You’re looking at a great web page, maybe an insightful article or a funny video, and you want to email it to some friends. Should you try to copy the contents of the page and paste it into an email message, or should you just send your friends a link to the web page? Will you somehow copy and paste it or is there an easier way? (Yes, there is.)
Emailing a page the easy way
Until recently, when I wanted to email a web page to someone, I’d copy the URL from my browser’s address bar, switch to my mail program, and then paste the page’s URL into a new email message. That works okay, but Mac Help For Mom reader Betty taught me a much faster way. Watch this video to see how easy it is.
button here ↑Send web page contents or link?
It’s usually best to email a link to a web page, rather than the contents of the page because:
- A link makes for a much smaller email, which will send faster and be retrieved by your friends faster;
- The web page contents may include personalized portions (for example, a section showing your Facebook friends who liked the page) that your friends shouldn’t see;
- Your friends would probably prefer those portions of the page were personalized for them when they view the page;
- Mail programs rarely display the web page contents as accurately as a web browser does (so let your friends click on the link and view it in their favorite browser).
Still, there are a few times when you might consider sending a web page’s contents, such as:
- You suspect the page may be taken down soon;
- The page changes frequently (for example, a news site home page) and you want to capture it in its current state;
- The page requires a password to view (of course, be sure you have permission to share the contents)
Summary
So, regardless of which popular web browser you use, there is a command to make it easy to create an email with a link to the web page you are currently looking at:
- Safari: File menu, Mail Link to This page (⇧⌘I)
- Google Chrome: File menu, Email Page Location (⇧⌘I)
- Firefox: File menu, Send Link…
If you need to email a web page’s contents, that’s easy if you use Safari and the Apple Mail application. Just use the “Mail Contents of This Page” command in the File menu or press ⌘I. If using another browser or email program, then you’ll have to do an old-fashioned copy and paste.
With the old fashioned way of cutting and pasting the URL, you don’t need to do command A to get the whole URL. Instead, click on the icon in the URL and the whole shebang is highlighted! Of course, it’s a lot quicker to use your shift command i tip.
Well, what do you know! Thanks Ronni. That’s a great tip.