Firefox

The Internet is an indispensable tool for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants researching their legal nurse consulting work product. Web browsers are getting better and faster than ever. No matter which browser I’m using, I like to use tabbed browsing and am always opening links in a new tab. This practice keeps me from losing my search results by following links too far forward and not being able to get back to my original search results.

One of the issues I run into (and I’m sure my CLNC^® amigos do also) is reflexively closing the browser instead of the particular tab you mean to close. Fess up, I’ve never met a nurse who hasn’t made a med error and I’ll bet I’ve never met a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who hasn’t accidentally closed out an entire hour’s worth of research by closing the browser instead of the tab. Well curse no more my CLNC^® amigos. Here’s a way to rescue your work – if you’re willing to put up with a little inconvenience.

Firefox users have the best options, so I’ll start with you. Open Firefox, click Tools, then Options. Now click Tabs, make sure the radio button next to Warn me when closing multiple tabs is selected and then click OK to close the options. Now when you accidentally attempt to close your browser instead of the tab you’ll get the pop-up warning You are about to close X tabs. Are you sure you want to continue? You’ll also get the option to continue closing the tabs or stop and save your work. Woo-hoo!

Your second option is to do the Tools, Options thing again and this time click General. Then select the dropdown box next to When Firefox starts and select Show my windows and tabs from last time. Now when you close Firefox (accidentally or not) the next time it starts you’ll recover all the tabs and windows that you were viewing. If you select the box next to Don’t load tabs until selected, it won’t preload the tabs so your browser will open just as quickly as before and you can recover or close the tabs you don’t want. One drawback is that this option will eliminate your customized home page(s), but hey – your work’s more important right?

Chrome users don’t have the same range of options. You can simply click the little wrench in the top right hand corner of your Chrome browser, then Options, then Basics (if it’s not selected) and select the radio button next to Reopen the pages that were open last. Now, when you accidentally close your browser you simply need to reopen it to open all those tabs you had painstakingly researched and opened. The inconvenience here is that you’ll lose your customized home page and, if you constantly keep a large number of tabs open, it may slow your browser’s load time. You decide what’s more important to you.

For the last two Internet Explorer^® 8 users out there, your options are limited to simply being warned before you close multiple tabs. Click Tools, Internet Options, General, then on the Settings button in the Tabs section next to Change how webpages are displayed in tabs; make sure the radio box next to Warn me when closing multiple tabs is selected, then OK your way out. Now when you accidentally try to close out you’ll get the warning Do you want to close all tabs or the current tab? and you can choose.

Finally, Safari^® for Windows^® users also have that same option to receive a warning before closing multiple tabs. Click the gear in the top right corner of Safari. Then Click Preference and Tabs. Then select the radio button beside Confirm before closing multiple tabs or windows. Do that and you’ll get a warning telling you how many tabs you have open and the option to close Safari or not.

Now there’s no reason to accidentally close a browsing session again.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

When you’re a busy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant working on cases for your business you’ll eventually need to download a file, photo, program update or, if you’re off-duty, simply save your favorite LOLCats. When you do, you’ll sometimes discover that your downloaded file can’t be found. You know you downloaded it because you watched the “thermometer bar” measure the progress of the download, but once it was done you couldn’t find that gruesome image of the epidural abscess. The reason for this is that each of your different web browsers and other individual programs put those files in their own, often hidden, locations.

Luckily, if it’s a software update, most programs download and self-install. That’s a relief. CLNC^® consultants, however, will most often be downloading files through their web browser so I’ve got a pretty simple fix – depending upon the browser and version you’re using.  Before we do anything else though, you’ll need to start this by opening up your My Documents directory. Once you do, create a new directory by left clicking File then New then New Folder. Name this folder Downloads.

Next, open your web browser. If it’s Firefox^®, click Tools, Options and then the General tab. Next, make sure the radio button next to “Show the downloads window…” is selected. If you choose, you can also select the button to “Close it when all downloads are finished.” Then, select the button next to “Save files to” and browse to that Downloads file and click OK when you’ve selected it. Now, all your Firefox downloads will go to that location.

If you’re using Google^®’s Chrome^® browser, open it and click the small wrench button in the top right corner. Next, click Options and then Under the Hood. Now, you can go down to Downloads and browse to your Downloads folder and click OK after you’ve selected it. Next, close your browser. Now all your Chrome downloads will go to that location.

If you’re an Apple^® Safari^® user, open Safari, click the small gear in the top right corner. Next, click Preferences and then the General tab. You’ll see “Save downloaded files to:” and a dropdown list. Click the list, select Other and surf to your Downloads folder and click OK after you’ve selected it. Next, close your browser. Now all your Safari downloads will go to that location.

Finally, if you’re the most common type of user (and I don’t mean that in a bad way), an Internet Explorer^® user, you’ve got it the easiest. I’m going to address Internet Explorer 8 because you should all be on that version by now. If you’re not, upgrade. Where does IE8 stash your downloads? Wherever you want because it will always ask you where to put it after you’ve told it to save a file. Coolest thing Bill Gates ever did!

The nice thing about creating a Downloads folder is that you’ll always know where your downloaded files are stored. It also gives you the ability to organize your downloaded files and keep that folder clean. You can even create a shortcut to that folder on your Windows^® Desktop – but that’s a Tech Tip for another day.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Google^® this, Google that, Google, Google, Google. Do CLNC^® consultants ever get tired of hearing about Google? I know I do, but hey, as they say in Nepal “Kay garne” (if you don’t know what that means, Google it). No matter what you think, Google is here to stay.

A lot of good things have come from Google. I think one of the best is the Chrome web browser for PC or Mac. Anyone who reads my blog knows my Firefox^® browsing preferences – well that’s about to change. I downloaded and installed the Chrome browser.

Installation was fast and simple. It gave me the option to import bookmarks and passwords from Internet Explorer^® 8 or Firefox so I chose Firefox. The transition was smooth. All my bookmarks, favorites and (this is scary) even my saved passwords (which I thought were encrypted) were imported into Chrome.

When I opened Chrome, my bookmarks bar (love it) and all my drop-down bookmarks were in place. I was able to seamlessly browse from site to site. Logins were just as I had set them up in Firefox. Chrome even looks more modern than Firefox. It’s minimalist and streamlined – kind of like a Maserati GranTurismo compared to Firefox’s retro-Honda Element. You can download and install different themes. It even pulled in all my RSS feeds from my customized Yahoo!^® and Google homepages.

I like this feature and I know Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will too because it saves lots of time in re-building or re-loading those newsfeeds. You won’t miss a minute of important news for your legal nurse consulting business.

Plus, if you look closely at the top of the image above, you’ll see that the top of the browser isn’t taken up with useless toolbars like IE. I do not like losing the top inch of my screen to bars I don’t use, can’t organize or get rid of, and Chrome seems to respect this by making the browsing screen as large as possible. As a busy legal nurse consultant trying to research online, you’ll appreciate the amount of text that you can see on a webpage at one time.

Chrome supports tabbed browsing and, get this, you can move the tabs around to organize them! This is terrific if you do a lot of research online and are constantly opening new tabs. Chrome’s improvement allows you to move relevant tabs to one side to group them for quick reference. There’s a little [+] tab that visually shows your most visited pages much like iTunes and Safari. This helps you quickly find pages you recognize without sorting through a long list of abbreviated bookmark descriptions.

If you think I can’t say enough about Chrome for your legal nurse consulting business, you’re wrong. One more thing I like in terms of security, Chrome “sandboxes” each open tab to protect you from miscreants. This terrific feature is supposed to keep malware from getting into your computer from a poisoned website. Anyone worried about their legal nurse consulting business or personal computer will love this.

Finally, like Firefox, Chrome supports all sorts of extensions. I’m sure that the number and variations of extensions will increase. Web of Trust and my 1-ClickWeather extensions installed flawlessly. There’s even an IE extension that lets you see a webpage as if you’re using Internet Explorer – this is terrifically handy for pages that aren’t cross-browser designed.

If you’re looking for a worthy and safe web browser – Google Chrome can’t be beat. You go Google!

Keep on techin,
Tom

Out of all the web browsers, Internet Explorer^® (IE) and Firefox^® lead the pack in number of users. Tech-types and cool Certified Legal Nurse Consultants play with Google^®’s Chrome^® browser and a few use Apple^®’s Safari^®. Just like opinions, everyone has one – a favorite browser that is.

I’m a Firefox fan because Internet Explorer is too riddled with security issues. I’ve toyed with Chrome and find it easy to use, stable but terribly invasive. Safari for Windows^® seems underdeveloped so I’ve given up on that one and prefer to play with the big three (Chrome, Firefox and IE8). I have downloaded the Web of Trust add-on for all three browsers to help me avoid websites with bad reputations. I recommend that you do the same to protect your legal nurse consulting business’s computer. Web browsers are prime points of entry for malware and Web of Trust can help Certified Legal Nurse Consultants avoid trouble.

But the purpose of today’s blog is how to get more out of your favorite web browser – that is if it’s IE8, Firefox 3 or Chrome. For the websites that you visit on a regular basis, you probably have them bookmarked so that you can quickly start a browsing session. Wouldn’t you like to open your top three or even five or more sites all at once? To quote Alec Baldwin’s character in It’s Complicated, “I like it” and I’m sure you will too.

Web browsers now have the ability to open many different webpages or different websites in what are called “tabs.” You can have multiple “tabs” that look like old-fashioned file folder tabs running along the top of your web browser and each tab can be a different webpage. If you use tabs when you first open your browser, it can load all the pages you want at one time. Then you simply switch back and forth between tabs.

Here’s how you do it for IE8, Firefox 3.5+ and even Chrome 5.0+:

Starting with Internet Explorer, open IE and click Tools then Internet Options. Next make sure the General tab is selected. You’ll see this screen:

Simply type in the URLs of the websites you want to open each time you start IE8 on a separate line and in the order you want them to open. Then click Apply.

Next click the Settings button under Tabs (it’s a little lower on that same screen). Make sure to check the boxes as checked in the screen shot below. Some people might want to check the box, “Warn me when closing multiple tabs.” This will alert you that you have multiple tabs open and will keep you from losing all your open tabs when you attempt to close one tab in your browser. This is a common mistake people make when first adapting to tabbed browsing.

Click OK, then on the next screen click OK again. You may need to restart your IE8 browser, but it will be worth it.

If you’re a Firefox user, it’s a little more difficult yet easier at the same time. In Firefox 3.6 (it should work with earlier versions but 3.6 is the version I’m on so I can’t tell you) you simply start Firefox, click Tools, Options and then General. In the Home Page box, type in the URLs of the websites you want to open when Firefox opens in the order you want to see them. Separate each one with the “|” character, usually found on the “\” key above the “Enter” key on your keyboard.

Next click Tabs at the top of the Options page and make sure the boxes shown below are checked:

Click OK and restart your Firefox browser. Your pages should open right up. If it’s your Facebook or another page that needs a login and password, you can store them in your browser.

If you’re one of those high-tech-tipping Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who uses anything Google because it’s cooler than anything else (except CLNC^® Apple-product users) start your Chrome browser and click the monkey-wrench-looking Tools icon, then Options. Next, on the Basics tab, click the radio button beside “Open the following pages.” Then click the Add button. You can either type in the URLs of the pages you want or select them from your history or bookmarks. When you’ve selected the one you want (or typed it in), click Add and you’re ready to add in the next URL. Click Close when done.

Safari users are out of luck – unless someone can give me a tech tip on how to enable this feature in Safari. The browser supports tabs, I’m just not sure how to make it open multiple tabs at once.

One more tip for legal nurse consultants that comes from a previous Tech Tip, set your browser (or even tweak your Google settings) to open links in a new tab and you’ll never lose your original search results again. You can also mine that Tech Tip for more browser tips.

Now my CLNC^® amigos, you’ll work smarter, not harder when you open your favorite pages all at once, you’ll save time searching through your bookmark bar for those pages. Using this Tech Tip, you can quickly scan your prime sites and then get on with your day. As a SysAdmin, I use one browser to make sure all the Vickie Milazzo Institute websites are up and running and another browser to hold my sites of interest.

Keep on Techin with Tabs!
Tom

I’ve got a confession to make. I love unique applications, so long as they aren’t malware (Remember the flying toasters screen saver?). I’ve updated my Windows^® XP machine to mimic Apple’s^® Dock and added emulations that give me some Windows 7 functionality. I’ve loaded add-ons to my Firefox^® web browser that tell me the weather, allow me to share websites on Delicious, trust a site or not with WOT, save a site with iCyte and use a cool program I’ve never shared with anyone else called FireShot to snag images of websites that even include Flash^® animations. In short, I could be a tech support nightmare, but I’m not because I only download my tools from well-known sites (like CNET.com) and only after I investigate their reputations on the web at large.

It’s with this love of quirky apps in mind that today’s Tech Tip is written. If you’re a hard-working Certified Legal Nurse Consultant you may not lift your head from your work for hours at a time. In fact, I’ve seen Vickie go an entire day without looking out a window because she’s fully engaged in a project. I’ll even confess that sometimes I get like that.

As CLNC^® consultants, you know what I mean – you get so caught up in writing a report or doing research for your favorite attorney-client that you forget to eat lunch, go to the restroom and do anything except grab another cup of your favorite caffeine-containing beverage (hot or cold). Or maybe your office is a cubicle, or in a room that doesn’t have a window to the world or perhaps you’re just so caught up in Second Life, Farmland or Spacebook that you forget what’s going on in your real life or at least out there in the great wide open.

Well for those of you who need a reality check, reality reinforcement or just don’t have a window handy, check out a program called “YoWindow.” This is an easy-to-use screensaver that will show you the weather outside your own window (or at any other location in the world you choose) in real time. It sets the weather against a rather bucolic farm scene and realistically renders snow, rain, night and day, etc. and even reflects the season! Here’s the weather in Houston when I wrote this blog:

This is one fun little weather tool that is almost as cool as the “1-ClickWeather” Firefox add-on from Weather.com (which I really like).

YoWindow even allows you to scroll forward and see the forecast so you’ll know if you need to take an umbrella to an interview with your hot attorney-prospect when you go to show how your legal nurse consulting business can help him win his cases.

I’m an old-school tech-type and tend to use the Windows “Starfield” for my screensaver because it doesn’t put a strain on my processor or video card like some of the 3D screensavers used to (such as the floating, rotating, reflective “3D Text” saying “Tom Rocks!” that I put on Vick’s laptop this morning). YoWindow is different in that it seems to be fairly simple, if you’ve got a decent computer the clouds and weeds will blow in the wind and the effects will render nicely. The developers promise more backgrounds in the future but in the meantime you can substitute your own photo or background of your choice and the weather will lay over it.

If you want a quick weather app, YoWindow is fun and easy to install and use. Give it a try.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant has experienced the joy of finding a website with the exact material they need for the report they’re working on for their attorney-client. Those same CLNC^® consultants have experienced the frustration of clicking on the bookmark for that webpage and seeing a “page not found” error message. How do you find that webpage once it’s lost in the Internet? Easy, there’s a free service called “iCyte^®” and it does a great job of saving a webpage so you can view it later, even if it’s removed or changed.

Simply visit iCyte.com, register for your free account and get started. It lets you “freeze” a copy of just about any webpage, and then it stores that “page” for you as a “project” on the iCyte system so that you can access that saved “original” page at any later time. You can even compare the past and current versions of the saved pages to see if there are any changes since you last visited.

Here’s the best part for savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. If you’re using the Firefox^® browser, it has an add-on that allows you to highlight text on the page! Also, you can annotate the stored sites you saved as well as tag them and use iCyte’s free-form notes field to write comments about a page.

If you’re working with legal nurse consulting subcontractors, you can “invite” them to join your projects. This allows them to view and comment on them also. It’s an efficient way to review or add to your CLNC^® subcontractors’ citations.

The iCyte service is a great addition to any legal nurse consultant’s useful collection of website tools. Try it today!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I don’t know about your husband (or wife), but mine is a creature of habits. Some good, some bad and some just…

For all his tech-tippyness, he even has a bad tech habit and I have his personal permission to share this one with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants (Tom, I owe you one!). Here goes: any time Tom starts searching, no matter where he is on the information superhighway at the time, he’ll go straight to either Google^® or Yahoo!^® to start his search. To get there he’ll open a new tab on whichever browser he’s got open and click “Home.” On Firefox^® it’s his customized Yahoo! homepage, on Internet Explorer^® 8 it’s his customized Google homepage and I have no idea what’s on his Safari^® page. Once the customized page has loaded, he starts getting ready to search.

Now, I’ve watched him do this. He doesn’t go straight to the search box and start typing, first he’ll scan that customized page of RSS news feeds, etc. for current updates, weather alerts, checks on how the Dow is doing and then when he’s satisfied that all is well with the world, he begins searching. By this time he’s lost at least two minutes and those minutes build up over a day, a week and a year. Every minute he’s assuring all is right with the world is one he could be spending on the ironing (Just kidding – it’s actually washing the dishes!). In all fairness, he does keep me updated on what’s going on in the world – but at a cost to his efficiency.

One of the things working in the ICU as an RN taught me is economy of movement. When you’re coding or resuscitating a patient you don’t want to be taking three steps to do something you can do in one or two. Seconds count when lives are in the balance. I try to apply economy of movement to my workday to keep me focused on the big things. I could end up needing to work all day every day if I’m inefficient, and that would interfere with my vacation plans!

That’s why when I search the Internet, no matter what webpage I’m on, I go straight to the search box built into the top of my web browser. Tom converted me to Firefox and I love to search right from the browser. If I’m ready to leave the page I’m on, I’ll just type my search term in the built-in search box and “Google” away. If I want to stay on the page I’m on and am just doing some fact checking, I’ll simply click open a new blank tab (Ctrl + t) and search away still using that built-in box. Firefox allows me to select the search engine I want to use:

IE8 picks Bing^®/Live search as its default and I’d have to ask Tom how to change that so I’ve left it on Bing:

I do recommend that you customize your iGoogle^® homepage and Yahoo! homepage to add RSS feeds relevant to your legal nurse consulting business. I also recommend that you search from “inside the box” to stay efficient and free of distractions.

Keep on searching – efficiently.

Success Is Inside!

One thing I know for sure about Certified Legal Nurse Consultants is that they all use different web browsers and different versions of those browsers. I like to keep up to date in my software and have blogged on the importance of updating the software on your legal nurse consulting business and home computers using automatic settings where possible. But once you’re a CLNC^® consultant out on the information superhighway doing research for an attorney-client, how do you know which websites are safe and which are insidious purveyors of malware? You don’t. Not, at least without some outside help.

My customized Firefox^® browser will often warn me of bad or suspect sites while doing a Yahoo!^® search (yes, I’m a Yahooholian versus a Googallion).

For legal nurse consultants who’d like a little more advice on which sites are possibly good or bad, you may wish to consider downloading the WOT – Safe Browsing Tool from WOT Services. Web of Trust (WOT) relies on its member community to rate websites based on the individual user’s experience. You can find the FireFox add-on as a download here and the Internet Explorer^® (version 6.0 and higher) download here. If you’re a Safari or Opera user, there’s no add-on available but there is a cool bookmarklet you can get here. Drag the link to your bookmarks in Opera/Safari (then rename it something like “WOT”) and when you’re visiting a website, you can click the WOT bookmarklet and it will display the site’s rating in a pop-up. Clicking on the bookmarklet again will close the window.

This is a cool add-on. Once you’ve installed it, register for membership in the WOT community and you too can start rating websites and helping keep the web safe for surfing.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I’d like to begin today’s blog by giving a birthday “Shout Out” to Vickie:

Happy Birthday Vick – with what’s in the works, I know 2010 will be your (our) best year ever! Thanx for sharing it with me (I’ve got one of your favorite bottles of wine to go with your favorite dessert tonight! Woo-hoo!).

Now that the important stuff is out of the way, let’s start techin’! Many, if not all of you, are automatically updating the Windows^® operating system using the “Automatic Updates” function (or you’ve bookmarked the Windows Update webpage) for your home and legal nurse consulting business computers. That’s great for Windows but we all have a lot of other programs on our systems – many of which need updating too.

Some of the biggest offenders are those cool programs from Adobe^® that we all love. You know which ones I mean – Flash^®, Shockwave^® and even Acrobat^® – all are security risks from time to time. How do you stay up to date on these? Well, Adobe is finally taking steps to update some of its programs automatically – read this article – but not until April 13! In the meantime, my CLNC^® amigos, you’ll need to visit Adobe’s Security Center to see the list of “buggy” programs and Adobe’s recommended steps for dealing with them. It may involve determining which version of each program you have and uninstalling it or it could be as simple as downloading the newest version. In any event, you should visit this page on a regular basis. You can also sign up for security alerts here so that Adobe can tell you when there’s a new patch, etc. available.

If, like many Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, you’re using the Firefox^® web browser as an alternative to Internet Explorer^® you’ll need to keep on top of updates too. Open up your Firefox browser, left click “Tools,” then left click “Options,” then click “Advanced” and finally click the “Updates” tab. Make sure the boxes next to “Firefox” and “Installed Add-ons” are checked and close those boxes being sure to save your changes. This way you’ll be automatically notified each time Mozilla updates Firefox or one of your add-ons is updated. You should also take a minute to visit Mozilla’s Plugin Check page to be sure all your Firefox plugins are up-to-date.

I know it’s a lot of work, but you need to keep on top of your updates. They’re not going to do it by themselves (yet).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I’ve blogged and blogged about the usefulness of the Adobe^® PDF (portable document format) file format and its usefulness to legal nurse consultants. For the longest time these files were pretty much free from attack by hackers and other malfeasors. Well, that’s all changed and Adobe Reader and Acrobat are now under attack. If you haven’t switched to one of the free or alternative PDF reader/creators, it’s time to take at least one step to help protect yourself from the hackers.

If you’re running Adobe versions 8 or higher, you’ll need to open your Adobe Reader or Adobe Professional, click Edit, Preferences and JavaScript. When you see the selection screen make sure that Enable Acrobat Javascript is unchecked (not selected) then click OK. This will protect you from at least one vulnerability that might allow a bad guy to take over your computer after you read a maliciously infected PDF.

Even after doing the above, whatever version of Adobe you’re running, you should use the “check for updates” function at least weekly and always make sure you’re on the latest Adobe build (8.1.4, 7.1.1, 9.1 and higher have security patches built in). Other alternative PDF reading/creating software programs have their own bugs, so it’s best to research them before selecting one for use in your legal nurse consulting business.

While we’re on the subject of Adobe, that brings up a reason to switch to the Firefox^® browser. Adobe’s popular Flash Player versions 9 and 10 have a vulnerability that only affects Internet Explorer^® (IE) users, not Firefox. Adobe should release a patch soon, but in the meantime – keep on using your Firefox browser instead of IE and if you’re using Flash Player make sure you check for updates on a regular basis.

As long as we’re talking Firefox – all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should be using at least version 3.5.0 and preferably the most current 3.5.1. Make sure you go into Tools, Options, Advanced then Updates and make sure your Firefox is set to automatically check for updates. You can also force an update check by clicking Help and then Check for Updates.

Once you’ve downloaded the most current version, take the time to install a spell-checking feature to your Firefox forms completer function. To do so, start with the listing of Firefox filters and functions. Open Firefox and type about:config into the address box and then click the box that says “I’ll be careful.” Type spellcheck into the filter box and hit enter. If you right click layout.spellcheckDefault, click Modify and change the value to 2, once you restart Firefox the spell-checking function should work in most online forms.

Finally, did you know that you can duplicate an open Firefox tab by holding down the Ctrl key and dragging that tab onto a blank tab? This is a great tool when you’ve opened a page in your search results on Yahoo! or Google and want to go back to the original search results page. Any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who’s not using iGoogle’s “Open search results in a new browser window” will certainly appreciate this Firefox function. Try it. If you have any other Firefox tips, I’d love to hear them.

Keep on techin’,

Tom