Quite a while ago I registered at Pandora, took a look and promptly forgot about it. I had other things I was doing at the time and thought that looks interesting, I’ll have to get back to that sometime .
Long story short, I started playing with it an hour ago and I’m finding it a remarkable bit of technology. I’m already listening to some excellent music.
However, when I attempt to put a shortcut icon on my desktop I end up with a file folder AND a shortcut icon with the Firefox icon. Well, that’s ok, I’ll just delete the file folder and I’m good. Right? Easy! NOPE!
I can’t delete just one, every time I try they both disappear. I’ve frigged and farted with thing for the past 30 min. and I’ll be arsed if I can get it to work right.
HELP please. And keep in mind, you’re dealing with someone who never quite mastered Atari before it became obsolete.
JJ , I’m right-clicking on the Pandora site, using the option “save page as” and directing it to my desktop.
And that is all fine except there are two icons that show up. The one I want with the firefox symbol and one with a file icon that contains all the operating files for the site. This, I would have thought, would have ended up in my programs file, but no, here it is on my desktop. I even tried to move it and it didn’t move, it just copied to My Documents.
It isn’t the end of the world if I can’t get rid of it, it just bugs me that this is the only time this has happened and I can’t figure it out.
So, let me see if I understand what you want. You want an icon on your desktop that when you double-click it, it opens up the Pandora page in Firefox? Is that right?
Right, and I’ve got that. But I also have an accompanying file that I can’t remove. I’ve tried deleting both of them at different times and when one goes, so does the other. It’s really stupid.
If that’s what you want, when you click Save Page As… you have to pull down the “Save as type:” dropdown menu underneath the filename text box and select “Web Page, HTML only”.
OK, I’m trying that but now Pandora has frozen up, having technical difficulties, engineers are working on the problem, try again later and now the download window won’t do anything.
Maybe I’ll just go right out of everything and reload. I’ve got your directions and I know you’re not far away. Thanks Q.E.D and JJ .
When you do “File>Save Page As…”, what you’re doing is making a local copy of the web page (useful if you want to use it while not online, etc.). The reason you get a file and a folder is that Firefox saves the HTML page itself as a .html file, and puts all supporting files (images, scripts, style files, etc.) in a folder with a similar name. These are linked in Windows (by default) so that deleting one deletes both. (You can turn this link off in Explorer’s “Folder Options>View”.) But making a local copy of the pandora.com homepage doesn’t make much sense; the web page is just an interface for accessing the Pandora database, and will probably change from time to time as new bugs and features are added.
What you’re trying to do (I think) is make an icon that when clicked goes to pandora.com. This is not the same as saving a local copy, though depending on the page the effect you see may be quite similar. One way to do this is as follows (instructions for XP; other Windows versions should be similar):
[ol][li]Make a duplicate copy of your Firefox desktop icon; call it Firefox-Pandora or something.[/li]
[li]Right-click on this icon and bring up the Properties dialog.[/li]
[li]Go to the Shortcut tab. The Target box should read something like[/li]“C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\firefox.exe”.
At the end of this box, add the URL of the website you want, e.g. “pandora.com”, so that the box now reads
“C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\firefox.exe” http://pandora.com/. (Leave the first argument as it was!)[/ol]
Now clicking on this icon should open a new Firefox window to that website.
Rebooted and when I came back Pandora was working again. Tried your solution Q.E.D and it took me to a text page where one click brought up Pandora and that’s fine, I can live with that.
OMPHALOSKEPTIC , for my first question, how do I create a “duplicate” icon? I tried but I was repeatedly told I already had one and did I want to replace it? I think I get what you’re saying if I could get two icons on the desktop but I’m not having much luck.
There’s a fast and easy way to make a shortcut to a URL. Grab the address bar, drag to your desktop: voilà, a file appears. Double-click on that and it will open the page. I usually use a Mac, but while working on my wife’s Windows computer, I tried doing what I normally do in Safari to save a link, and to my surprise it worked.
If you’re using XP, all you need to do is copy the URL, go to your desktop and right click new > shortcut > type in the URL and hit OK and there it is.
If it shows up as an IE icon, you can do a right click, choose “properties” and “change icon”.
But wouldn’t a Firefox bookmark be just as easy? One of the things I love about Firefox (and Netscape before it) was the ease with you could organise and sort bookmarks.
I clicked on my new icon this am. before I did anything else and wonder of wonders, it opened directly to the Pandora site. I’m listening to it now.
Strangely the banner at the top shows it being on Mozilla Firefox. Maybe I’ve got too many browsers on my computer. :dubious:
Let me say again, for an internet newbie like myself (yes I said myself) it’s nice to see how members come to the rescue when presented with a problem. With all the feudin’, fussin’ and a-fightin’ that sometimes goes on here, I think these types of incidents highlight what people mean when they refer to the Dope as a community.
Huh. I did not know that. In Firefox, you drag the icon in the address bar, not the address bar itself–you’ll see the cursor turn into a hand when you mouse over it. The drag-and-drop interface takes care of the rest. Neat!
I have FF set as my default browser. When I click on a shortcut for Google (created from FF or IE7), the tab opens fine in FF, but I also get the error message “Windows was not able to find ‘www.google.com’. Make sure you typed the name correctly [etc.]” A shortcut to a page ending in “htm” doesn’t get that error. Looks like Omphaloskeptic’s method would avoid that error, so it’s more general.
