Customizing Your Browser
Customizing Your Browser
Internet browsers can be customized to fit your needs and preferences. Whichever one you use, take a few minutes to look into potentially helpful customizations, such as add-ons and toolbars. Add-ons are applications that let you personalize the functionality and style of your browser; however, most editors don't use these much, as they tend to distract from editing.
You'll also want to make sure you have plugins installed. Here are some of the most common plugins:
Flash Player
Apple QuickTime
Windows Media Player
Word Adobe Acrobat
You'll want these installed so your browser can display these files appropriately within the browser window. First, we'll look at some add-ons that might be helpful, and then we'll talk about toolbars.
Add-ons are useful pieces of software designed to tailor browsers to a user's preferences. They can be used to add, augment, or disable various features of Internet browsers, and they can also be used to block web sites and information altogether. Let's talk about some of the most common add-ons and extensions out there. It should be noted that different browsers have different versions of the specific programs we name. The add-ons and extensions we refer to specifically are only used here for examples. We are not endorsing these products.
Advertisements basically pay for the Internet. All sites do it, and there's really nothing wrong with it. However, if you use the Internet frequently and find yourself frustrated by web pages that load slowly or if you are tired of advertisements crowding your screen, you can download an add-on that blocks most advertisements. Perhaps the most well-known advertisement blocker is Adblock Plus, but there are others.
If you are concerned about your security on the internet in general, consider installing an extension or add-on that tracks where information from your IP address is being sent. There are a number of extensions that monitor and/or block cookies installed on your computer when you visit web sites. Some add-ons simply track where information is going, and others actively block anything from being installed without your permission.
If you are the kind of person that always has anywhere from ten to fifteen tabs open in your browser at any one time, or if you are the kind of person that opens each link on a search engine search return page in a new window, you may want to use an extension like Snap Links Plus. This extension allows you to open up all links within a designated area on your screen. To determine the area, simply draw a rectangle with your mouse. It's that easy.
There are also a number of other add-ons that operate in a similar manner as Snap Links Plus. Some open all URLs on the page, some copy and paste URLs to a text file, some let you bookmark many links at one time, and some do all these things. Choose the add-on that's best for your browsing habits.
If you are going to be editing and proofreading on the web, you may need to generate images of web sites for various purposes. Sometimes you'll be asked to comment directly on a screenshot of a web page. Sometimes you'll need to take screen shots to help explain problems with a specific part of the page.
While the Print Screen button on your keyboard is sometimes useful, web pages extend beyond what you can see on your screen, so you need an add-on that will take a picture of the whole web page you are viewing at the same time. FireShot is one such add-on, and it generally seems to have the most features available. You can capture entire web pages as images, leave comments on the images, save them to a clipboard (or to a file with a .png, .jpg, or .pdf extension), or send them through e-mail. Think about how much easier it will be to give a client direct feedback about his or her web page when you have a PDF file of images to leave comments on. There are other programs that have different features than FireShot. Pick the one that best suits you.
There are add-ons for almost everything. There are add-ons that notify you every time you receive an e-mail. There are add-ons that help manage documents you want to print, Pinterest add-ons, Facebook add-ons, add-ons that allow you to view JavaScript, add-ons that block JavaScript, add-ons that manage your tags, add-ons that allow you to search the dictionary (or thesaurus) of your choosing, and of course, add-ons for games. Again, the add-ons you require will depend entirely on how you use the Internet, so let your habits be your guide.
There are few web toolbars directly for editing use, but the bookmarks toolbar more than makes up for this. Each browser has a different bookmarks system, but all of them allow you to have a toolbar at the top or at the side of your browser window that you can fill with quick links to your favorite sites. You can choose the most valuable, frequently visited sites, and they will show up as buttons in the toolbar at the top or side of the screen. This way, your best resources are only a click away, which beats having to search for them every time in your bookmarks menu.
Candidates for sites you might want to link in your bookmarks toolbar would be research sites, online style guides, dictionary sites, and the sites of the company or companies for which you work.
You can also often (depending on your browser) tell your address bar or quick search bar to search a specific site or search engine when you enter information into that field. Simply go into your browser's search settings and indicate which search engine you would like the browser to use.
Mozilla Firefox offers you the opportunity to select which site you want to search from a prepopulated list. Take a look at the screen grab to the right.
By clicking the Google symbol, you can make a drop down menu appear. This menu will let you search a variety of sites without actually having to take the extra step of going to that site. As you can see, by clicking Manage Search Engines, you can specify which sites you'd like to see in that list.
Last Updated: 10/01/2022