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.quixoticproductions.biz,"
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 and low-cost 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 RoboForm at www.roboform.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.
Brought
to you by: Amy Dent Beebe, Quixotic Productions- http://www.quixoticproductions.biz
Visionary Design. Quixotic Productions provides web design and
hosting services.
You
may reprint this article on your web site, provided it is reproduced
in its entirety along with this resource box. Copyright 2001-2004.
All Rights Retained by Author.
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