Clicking and Dragging

Reposted from...February 2006

As I was helping my library patrons this week find information on the web I was noticing that many students and teachers were not taking advantage of the clicking and dragging features of the Internet and its browsers. If you look at the URL (webaddress) bar at the top of your browser you will probably see an @ or other symbol to the left of the URL. If you click on this icon (symbol) it will highlight the entire URL. If you continue to hold down the mouse button you can then drag the URL to your desktop or documents. Once it is on your desktop you can just click on the item (which when saved may look like a file) and it will automatically boot you into the Internet and directly into this saved webpage. I use this feature for many reasons: saving pages I want to get to easily, saving pages I want to read at a later time, saving URLs that I want to include in other documents, and other reasons I cannot think of right now. This very easy computer move has made my job easier because I work with a lot of URLs and am constantly adding them to documents and forms. I recommend that whenever you can, avoid typing URLs by clicking and dragging. If you are anything like me you know how easy it is to mess up a URL you are typing from scratch. Clicking and dragging the URL is a very accurate way of retaining the URL for future use. Note to Explorer browserers: You can change your homepage by clicking the URL and dragging it to the little house or homepage symbol on the navigation bar. When you release the mouse button, the browser will ask you to confirm the change. Most browsers will allow you to add to the favorites bar in the same manner. Let me know if there are other ways clicking and dragging has made your life easier.