While you browse various web sites of your interest under a specific topic, you might want to keep a local copy of the web page files and import related documents or multimedia files. For that purpose, you would create Internet shortcuts for these files. There are four methods of creating Internet shortcuts:
The usual method of creating an Internet shortcut, is to
You do not need to read each file now, you can enjoy them off-line later.
Some applications might not offer the drag-drop support. Use the system clipboard as follows:
You should see the new shortcut file with hyperlink text content as its file name.
If you have reached a table of contents page of a web site, it is easy to use one of the above methods, but what about if there is no valid hyperlink to the page you are viewing? You might have reached the web page through an embedded script of a previous web page, or through a database query, or through a redirect script. The hyperlink in such cases is not valid since it does not contain the URL of your viewed page. This is where the Dir or Shortcut Creator dialog becomes handy, the instructions are found there. The idea is to get the related URL string into the system clipboard. Where is the proper URL string? You might get it from your browser navigation bar or, sometimes, from a page property dialog.
This is the minimalist method. You simply need a simple text editor.
Before grabbing the hyperlink, try to figure-out its URL, try to view it on your browser (usually at the browser's status line while the cursor is on the hyperlink). If you can see a valid URL, chances are that the created shortcut will work. Sometimes, this is not possible, either because of the browser or because the web page contains a script that hides the URL display. Under such circumstances, create the shortcut and see its content. You might be able to see its URL either by a ToolTip display while the cursor is on the shortcut symbol, or by opening the shortcut file with a text editor. If you changed your mind, you just delete the shortcut file.