When it comes to paring a browser's UI down to the smallest possible size, the discussion always seems to focus on Firefox. Granted, Firefox is a very customizable browser, and with the right extensions cleverly applied, you can minimize its UI. But as John Holdun notes, often overlooked in this regard is the fact that Safari is very capable of being pared down to almost nothing, and you don't need any add-ons to do it.

In fact, if you're comfortable with keyboard shortcuts, all you need to do is learn a few key ones and you'll be able to minimize Safari to a Title bar and tab bar. One warning - I've only tried this using Safari 4.0 on a Mac; I don't have easy access to Safari running on Windows, but I imagine that there are equivalents for the keyboard shortcuts I'm about to discuss.

Firstly, let's get rid of the Toolbar -- that is, the bar with the back and forward buttons, address bar, and search field. To hide the toolbar, click View > Hide Toolbar from the menu, or simply press the Command-| shortcut key. Don't worry, if you need to enter a web address quickly, you can either show it again using the same shortcut key combination, or better yet press Command-l to have the cursor automatically placed in the address bar. Type something and press enter, or tab to the search field and type something and press enter, and your page will open, and the Toolbar will immediately hide again. Slick.

The other desktop real-estate offender is the status bar at the bottom. Hiding it is just as easy - the shortcut key combination is Command-/. Like John, I tend to like to use the status bar to snoop on the destination address of links by hovering over them. This takes an extra step now, but the extra room gained by not constantly showing the status bar is worth the occasional inconvenience for me.

When you insert a USB flash drive or removable storage like a CD or SD card into a Linux computer, you'll often see a shortcut pop up on your desktop. When you do the same thing in Windows, you probably see an often-annoying pop up menu asking what you'd like to do with your removable media.

Desktop Media is a small Windows app that brings up a Linux-like desktop shortcut whenever you insert removable media. The application can automatically detect CDs, DVDs, RAM disks, or removable flash drives or other storage. When you remove the drive, the shortcut disappears.

Desktop Media is available as a free download for Windos XP or Vista.

[via Freeware Genius]

Utility Launcher is a free Windows application that lets you create an ordered list of Windows utilities to launch. If you have a couple of apps that you launch every day, but don't want to add them to the Windows startup routine and bog down your boot speed, Utility Launcher could come in handy.

Here's how it works. You download and unzip the application to any folder. Then click the menu button and start adding utilities to the list. Once you save the list, any time you click the Utility Launcher application you'll see the same list. Just click run to launch the first program in your list. Click run again and the second program will load. And so on. If you create a shortcut to the Utility Launcher.exe file and save it on your desktop or in your quick start menu, you can access your list anytime you need it with just one click.

When creating your list, you'll want to take care to put the programs in the order you want them to launch in. Rearranging the list is pretty tricky. You can delete items or delete the entire list, but you can't move an application from spot 3 to spot 1.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

Wizmo is a handy little utility that lets you create desktop shortcuts for a handful of useful Windows system functions. Here's how it works. You download the tiny (40kb) Wizmo.exe file to your computer. then right click on Wizmo to create a shortcut. Add a modifier to your shortcut for the task you want to perform. Then when you click on your shortcut, you can perform that action.

For example, say you want to create a desktop shortcut that you can hit to put your PC in standby. Your shortcut would look something like "C:\wizmo.exe" -standby"

Here are some of the functions you can access with Wizmo:

• Bring up a blank screen without turning off your monitors
• Power off your monitor
• Standby, hibernate, logoff, reboot, or exit Windows
• Open or close a CD-ROM drive
• Mute your system or change the volume to a specified level

You can get a full list of available commands by clicking on the main Wizmo.exe file.

[via Lifehacker]

You know that shortcut icon on your desktop for a program you could have sworn you uninstalled ages ago? Yeah, you'd delete it, but when you click the icon, it actually launches the program, which means it's still hiding somewhere on your PC, it just doesn't show up in the add/remove programs dialog.

There are a couple of ways to figure out where the link is pointing. You could right click the icon, select properties, and try navigating to the directory listed as its Target. Honestly, this takes just a few seconds. But if you're too lazy to do that, you could also install FindMe, a little utility that adds an option to the Windows right-click context menu whenever you click on a shortcut icon.

When you click FindMe, a Windows Explorer window will pop up with the target directory. Comes in handy if you're looking for a manual uninstaller file, or just can't remember where the icons on your desktop or in your Start Menu are pointing.

[via Techie Buzz]

Vista Shortcut Manager is one of those little applications that doesn't really do much of anything, but what it does do, it does well. While the name may conjure up a program that gives you advanced controls over your shortcut behavior, and perhaps even a list of shortcuts on your PC, the program really just does one thing. It lets you change the default icon behavior of your shortcuts in Windows Vista.

By default, shortcuts in Vista have a big ole arrow, much like the one you see on the far left side of the screenshot above. Vista Shortcut Manager lets you change the big arrow to a lighter one, remove the arrow altogether, or choose a custom arrow. And that's pretty much it. You need to logout of your account and login for the changes to take effect.

[via LifeSpy]

In order to create a shortcut/hotkey combo to pull up the SRH box, right click anywhere on the desktop and go to "New" then "Shortcut". Paste the text below into the box asking you, "what item you would like to create a shortcut for?"

RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

That shortcut will open the SRH box. At this point, you can place the shortcut anywhere -- including the quick-launch bar.

It happens to everyone, and it's annoying. Sometimes the wrong tab gets closed in Firefox, but it's OK. There's a solution to the problem, and it comes in the form of CTRL + SHIFT + T in Windows or COMMAND + SHIFT + T in Mac OS X.

We've covered other solutions in the past such as Unclosetab, a Firefox extension that adds a right-click option to reopen a closed tab. Another easy way to reopen a closed tab is simply to visit the Recently Closed Tabs menu under History.

And if you'd like to close the tab currently up, CTRL + W or COMMAND + W should do the trick. Now you have no excuse for your lady to catch you browsing the Apple Store late at night.

Gmail has unleashed a new shortcut for you to really keyjockey your way through your e-mail: the "e" shortcut. What does the magnificent "e" do, you ask? Well it... archives.

"But there already was an archive shortcut, "y" - why do we need another archiving shortcut?!" If this is the sentiment that you currently hold in your heart, let us explain. What "y" actually means is "remove from current view." In the inbox it means "archive," but in other views such as labels it means "remove label," and in the trash it means "move to Inbox."

So, let's say you're browsing through your e-mail that was filtered by a label. As you go through and try to archive your messages with the "y" button, all you're doing is stripping the poor thing of its label. This is where the "e" key comes in. Regardless from what view you're in, the conversation will be archived. Even if you are in "Starred" you can archive the message with "e" instead of taking away the star from a conversation you really just wanted to archive.

If they keyboard shortcuts don't seem to work, remember to enable them in "settings."

[via Lifehacker]

Getting around Wikipedia could take shorter than you have been previously use to. For instance, do you know about the keyboard shortcuts?

Keyboard shortcuts aren't a well known feature for users of the popular online encyclopedia, but they do exist. I recently came across a post by Steve Rubel reminding me of this fact.

These keyboard shortcuts work with any browser, and on both PC and Mac platforms, and don't need to install any special Greasemonkey script, and will surely speed up your time when searching for useful content.

Depending on which browser you are in you will have to use hold down this combination of keys, then hit your access key:

• Mozilla Firefox 1.5: hold Alt, press access key
• Mozilla Firefox 2: hold Alt-Shift, press access key
• Internet Explorer: hold Alt, press access key, and then press Enter
• Opera: press Shift-Esc, then press access key
• Mac OS: Control and a key

Check out a cheat sheet for the key shortcuts after the jump:

Ever wish you had a simple 1-page sheet with keyboard shortcuts for Firefox, WordPress, or Excel? How about a simple set of DOS, Linux, Unix, or Windows commands?

TechTarget has put together what may be the coolest cheat sheet ever. It's a page with links to dozens of excellent cheat sheets on topics including blogging, browser shortcuts, HTML/XHMTL, programming, and even internet slang.

The list is definitely worth a bookmark, as it's sort of a one-stop shop for practically everything you'll ever need to do on the internet. (We might be exaggerating here, but we're not sure).

[via Lifehacker]

Use Thunderbird for your desktop email needs? Wish it were more like Gmail? I bid you take a look at GMailUI. It's an extension for Thunderbird that aims to import some of the best features from Gmail. No, I'm not talking about conversation view (it will be a glorious day when every mail client offers that as an option), unfortunately. First of all, it steals Gmail's archive paradigm, allowing you to press 'y' (just like in Gmail) to "yank" a message from your Inbox and put it in a specified archive folder. GMailUI steals a few more Gmail keyboard shortcuts, too, like 'j' and 'k' to skip between messages. On top of that GMailUI revamps Thunderbird's search system to be much more Google-like. It lets you type in expressions just like in Gmail--for example, 'from:dave' for all messages from Dave, or attachment:yes for messages with attachments, or any combination thereof. It also adds a feature Gmail doesn't have, but you'll recognize from Google: a calculator. Just type in a mathematical expression like 2+2 (or, you know, something slightly more complex) and the answer will appear. Not mind-blowing, but handy. GMailUI is donationware.

Do you switch your Windows Mobile device to landscape mode every time you open a web browser? Would you like a way to make sure your PDA never shuts off when you're reading an e-book, even if you haven't pushed a button in a while?

CommManagerPlus is a program that lets you create application shortcuts on a PDA. But it also allows you to assign properties to those shortcuts.

You can create a shortcut that performs the following actions before starting a program:

• Turn the telephone on or off
• Turn Bluetooth, Wifi, or GPRS on or off
• Rotate the screen 90, 180, or 270 degrees
• Adjust the brightness, sound level (WM5 only), or telephone volume
• Turn off ActiveSync
  
• Keep the backlight on
• Keep the device from shutting down.

When you exit the program all of your settings will revert to normal.

Today, Ryan Kennedy demonstrated why he's the right guy to be the Yahoo! Mail Beta evangelist. One of the best-kept secrets within the new Yahoo! Mail Beta have been the search shortcuts. We've learned a little about them from Josh here and in Ryan's post today at the Y! Mail Updates blog. But the frosting on the cake is the complete reference page provided here.

Ryan promises this will be updated when new shortcuts are rolled out and existing ones change. Thanks Ryan!

The second best-kept secret? While holding down the Ctrl button, click on the Subject line of a viewed email. This generates a search result with all emails with the same subject line. A threaded view of sorts.

In case you're of the opinion that finding a list of keyboard shortcuts for whatever Google web app you happen to be using right now, you should bookmark this master list of keyboard shortcuts, which has all the hotkeys for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Video, Google Local, and even Writely all on one page. Handy!