So, some of the stories here are really long and I can't read them in one setting, so I have been using a marker to mark the position of the slide thingie before I shut down for the night. Before you all laugh at me, how else can I do it? It is really troublesome to find my place again when I come back on line.
I am worried about getting the marks off my screen.
Is there some sort of book mark thingie I can use so I can come back to the right place?
Thank you.
Gwendolyn
Comments
Save a print version
Use the Printer Friendly Page to strip out unnecessary sidebars and such, then copy and past the page into some editing program. At that point, you can put a marker in the file itself to show where you left off.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
I likie Erin's suggestion.Whether fromhere or other sources,
I insert a && in the ( .txt, .rtf, .doc), file and save it. Then when I bring it back up, I use my word processor to find it.
Only one time have I ever found a file that had more than 1 & in a row. The author used 5 of them as scene delimiters, but I'd already noticed that, and used ^^ instead.
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
couple ways
First, I'd say trade your marker on the screen for a post-it note or piece of tape on the bezel.
Or if you don't mind taking a couple steps, copy a sentence from where you're at in the story, paste it somewhere convenient, like maybe a notepad text file on your desktop, then when you come back online grab that sentence from the file and tell your web browser to find it on the page.
It's really simple, make a
It's really simple, make a text file and copy/cut a sentence of where you are.
Then when u continue read u press ctrl+f[ open a search thing in the current page, all browsers have this], just cut/copy the setence u copyed before and it will find.
By Miri-tan
"People don't change. They may want to. They may need to. But they simply don't." House M.D
Sorry my poor english, i am from Brasil >_<
White out?
I use Firefox. I shut the computer down with the browser still running. When I boot back up and restart Firefox, it gives me the option of restoring tabs. When it does, it restores them so that the stories are all scrolled to where you left off.
I have no idea if this works in IE or not.
Another trick I have used is to grab part of a sentence and copy and paste it into a text file. The next day, after bringing the story back up, I copy the text, use control-f on the browser, and paste the text into the 'find' box. If you grab enough text, you'll find your place very reliably. If not, you might have to click on the 'find next' button a few times.
Are you sure?
Internet Explorer is aptly named, since it feels like every time you log on it's going to be an adventure fraught with peril and surprise. It's gotten to the point where each subsequent version is ruder and more intrusive.
"Are you sure you want to have eggs for breakfast? Have you checked your cholesterol level lately?"
"What were you thinking? Did you really believe it was a good idea to buy a Mercury when they were discontinuing the line?"
"Were you aware that Apple spelled backwards is SATAN? Do you really want to buy an I-Pad?"
"Are you sure you can handle caffeinated this late in the day? Wouldn't a nice cup of Rose hips and Chamomile be better before you go into that staff meeting?"
If I open up anything in IE, I can expect at least six or seven ridiculous 'You are about to...are you sure" windows to pop up before it even loads. I use Chrome because the rest of the family uses Mozilla, and it's easier to 'hide.' Ah well.
"You're about to comment on a TG Fiction Website. Are you sure that's such a good idea considering your family would have a cow if they knew?" Oh wait...that's not IE, that's real life! Sigh....
Love, Andrea Lena
Thanks, Andrea
Thanks for my first good chuckle of the morning, Andrea.
I am Microsoft Certified in, among other things, several versions of the Windows operating systems, so I am even more qualified than most to have contempt for Microsoft and how they do things, and your facetious examples of intrusive, nosy dialog windows had me laughing and getting strange looks this morning.
On my main machine, I use Firefox, usually. The only time I use IE is when I want to grab a video off of Youtube so I don't have to keep downloading it over and over. Once the whole video has downloaded, I can find it (by timestamp if I have to) in the Temporary Internet Files and copy it to another folder (usually somewhere in My Videos) and rename it (ending with the extension, .flv). Then I can watch it from my own hard drive instead of having to go to Youtube again. (note: some newer music videos or other copyrighted material defeats this by splitting the video up into multiple pieces in the folder)
Anyway, I use IE for that because the last few versions of Firefox changed how they store temporary files, no longer dumping them all in the same folder but in a whole maze of nested folders. But I use Firefox for pretty much everything else, including satisfying my fiction addiction. On my main machine, anyway.
On this old Win98 dinosaur in the basement that I sometimes use instead, the only browser I've found that both works with this version of Windows (using an older version of the browser) and doesn't crash with (most of) the websites I use it for is Opera.
Both Firefox on the main machine and Opera here keep track of what windows you have open and what URL they are at (and where in the window you are), so if the computer crashes (more likely on this dinosaur) or I three finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and End Task on the browser (Firefox on the other machine, so I can free up memory and resources to play a game, say), then next time I load the browser, it remembers what windows I had open, and (in the case of a story I was halfway through) how far down the page I was.
But I've done it the other ways too. Trying to stop reading when a new chapter starts so I can remember/note it and start at that chapter next time, or cutting and pasting a unique text string from the story into a temporary textfile on the desktop so I can Find it again.
When I reread the good stories I've saved to my hard drive as textfiles, I'll end my reading session by inserting "Bookmark" or something at the cutoff point, and then add the same thing to the very top of the file (to remind myself I have a bookmark in that file next time I open it), or I'll even say what chapter I'm about to start in that note at the beginning. Then I just remove these changes after resuming where I left off.
But I'm sure many editors and viewing software have fancy features for saving your location in the story, etc. I'm just an old fashioned nerdgrrl, I guess.
Lisa D.
YouTube
Firefox has an add-on called 'Download Helper.' It allows you to easily download videos from YouTube and a number of other video sites. You can even choose the resolution of the download.
Download Helper
I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised either. The sheer number of add-ons makes it tough to keep up with what's available, and I never think to look anyway. Thanks, Ray. I'll look for that.
Lisa
I use it quite a bit myself,
I use it quite a bit myself, because I'd rather not keep using up bandwidth for videos I watch frequently.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Hiding
There's a 'Start Private Browsing' item in the Tools menu of Firefox.
Also, if you get a USB drive and go to portableapps.com, you can download a whole slew of applications to the thumb drive and essentially have a portable system on a stick. Just plug it into any Windows computer and do all of your email, browsing, office, photo editing, whatever you want. You can save your work to the thumb drive, then pull it out and put it in your pocket.
If you want to be really fancy, you can put Linux Mint (or Ubuntu) on a stick. That way, you won't even need to use a Windows computer.
(Yes, it's a great time to be a nerd.)
Don't use a marker on the physical screen!
I use Firefox with the session manager extension. The session Manager extension will let you save the page you are on and scroll position. It then lets you restore them to where you were before.
I use 2 extensions in Chrome to do the same: Session Buddy to save the open pages, and Scrollmark to save the position on the page.
--Brandon Young
5 letters
can be pretty unique. I have a notepad (my mouse pad, a disposable piece of paper folded in half) I write this stuff down.
F is the find function in Firefox. Type the 5 letters down, and do a quick scan.
A safer approach.
A safer approach to remembering where you were in a story...
Create a text file on the desktop (perhaps named .txt). Copy the last paragraph you read to a clipboard and past it into the text file.
Then, when you want to start again... You open the story, and then search for the first sentence of the paragraph.
As to getting the marks off - depends on what you use to make the marks. An old fashioned graphite pencil - easy! A sharpie permanent marker? Not so easy... There, I'd suggest combining the marks into some sort of pattern (say on both sides of the monitor) so you can claim you "decorated" it... You can also search (google, bing, whatever....) for "how do I clean xyz from plastic" or similar searches... You'd be surprised how many ways there are to clean stuff. Believe it or not... Cigarette Ashes can be used to clean something! :-)
Good Luck,
Anne
book marking
its as simple as remembering a few words or copy/paste to text document and saving.
when you come back use your browsers find in page function
Dayna
In the worst case you could
In the worst case you could just put your computer into idle state. It should just restore all tabs and windos as they were. I guess it wastes some power...
Gwen,
Almost as crude as marking on the monitor screen, I used to take a piece of scrap paper, line up a corner to the top of the scroll bar and mark the location of the top of the darkened oval with a pencil. I'd usually write the name and chapter of the story on the paper, too.
I now have a flat screen monitor and the screen surface is fragile plastic; I read not to mark or stick anything to the screen and clean it carefully with soft cotton or a special screen cleaner to avoid scratching it.
I also now run Firefox. When I open it, all the pages I had opened come up at the same place they were when I quit Firefox or shut down the 'puter.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
If you're actually using
If you're actually using marker, use rubbing alcohol to remove it. It's safe for the screen, and almost all markers are alcohol based.
That's what I use to clean screens that come to me for repair or service.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Gobsmacking!
One of the simplest things a user may want to do, but so many fairly complex ways of solving it!
Surely there must be a straightforward way?
This is the main reason why, as an author, I tend to split up a long story into several bite-sized series.
Perhaps all stories should be split into separately numbered pages, then readers could simply write down the page number. That would also allow authors to discover how far most readers get through their stories before they are abandoned.
But if...
But if you're committed to using markers, you might switch to Dry Erase markers. Just be sure you're using a soft cloth to wipe down the screen and not tissue paper. Paper (even tissue paper) can still have a rough enough texture to damage the surface.
Kristin Darken