Firefox : Problem with shortcut on desktop to PC Gide

[Sylvander]

When IE was my default browser I had no problem.
Now, having made Firefox the default, when I click on the "PC Guide" shortcut on the desktop the following warning is displayed:

"Cannot find the file "C:\Windows\Desktop\PC Guide.URL" (or one of its components). Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available."

In Windows Explorer, the file has the correct address & name, as shown above, except the ".URL" extension doesn't show.
Any ideas how to fix?

[Cavalier90]

Simple solution is to open Firefox from a Firefox shortcut, and then set up a bookmark to the PC Guide. It keeps your desktop a lot clearer, one icon for Firefox and all your favourites stored in the bookmark, rather than many icons with shortcuts to the URLs on your desktop.

Just a personal preference I suppose, but it will sort out your problem.

[Sylvander]

The problem has disappeared! :D

I discovered that the version installed from my CD full of prog's was not the latest, so I installed the latest and the problem was gone.

Still have a shortcut to the PC guide on my desktop.
I like to get super-quick and easy access. :D

Need a spellchecker for Firefox.
It appears that one of those is not included. :confused:

[pentachris]

Spellbound (http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/index)

Here (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=34807) are some other extensions folks around here like.

[Sylvander]

Well, I installed "Spellbound V0.7.3" for "Firefox V1.0.2", but see no sign of it.
How do I check that it's installed and how do I use it?
Ah, I've just added the spell checker icon to the toolbar, but it's greyed out. :confused:

[FastLearner]

Simple solution is to open Firefox from a Firefox shortcut, and then set up a bookmark to the PC Guide. It keeps your desktop a lot clearer, one icon for Firefox and all your favourites stored in the bookmark, rather than many icons with shortcuts to the URLs on your desktop.

Just a personal preference I suppose, but it will sort out your problem.

Another alternative is to export your Favorites to your desktop. It creates an .html file so you can see all your favorites on one nicely-formatted page.

Or you could simply set up a Firefox Icon in your quick-launch tray and use the PC Guide as one of your start pages (multiple start pages are easily set up in Firefox).

Just a couple other ideas

[Sylvander]

Already have:
a. IE & Firefox in the quick-launch tray.
b. Link to the PC Guide in both Firefox Bookmarks & IE Favourites.
d. Very many bookmarks/favourites and I'm happy with them as they are, especially in Firefox with the "Search" facility.
e. Keep my default start page as a "Blank" [my preference].

Does a "nicely-formatted page" give some advantage?

Somehow the spell checker is ungreyed and working. :confused:
Because I shut down Firefox and restarted it?
Ah, I notice it only ungreys when I put the cursor in the text box. :D

[Paul Komski]

If you want to try something a little different try saving the attached txt file as an htm file. Then using active destop browse to where you have saved it on disk and show it on your desktop.

You can then either use any links displayed or any others in the javascript drop-down box to open "these favorites" directly from the desktop anytime you want. Obviously editing/adding/removing them to customise your own ones.

Add any background, css, etc to make it look the way you want and to fit in with your own desktop appearance.

The "_blank" suffix is needed in the javascript group or the pages wont open in your browser's window.

[Sylvander]

You'll need to speak slowly in words of one syllable Paul. :)
Most of that made no sense to me.

QUESTIONS
1. What is "active destop browse"?
Ah! My wife has solved it. There is a comma missing. It should read "Then using active destop, browse to where you have saved it on disk and show it on your desktop." How do I use active desktop? I don't think I have that enabled.
2. "and show it on your desktop." How do I do that?
3. "You can then either use any links displayed" Huh?
4. "or any others in the javascript drop-down box" Huh?
5. "to open "these favorites" directly from the desktop anytime you want." Huh? I have so many favourites they couldn't begin to fit on there. Or have I misunderstood?
6. "Add any background, css, etc to make it look the way you want and to fit in with your own desktop appearance." Huh?
7. "The "_blank" suffix is needed in the javascript group or the pages wont open in your browser's window." Huh?

That's about 99% failure to comprehend. :confused:

I did save the file to disk with an ".htm" extension though. :)

[Paul Komski]

If you save the htm file and simply view it you should see a couple of links to the PCGuide and to Google and a also a DropDown Box from which you can open 4 websites. The DropDown Box will only function if scripting has not been disabled.

You can 'embed' any htm file into an active desktop whether it be stored somewhere in your own file system or on the internet. Hence that webpage is constantly available on your desktop. This example is just to keep your commonly accessed favourites easily accessible at any time. The drop down box is particularly functional since it preserves space on the desktop; it can contain a big list of links but only occupy one box.

There may be better tutorials of how to do this but http://www.worldstart.com/tips/internet-tips/website-on-desktop.htm should get one started.

Some very basic knowledge of html is required to edit the page but it should'nt be that hard to do if one can follow the examples already present there.

Using css and other formatting techniques are nothing functional but just to make the page 'look nice'.

It won't be everyone's 'cup of tea' but I use it a lot. In fact on my own page I have a full taskbar at the top of it with a number of sub-groups on it - just like many web pages have.

[FastLearner]

A
Does a "nicely-formatted page" give some advantage?



It depends. I don't know how carefuly you are with your favorites, but I usually just add them to my bookmarks now and manage all of them at a later date (at which time I just put all of the new bookmarks into their appropriate subfolders). By nicely-formatted page, I'm really only talking about a nicely-formatted web page with your favorites folders in bold and the corresponding links indented appropriately. To see what I mean, see an old links page of mine at http://www.garyvogt.net/Links/LinksHome.htm

To access this page on my computer, I don't need to open any browser. I just click the bookmark.htm shortcut on my desktop and choose a link that I want to go to. I click on the link (exactly as I would if I had a browser window open) and my default browser (Firefox) opens with the page that I selected.

But like I said before, in my case just having Firefox with 3 home pages is enough for me. You can add as many pages as you want, as long as you separate them with the pipe symbol ( | ) in your home page preferences box. I have the PC Guide as a home page, SWI as a homepage, Yahoo as a homepage, and I could add some more very easily. It's cool because when I open Firefox, I'm already signed in at all of the sites that I normally would need to log in making my surfing much faster and those sites all load when I launch Firefox.

[Sylvander]

It looks nice fastlearner, but...
My list of favourites is wayyyyyy bigger than that.
In fact, just to attempt to display a reasonable part of them the text size needs to be small.
Then there's the fact that I use a higherarchical folder system...
A tiny fragment would look like:
Genealogy
__Archives
____UK
______London
____England
______Tyne and Wear
____Scotland
______Edinburgh

To expand the whole thing takes what seems like forever, and goes on seemingly without end.
There are about 50 top folders with an average of say 10 sub-folders in the next layer, with perhaps 4 layers. Anyone good at maths? How many folders does that make?

And this is changing/growing/evolving all the time.
This is where the Firefox bookmarks search facility is so useful.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Personally I found it a difficult adjustment going from IE and creating a 'shortcut' to desktop and using Firefox with no simple shortcut until the 'Deskcut' (http://deskcut.mozdev.org/) extension was available/ discovered by me. It clutters the Desktop gfor a few days but I eventually catgorize them to their respective partitions/folders etc.

I have very many shortcuts categorized in many sections of varying folder depths such as you Sylvander and I concur that the Bookmarks are just that, and not a proper place for all the other links that are used much less often but are stiil needed to be referenced to occasionally. Prior to deskcut I could only save the webpage or right click on the page, click on 'View Page Info', then highlight the url and open IE to it, to then get a Shortcut link as I wanted. It was a tedious way but worked until 'Deskcut' came along.

[Paul Komski]

This is where the Firefox bookmarks search facility is so useful.
It's a nice facility alright. Since you have got into huge numbers of links and want to manage them for different browsers, searching, creating special lists and so on then you might want to consider the trialware Linkman from http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_charisma_page=product&id=5