the file and click open

And there you have it. You should see a new folder called “Translate” at the bottom of your list of Bookmarks on the left. Now, whenever you’re on a page that needs translating, you can just click on “Bookmarks” => “Translate” and select the translation you need.

Personally, I’m a great “Bookmarks Toolbar” lover because it’s less tedious then going the above route. So, on the left, click the very top folder (it should be named “Bookmarks”), and then look for the “Translate” folder on the right. Try dragging the folder all the way up and into the folder named “Bookmarks Toolbar Folder”. This way it will appear on your bookmarks toolbar, within easy reach for quick translation. Take a look at the beautiful image of this in action (clicking the image will enlarge it).

Thanks to Google Operating System for pointing this out.

In my post entitled “Browsing with tabs quickly in FireFox” I highlight some of my reasons for why browsing the web using tabs in FireFox is more efficient. Well, if you’re anything like me, that’s not enough. One of the main reasons for this site is because I would like to share the shortcuts I use and think that everybody should use.

So, here are some of the keyboard shortcuts for browsing with tabs.

[CTRL]-T

This will open/create a new tab in Firefox. Remember this one for future shortcuts.

[CTRL]-W

This will close the current tab that you are viewing. Be careful though, if you only have one tab open, it will close your browser.

[CTRL]-[TAB]

This will cycle forward through your tabs. So, in the example in my previous post, if you have Google open in Tab 1, Site #1 open in Tab 2, etc, pressing [CTRL]-[TAB] will take you from the Google tab to the Site #1 tab.

[CTRL]-[SHIFT]-[TAB]

This does the same as the above, only in the opposite (reverse) direction…

My recommendation for this is to keep your left hand on the keyboard for cycling through your tabs, and, unless you have to type anything, keep your right hand on your mouse for clicking on links.

The main benefit to using FireFox is the ability to browse the internet using tabs. The tabs enable you to have just one FireFox program running, and yet have multiple “windows” open. These tabs could effectively be different websites or different pages within one website, or both.

If you’re wondering why you would want to be able to do this, think about the steps in the following situation:

• You search for something in Google
• You see an interesting site in the results - Site #1, for example. So you go to that site
• You read the site, browsing to different pages in the site
• You realise it wasn’t quite what you were looking for, so you click the [BACK] button in your browser until you find your Google results
• You go to the NEXT result that seems interesting
• etc… etc… etc..

Now, look at it from the FireFox perspective:

• You search for something in Google
• You see an interesting site in the results - Site #1, for example. So you open that site in a new tab
• You still have your Google results open in your current tab, so, while your new tab is loading, you carry on scanning the Google results
• You find another interesting site, and open that site in a new tab
• etc… etc… etc…
• When you finish opening up your preferred sites, you close your Google Results, and go to the first tab. Read that one, if it’s not what you want, close that tab and read the next one…

Don’t you agree that this is MUCH easier? For one thing, you won’t wait as long for pages to load because you are scanning and reading one tab while the other tab(s) load in the background.

How to open new tabs in FireFox

There are 3 main ways to open new tabs in FireFox with your mouse:

1. Right-click on the link and click on “Open in new tab”
2. While holding the [CTRL] key, click the link with your left mouse button
3. Use the middle button on your mouse to click on the link