From The Tips Box: Firefox Search Engines, CCleaner Notifications

Readers offer their best tips for switching between search engines in Firefox and getting audible CCleaner notifications in Windows.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons — maybe they’re a bit too niche, maybe we couldn’t find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn’t fit it in — the tip didn’t make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or use the contact form on the right.

Switch Between Firefox Search Engines With A Keyboard Shortcut

Jlr860 tells us about a useful shortcut in Firefox:

If you start typing in the Firefox search box and want to quickly change the search engine hold Ctrl and use the up/down arrows to change them without leaving the keyboard. Substitute Alt for Ctrl and it will show the list.

This one’s been around for a while, but it’s been less talked about here at Lifehacker, so I thought it might be a good refresher for the Firefox fans out there.

Tell CCleaner To Notify You When It’s Done Cleaning

Moon shares an AutoHotkey script to run CCleaner silently in the background, then notify you when it’s done:

I like to have an audio cue when ccleaner is done with an autoclean.

#DEL::

RunWait, “C:\Program Files\CCleaner\CCleaner64.exe” /auto

RunWait, “c:\windows\sndrec32.exe” /play “C:\command\message2.wav” /close, , min

return

This will run autoclean when you hit Win+Delete.

I’m not sure what other parts need explaining. Probably it’s the command for Sound Recorder. It just plays my chosen wave file, without getting in my face. If one cares to look, it makes a brief appearance in the Taskbar after CCleaner is done. Very brief. Hope you like.

Make Windows Live Mesh Act More Like Dropbox

If the new SkyDrive mobile apps have you considering a switch, Java-Princess lets us know how to make it act a bit more like Dropbox on your home machine:

Here’s how to make Windows Live Mesh or your Skydrive behave like the Dropbox folder on your computers so whatever you save or drag there will appear on your other machines.

First, create the folder you want to use as your dropbox-type folder. I put mine in My Documents but you can put it anywhere. Call it something like My Mesh or even My Dropbox if you’re feeling feisty.

Then, put a shortcut to this folder on your Desktop (easy), or in your favourites in Explorer (a bit less easy) like this: open your My Mesh folder and in the left pane of Explorer right click favourites and select ‘Add current location to favorites’.

Give it the Mesh icon instead of the default folder icon. The icon is here on Windows 7 machines:

%SystemRoot%\Installer\{DECDCB7C-58CC-4865-91AF-627F9798FE48}\App.ico

To make this new folder sync automatically open Windows Live Mesh and select this folder to be synced.

Do all this on your other machines.

You now have a 5GB dropbox (with Live’s 100MB file size limit) and by using Remote Desktop Connection you can actually access any file on your linked and synced computers.