Since I switched over from Windows XP to Mac OS X Leopard this past November one of the more puzzling things has been how to add desktop shortcuts.  This was real easy in Windows’ Internet Explorer.  Just Right-click your desktop and select “Create Shortcut”.  On a Mac (FireFox or Safari) this is not an option.

I finally found the answer, and like most things on the Mac, it’s easier than the PC.

You may have noticed while surfing around that when clicking text on a page it sometimes turns into a box, one that you can drag.  I know I did, and I always wondered what I could do with it.  Now I know.

You can drag any text link from a page onto your desktop to create a shortcut.  Also, if you want to make a desktop shortcut of the current web page, just drag the icon that appears to the left of the URL in the address bar.  This is by default a globe icon, but a site can customize it so it may look like some other 16×16 image.  Either way, just drag it to your desktop and it will create a .webloc file.  Just click it to open it up in your default browser!

Works great in both FireFox and Safari.

Just click and drag the icon to your desktop when it turns to a hand icon.

This is one of the reasons I’ve switched from Windows to Mac:

As a web developer, it’s essential to be able to test a fresh page in as many browsers and environments as possible.

Read the Rest of ‘5 Browsers, 1 OS’