Browser Use

There are a number of browser tricks and techniques that can enhance your surfing experience. The following sections provide more information:

Running Multiple Windows

You can surf the web in more than one browser window at once. If you do a lot of surfing, then you should open more than one window when you start your browser. You can then perform different actions in different windows.

You open a new window with the command <ctrl>-n, or the menu item "File / New Window". You can then quickly stagger new pages when you open them for easy access in two steps:

Top Left. Line up the top left corner of the new window with the previous windows. Bottom Right. Pull the bottom right corner of the new window up and to the right so that it is staggered with the previous windows,

With several windows open you can perform advanced web navigation, such as searching for different things in different windows, search in one window and surf in another, use one window to explore one site and a second window another site, or use one window to track the news while you type in a chat room in another window.

Browsing History

A history of the links that you have visited is tracked by your browser in a "history file". Your browser checks your history file every time you visit a web page, so that it can darken the links you have already visited.

You can access your history file by typing the command <ctrl>-h.

The most common uses of a history file are described below:

Revisit sites. If you visited a site and would like to return, but can't remember the URL, you can often find it in your history file. You can search for the site by the date visited, or by a text string search, and then double-click the entry to visit it.
Search. You can search your history file for keywords to find sites you may have forgotten you visited.

Explorer: Select the Search button at the top of the history list.

Netscape: Select <ctrl>-f

Delete. You can delete entries in your history file by highlighting them and pressing <delete>. When you subsequently visit a page with those links, they will be coloured like normal links that have never been visited.
You can specify how long to keep pages in your history file as follows:

Internet Explorer: Tools / Internet Options / General / History:
Set to the number of days to keep a page.

Netscape: Edit / Preferences / Navigator / History:
Set to the number of days to keep a page.

Cloning

You can copy a URL into a second window, and surf the same page two different ways. You can open a web page in two windows, and then navigate the same page two different ways in two different windows. This can be useful when you are exploring, and want to try two different paths at the same time.

First open several browsers as described in running multiple windows, and then open the page you want to clone in one window. Open the same page in a second window in the same way you got to it in the first window (for example by selecting it from your bookmarks), or copy the URL from the first page and paste it into the URL field on the second page directly and then press return. A couple of reasons you might want to clone a site are listed below:

Duplicate Searches. It can be useful to duplicate a search result page without having to redo the search. Just copy the URL from one search result window to a second window, paste it into the URL field, and press return, and the same search result page will load in the second window.

For example, you can select links from the search result in one window while keeping the entire search listing in another window for reference. Or you can explore different links of the search result in different windows at the same time.

Downloading. You may find a page through a search engine that identifies a download file, and your want to learn more about the file before downloading it. You can copy the URL, paste it into the location field of a second window, and then delete the left-most part containing the name of the file to visit the rest of the same directory (see the virtual city). Sometimes this loads a default page with context information for the download file. Sometimes there is no default page, and it displays directory information.

Bookmarking Searches

You can bookmark the web page returned by a search engine in the same way as any other page. For example, the URL for the search for "world and museum and art" on Yahoo is:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=world+and+museum+and+art

Once you perform a search, simply bookmark that search result page. You can recall the search at any time simply by selecting that page from your bookmarks. The search string URL will be passed to the search site, which will then return an up-to-date, real-time list of the search engine's results for that search.

By checking your bookmarked searches every now and then to see if there are new entries, you will be able to keep current with the leading sites in the subject area you are interested in, and know which ones to add to your own

Configuring Plugins

There are a core set of key programs that can extend the capabilities of your browser. Several companion programs for Internet Explorer can be set on the window "Tools / Internet Options / Programs". Internet Explorer generally downloads additional plugins automatically the first time it needs them, and will prompt you for permission if it runs an installer program.

You can get information on Netscape plugins from the menu "Help / About Plugins". They are usually stored in the following folder:

\Netscape\Communicator\Program\Plugins

You should try not to download too many plugins, especially when they provide overlapping capabilities. Check and delete any extra plugins that build up in your plugin folder if you later uninstall their programs.

Resources. The average plugin is between 500 KB and 1 MB in size. If you have the disk space, you should get the latest copy of the following key plugins which are widely used across the net::

Acrobat

Mediaplayer

Quicktime

Realplayer

Shockwave

Saving Data

You can save web pages, graphics, images, and text to your computer for subsequent reuse in another document. There are several ways you can save data from the web:

Pages. You can save a web page through the "File / Save" or "File / Save As" menu items. You can then access the page by double-clicking on it, or by opening it through the "File / Open" menu item. The text and links will be saved, but the embedded graphics and other objects usually are not. You can also "Save As" the page in text format.
Graphics. You can save graphics by dragging them to the desktop with your mouse. You can also save images by clicking on them with the right mouse button (hold down the button on a Mac) and selecting "Save As".
Text. You can select text and copy it with the mouse, unless the page has special settings that disallow it. If the text has a lot of spaces at the start of the lines when you copy it into a word processing document, you can replace them as follows in Microsoft Word. Copy the paragraph mark from the end of one line and the spaces at the start of the next. Paste them into the "search for" field. Put a single space in the "replace with" field. Select "replace all". The web makes it very easy to copy text, graphics, and even entire pages, but remember that most web pages are copyrighted either explicitly or by default under international copyright law. Therefore, you should always make sure you have the appropriate permission before you reuse data from the web.

Many sites explicitly or implicitly allow the copying of text and graphics for personal use, and for individual use in educational environments. If you do use someone else's work with their permission, you should also provide an attribution and a link to their page.

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