Would you like to be able to highlight words on a page and choose the search engine or a site to look them up? This can be done in most web browsers, but it may not be a built-in feature.

A while back, I told you How to Add a Right Click Search Menu to Internet Explorer.   Now I’ll tell you how to add this to Firefox. Here’s what it looks like:

As you can see above, the word RSSis highlighted on the page. A right click on the highlighted word, brings up the context menu(or right click menu).

To add the Search formenu item, we’ll need to install an addon to Firefox. There are a few addons which add this type of function, but I like the SmartSearch addon.

Do you see all of the search engines listed in that menu? Those won’t be there when you use this addon the first time. You have to add them yourself. It’s easy to do, and the beauty of this is that you can add only the sites you like to search. Nobody will be giving you a pre-made list that they think you’ll like.

Here’s how to add a site to the Search formenu after SmartSearch is installed. I’m going to use Download.com as an example.

Go to download.com

When you see the search box, right click on it and choose Add a Keyword for this Search.

Next, you’ll need to fill out the name of the search and add your own short keywordfor it (as shown). You can see that I’ve chosen the two letters DLas the keyword.

Notice that the Folder says Bookmarks Menu. You are actually better off creating a new folder for all of your searches. I chose to call my folder quicksearch.

After saving, you’ll have a new search in your right click Search formenu.

There’s an additional benefit. Since you have a keywordon the bookmark, you can search from your address bar using that keyword. If you want to search for browsersat download.com, just type dl browsers  into the address bar and the results from download.com will quickly fill your page.

Here’s where to install SmartSearchfor Firefox.

Be sure to check out some of the other cool Firefox addons we’ve talked about in the past.

Happy searching!

Zip files are a great way to pack up a collection of files to send them to other people, usually in an email. At least three or four times a year, I run into someone who doesn’t know how to zip up a collection of files in Windows. I ran into three people in the last two weeks at work.

Years ago, you had to have a third party tool such as WinZip to create and open zip files. In 2001, Windows XP was released with built-in zip capabilities. Microsoft decided to call these compressed folders.

Not only is it easy to use the built in zip features in Windows, it’s also possible to password protect zip files so that others can’t open the files inside them. However, even though a zip file is password protected, you can still see a list of files inside it. I have always hated that, but I found a way around it.

Here is how to hide all of your top secret files in a zip file (or compressed folder).

First, let’s create two zip folders. You’ll see why we need two of them shortly.

To create a zip folder, right click into any folder or in an empty place on your desktop, and choose NewCompressed Folder.

Let’s choose Stuffand Top Secretas the names of the new zip files.

Now we can add some top secret files to our Stufffolder. I’m going to add a JPG picture to it here. I’ll open up Stuff.zipby double clicking it, then drag the JPG file into it.

Now let’s add the Stuffzip file to the Top Secretzip file.

Now we need to add a password to the Top Secretcompressed folder.

You’ll have to type your password in twice to confirm it.

That’s it. The next time anyone opens that zip folder, all they’ll be able to see is a file named Stuff.zip. If they try to open it or extract it, they’ll have to know the password you’ve set.

As you can see, all of the files inside the Stuff.zip are hidden. That’s why we needed two zip files.

As a final cleanup step, you can delete the older copies of Stuffand the JPG. These are safely and securely inside the Top Secretzip folder now.

These techniques will work in all versions of Windows released after XP, as well as XP itself.

Here are some other ways to use zip files:

1. Compress and Zip Files Online Without Any Software
2. How to Fix Default Zip File Behavior
3. Open Zip Files Online
4. Repair Corrupted Zip Files
5. Unzip or Extract Files Online

Here are some other ways to hide files:

1. Lock And Hide Files & Folders
2. Windows Scripts: Show/Hide Hidden Files and Folders In Windows
3. Password Protect and Hide Personal Folders
4. Hide Drives From My Computer

If you have your own special way to hide secret data, let us know in the comments below.

Do you have favorite websites that you need to search? You might already know that you can search specific websites by using the pull down menu on the built-in search box in Internet Explorer. You can see a list of sites, such as Bing, Google or Yahoo; these are called Search Providers.

You can add Search Providers in Internet Explorer very easily, but what if the site you want isn’t included in Microsoft’s list of providers? Here are a few of the providers listed by Microsoft:

Bing Search – New York Times Instant Search – Wikipedia Visual Search – Amazon Search Suggestions – eBay.com Visual Search – Google Search Suggestions – Yahoo! Search Suggestions – ESPN Search – Realtime Web Search (by OneRiot) – Sports Buzz from Buzztap

Creating your own Search Providers is an easy trick to learn. It might save you several minutes every day if you have to perform lots of web searches. I’m only going to show instructions for Internet Explorer 7 and 8. If you have Internet Explorer 6, you should upgrade to a newer version. IE6 is getting too old, slow and insecure (like me). Unlike me, however, IE6 is not getting any wiser.

Let’s start with a good example. let’s say that you are in love with the Techie Buzz site and you need to search it every day. Follow the steps below to add your own “Techie Buzz Search” to Internet Explorer.

1. Open Internet Explorer and navigate to Techie-Buzz.

System Restore helps us to roll back all of the system files, registry keys and installed programs to a previous state in the event of malfunctioning or failure. Whenever you install a program, a system restore point is automatically created which indirectly eats up a lot of disk space. Today I will show you how to delete system restore points and increase your disk space.

To delete system restore points, first you will have to download and install Ccleaner. After that follow the steps shown below:

1) Open Ccleaner.
2) Click on the Tools tab.
3) Now click on System Restore tab.

4) Delete all the system restore points except the recent one.

Watch this video to learn how you can increase your disk space by deleting system restore points.

This is a guest post by Abhishek Bhatnagar from www.technixupdate.com, a blog covering Computer tips and tricks. Subscribe to his RSS feeds to get regular updates.

There are lots of times when you may feel the need to view hidden and system files in Windows. The process though quite simple is tedious if you do it frequently, first of all you will need to open windows explorer, then go to File Menu >> Tools, after that you will have to click Folder Options.

In the Folder Options window, you need to select the View tab and select the check boxes accordingly. ( shown below )

Related: A simple guide and video to view hidden files in Windows.

But wait, what if you can write a windows shell script that can do the same for you in seconds?

Let’s see how can create the script to show and hide hidden and system files in windows explorer.

I have compiled a Windows shell script after some searching on Windows shell scripting and written it out of curiosity and it worked.

About the Script

The script is quite self explanatory, but let me explain, I have first created a Shell Object sh and variable theKey to hold the registry path.

Also used a variable setHidden to set the value of the registry key named Hidden. 

You just need to double click to execute the script to show or hide system and hidden files in windows explorer. It will also show a Message Box which displays a message whether system hidden files are shown or hidden in windows explorer.

If you want see the script right click on the script file and open with notepad. You can refer to the script and create another script to automate the registry editing of any other registry key.

How To Use the Script

1. Download the script from here.

2. Double click the downloaded script to show and hide system and hidden files in windows.

Note: This script works for both windows vista and XP

Tip: We recommend to place the script somewhere else on your hard drive and place a desktop shortcut for the script.

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