Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Internet Location Files

One of the least convenient aspects of using the Internet is having to remember the often cumbersome addresses for various Internet features. The Mac offers a clever way to manage and memorize these addresses: Internet location files. Figure 18-14 shows the procedure for creating one of these special clipping files.

The idea is simple: When you double-click an Internet location file, your Web browser opens automatically to that page, or your email program launches and generates a new, blank, preaddressed outgoing message.

Figure 18-14. To create an Internet location file, highlight an Internet address in any dragand- droppable program (like TextEdit or Stickies). Drag the highlighted text to your desktop, where it becomes an Internet location file.

In other words, an Internet location file is like a system-wide Bookmarks feature. You might consider gathering together the location files for Web sites you frequently visit, put them into a folder, and put that folder into the Dock. Do the same with addresses to which you frequently send email. Thereafter, you save a step every time you want to jump to a particular Web page or send email to a particular person—just choose the appropriate name from the Dock folder’s pop-up menu.

Tip

Rename your Internet location files. Doing so doesn’t affect their original programming—they still take you to the same Web pages or email ...