Many websites have quite long addresses to various pages. This is particularly the case if linking across to a blog (or like) since the addresses for such blog posts generally have the title included (to assist with identification of the site by search engines). While this is good from the perspective of previewing the content of the page before actually visiting the page, it makes it quite difficult to share the website with other people, particularly if you need to read the website address to someone over the phone (or need to retype the address, with the potential for errors). To help alleviate this issue there are many services which provide URL shortening. This will provide you with a new (much shorter) URL which redirects to the original website, making it much easier to share that shorter URL rather than the original (long) URL. Services which provide this functionality include bit.ly and tinyurl.com .

When using a computer, most of the time is spent with your hands on the keyboard, so using keyboard shortcuts for common operations can be much quicker than manipulating the mouse and clicking things on the screen. Two of the most common and useful keyboard shortcuts which I use in Windows 7 are Windows Key + Home (allows you to minimise all open windows except the active window) and Windows Key + D (which shows the desktop).

Keeping with the new rapid-release schedule for Mozilla Firefox, version 7 of this free and open-source web browser was released in late September. This new version increases support for new web standards together with the inclusion of several bug and stability fixes. A full list of changes in Firefox 7 can be found in the release notes at www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/7.0/releasenotes/ . You can also download the new version of Firefox at www.mozilla.org/firefox .

Some website links wish to open in a new browser window. However, quite often it would be more convenient to open such links as a new tab, rather than window, as that means you only need to manage multiple tabs rather than multiple windows. For users of Safari on Mac OS X this behaviour can easily be enabled by going to the “Safari” menu > “Preferences” and select the “Tabs” tab. Change “Open pages in tabs instead of windows” to “Always” and now new windows will instead open in a new tab.

Microsoft recently released the Windows 8 Developer Preview, allowing interested people (mainly developers) to download and try an early version of Windows 8. You can download the Windows 8 Developer Preview for free at msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/ . Be aware, this is very much pre-beta software and should only be used for testing purposes and not as your primary operating system, since it is likely still quite unstable and has missing features. A good way to test Windows 8 without affecting your primary operating system is to install it within a virtual machine, using software such as VMware Workstation.