Browser shortcuts

Lately I have found myself searching for deals on used parts for our Jeep. As part of this routine, there are several sites that I navigate to, typically opening them in multiple browser tabs. As lazy as it may sound, I got tired of right-clicking items in my favorites list to open the site in a new tab. I decided it would be easier if I had a shortcut for opening all of the sites at once. I know that IE allows you to set multiple home page tabs, but this was not what I wanted because I don’t want the sites to load every time I open a browser.

I decided that a batch file might be an easy solution, and began researching IE’s command line options. While IE, does have a nice selection of options, unfortunately I could not get IE7 or IE8 to yield the results I wanted (the sites were opened in new windows instead of tabs). However, I got exactly what I wanted with Firefox (not a big issue because I routinely switch between the two browsers anyway). I just created the batch file in Notepad and saved it as a .bat file on my desktop. Here are example contents of the file:

cd\"Program Files (x86)\mozilla firefox\"
start firefox.exe http://www.cnn.com http://www.msn.com http://www.yahoo.com

After creating the batch file, it dawned on me that it would be easier to create a copy of my Firefox desktop shortcut, rename it appropriately, and then simply modify the shortcut’s target with the desired sites, as shown here:

Both methods are a great way to quickly navigate to a group of sites.