'The Net Just Got Better: Tips for Surfing' from Quixotic Productions

The Net Just Got Better: Tips for Surfing

By Amy Dent Beebe

Better Views.

Need more room on your screen to see a web page? Use F11 to toggle between full screen (without toolbars) and normal views.
For those of you who have a mouse with a scroll wheel, you can easily change the font size in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x without taking your hand off of the mouse. Just hold down the Ctrl key and scroll the wheel to increase or decrease the font size.

Better Searching.

Don't be afraid to be specific. The more information you give a search engine, the easier it will be to find what you want. Often, typing in your exact question will actually produce great results - for instance "Can I upgrade directly from Windows 95 to Windows 2000?" (the answer is yes)
Add it up. When you want to find pages that have ALL the terms you enter, rather than any one of them, use the + symbol. For example, typing in: +star +wars +phantom +menace would narrow down your search to pages that specifically refer to only the Star Wars movie in question, weeding out pages that only refer to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi.
Take it Away. Sometimes, you want a search engine to find pages that have one word on them but not another word. The - symbol before a word means that word MUST NOT appear in the title or body of a document. For example, imagine you want information about Monty Python, but don't want to get pages upon pages about python snakes. Try this: +monty +python -snakes -reptiles That tells the search engine to find pages that mention "month python" and then to remove any of them that also mention "snakes" or "reptiles."

Better Navigation.

In Internet Explorer, you can press Backspace to move backward and Shift + Backspace to move forward. You'll also find that Alt + left arrow will work to move backward and you can press Alt + right arrow to move forward.
Instead of just clicking on a link, right-click it. A menu will pop up. Click on "Open in New Window." It works the same for Internet Explorer and Netscape. That way you don't have to wait for the original page to re-load -- just close the new page you opened (click the X in the right-hand corner) and your first page is still there. This is handy if your connection is slow and the sites you visit are large, or if you're searching a lot of different sites and don't want to lose track of your starting point. Opening new sites in new windows makes it easy to retrace your steps.
Type a word in the Address bar and press Ctrl-Enter to automatically add http://www and .com on both sides of the word.

Better Bookmarking

Faster favorites. Right-click the page you want to add and choose Add to Favorites. This opens the Add Favorite dialog box where you can choose which sub folder you want to use. If you want to quickly add a Web page to your Favorites folder without making any choices about which sub folder to save it in, you can just press Ctrl + D. You won't see anything happen, but the page will now appear in your main Favorites folder.
When bookmarking a site for later, it's a good idea to bookmark the front page, like "www.emazing.com," rather than a page within a site, especially if you want to save the site for long-term reference. Why? Because Webmasters change things around internally, re-addressing the page you need.

Better Security

Don't set yourself up for the sake of convenience. Lots of surfers use the same passwords and usernames on multiple sites - but if someone gained access to that one password, they could theoretically use it to access personal and even financial information on other sites where you used the same log in.
Your passwords should be at least eight characters, and use a combination of letters (both upper & lowercase) and numbers. Don't use family member names, pet names or other information that many people might know about you.
There are plenty of free programs out there than can help you keep track of your passwords and usernames. Take a look at Bouncer at www.webmasterfree.com/bouncer.html and Gator at www.gator.com. Both of these programs store your data only on your computer, and give you the freedom to use different (and secure!) passwords at all your sites.

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Brought to you by: Amy Dent Beebe, Fluid Communications - http://www.fluidcommunications.org Ideas and Designs at work.

Fluid Communications provides web design & hosting, graphic design & printing, and marketing services.