Readers offer their best tips for getting a Lion-style launchpad on your Mac, viewing all your Firefox add-ons at once, and adding notes to your web site bookmarks.
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About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments, email it to tips at lifehacker.com, or share it on our tips and expert pages.
Get OS 10.7 Lion's Launchpad in 10.6
Roher4 shares an app that brings a bit of Lion goodness early:
Quick Pick is a OSX app that provides Lion functionality in Snow Leopard. It's available in the Mac App store. It's best described by using a screenshot, shown above.
Zoom In and Out on Firefox 4's Extensions Page
PrairieMoon discovers a helpful feature in Firefox 4:
In FF4, I found that ctrl with +/- will magnify or reduce the size of text in the addons manager. I think there is at least one use for this. Right now, I have a lot of extensions installed. With this feature in the addons manager, I can zoom out enough to see them all. No scrolling needed.
This works on all web pages in Firefox, but now that the Extensions page is a normal tab instead of a separate little window, this feature now works there too.
Use Hashbangs to Store Notes in Bookmark URLs
Java-Princess lets us know a clever way to store information:
You can add a hashbang, #! to the end of any web address and the browser will ignore any text that comes after it, sort of like a comment in code. The browser leaves it to any javascript in the page to interpret it. So, if you have any bookmarked sites which need a login and will let you remember the username but not the password (my bank does this) you can add the password to the end of the web address by editing your bookmark or shortcut.
Example - your bank address in your bookmark:https://www.bank.com/login
New bookmark:https://www.bank.com/login#!mypassword
Then all you need to do on your log in page is double click the password in the address bar and copy/paste it into the site password box.Sites like the new design lifehacker use hashtags to send you to your chosen link while collecting all sorts of info from you in the process. however this info is known to be there and the associated scripts look for it. Therefore any site which uses hashbangs won't be compatible with this. Any php sites won't work either and a couple of others too such as aspx pages. You can put any info you want up there such as site security questions etc, anything that's a bind to keep typing in.
We do not really recommend using this to store your passwords—that's pretty unsecure—but it could be pretty handy for storing other useful bits of information.
Wear Gloves to Wash Dishes with Hot Water
Photo by Amanda Niekamp.
KayDat shares a good way to get your dishes clean and sanitary without burning yourself:
So, you want to wash dishes with hot water, but your hands can't stand it? Put on a pair of gloves. Still too hot? Put on two pairs!
Something I learnt when I visited my friend's house, put on a pair of latex disposable gloves on before putting on a pair of rubber gloves. The extra insulation means you can use much hotter water without burning your hands. If you have small hands like my friend, you can put on an even larger pair of rubber gloves on top for more insulation. Not something I can do, since I'm wearing large rubber gloves to begin with.