Avoiding Unnecessary Typing When Entering URLs

Repeatedly typing http://www.google.com gets old really fast. Here are three ways to avoid typing any more of a web address than you need to.

1: Simplify the URL

Most people probably already know this trick, but every modern web browser will fill in the http:// for you if you omit it. You also don't normally need to include the www., but in this case a few stupid websites will return an error if you omit it. (When I attempted to contact my school corporation about the fact that their website did this, I discovered that nowhere on the webpage was there a webmaster email.)

 

So all you really need to type is google.com. (Additional Note: If your website has something else before the dots, like this website, tips.thetechnicalgeekery.com, that's called a subdomain, and you cannot omit that--it leads to a different page than if it was missing.)

 

2: Ctrl-Enter

If you type just google and press Ctrl-Enter, the .com and .www parts will be filled in for you. Some browsers support additional modifiers of Ctrl and Shift to allow you to also use this trick for .org and .net websites as well--try it and see if yours does.

 

3: Autocomplete

Google Chrome has a really nice feature where beginning to type runs an incremental search through websites you visit frequently. So all I have to do to get to Google is press Ctrl-T to open a new tab, type a g, and google.com will appear in the address bar. Then I just press Enter and I'm there. This can save you an enormous number of keystrokes, and is one of the primary reasons that I use Chrome. If you don't have Chrome, you might consider trying it out.

 

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Soren "scorchgeek" Bjornstad

 

If you have found an error or notable omission in this tip, please leave a comment or email me: webmaster@thetechnicalgeekery.com.

 

Copyright 2012 Soren Bjornstad.

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