Easily create desktop links to websites using a text editor on Mac

I've been looking for a way to have quick access to certain sites for my Dungeons & Dragons game for a while now. In Mac OS it is possible to drag the address of a site to the desktop but for us VoiceOver users it's hit and miss at best. In this short and ineptly composed guide I'm going to explain how to write a quick and easy file as an alternative.

Steps

1. open a text file in your editor of choice, we will use text editor for illustrative purposes.
2. Make certain that it is a text file and not rich text, you can do this in text edit by pressing shift, command and t.
3. Now copy the following text, take note of the brackets if copying by hand: [internetshortcut] URL=http://AppleVis.com Where you can replace the web address with your chosen site.
4. Save the file to your desktop.
5. Go into finder and hit enter on the file you have just created.
6. Add dot URL as the file extension. Finder will ask if you want to keep txt or change to URL, change to url.
7. Now open the file and, if everything has been done correctly, you'll fly directly to your website of choice.

Conclusion

For my part, I have created keyboard commanders in VoiceOver to quickly access monster statistics that will attempt to gobble up my player's characters. I hope you find a use that is as worthy.

Note: Please comment if you are having any issues with this and I will end ever to help and update this guide accordingly.

If you wish to speak with me directly find me on twitter right here