The Most Time Saving Tip for Internet Explorer Users

Contributed by mm | October 4, 2005 11:57 AM PST

Time is money, so presumably a time-saving tip is also a money-saving tip. Let me share my favorite:

Being an office worker and a blogger, I spend at least a couple of hours everyday using Internet Explorer alone, and here is my best kept secret: visiting your favorite web sites by typing only a letter or two.

You may already know you can add your favorite sites (like PFBlog) to your favorite folder, but you may not know you can assign a shortcut to each favorite folder entry. Here is how you can access PFBlog.com by just typing the letter "p" and hit "Enter":

- Go to http://www.pfbog.com/.
- Use menu Favorites | Add To Favorites to add PFBlog to your favorite folder
- You will be prompted for a name (default is "PFBlog.com - The Unique Personal Finance Weblog"), change it to "p".
- Click "OK" to add it to your favorites folder.
- Now, the next time you want to visit PFBlog, go to the area where you type URL, type "p" and press "Enter". Are you seeing PFBlog loading?

I am using this trick extensively for all my favorites, and here is the incomplete list:

p - PFBlog
m - MSN Money
j - WSJ
sm - SmartMoney
ki - Kiplinger
bw - BusinessWeek
yh - Yahoo! Money

citi - Citicard
pro - Providian
mbna - MBNA credit card
amex - American Express
ed - EmigrantDirect
vb - VirtualBank
ing - ING Direct
td - TreasuryDirect

fi - Fidelity
401 - 401(k)
at - Ameritrade
scot - Scottrade

Is this helpful?

P.S. I tested on FireFox but cannot figure out how to get it work (admittedly, I didn't spend much time on it). If you can make it work, be sure to add a comment.

This Post Has Received 8 Comments. Share Your Opinions Too.

Noel Flicken Commented on October 4, 2005

In Firefox, it's called a "keyword".
http://channels.lockergnome.com/web/archives/20050819_using_keywords_with_firefox.phtml

firefox@mozilla.org Commented on October 4, 2005

And with Firefox, you can pass parameters to modify the bookmark. I have http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%s bookedmarked with keyword yf. So if I type "yf msft" into the address bar, I get the current stock quote for microsoft.

Can't say I'm surprised that the Microsoft employee "couldn't figure out" how to get it to work.

Rachel Commented on October 5, 2005

I use Firefox keyword on my daily work. It results in speeding up my productivity.

Todd Commented on October 5, 2005

New software is new software. It had nothing to do with him being a Microsoft employee. Come on now. :)

Useful tip for those who haven't seen it before. Thanks for the post.

Steven Commented on October 11, 2005

Thanks for sharing your working tips. I'll surely try this out.

Mitesh Commented on October 16, 2005

I am unable to make this work in my IE. I tried with both cases for p, but it goes to the auto search feature. Am I missing some settings for this?
Pls email me if any thoughts...

Leslie Commented on October 29, 2005

Very well said - "time-saving tip is a money-saving tip." I totally agree with you.

Anonymous Commented on November 24, 2005

This feature only works if the bookmark is added in the top level favorites, i.e. not in subfolders.

However to get full firefox like functionality in IE, install yahoo messenger. It installs in red yahoo logo in your IE toolbar ( toolbar is where back forward, home, print etc buttons are ) . Job of this button is to make it easy to loging to yahoo . But it also provides a feature called "yahoo shortcuts". It defines many 1 or 2 letter keyboard shortcuts for yahoo services. but you can add your own as you please. You can also use %s feature.