Portal to the Internet
Tips
Here are some tips to help you navigate the World Wide Web in general, the Portal in particular:
- Download Netscape Navigator and use it, even if you already have the AOL browser or Internet Explorer. This browser is far and away the best all around browser, supporting the vast majority of Web features and doing it in the manner most nearly bug free.
- Three words to remember: BOOKMARK, BOOKMARK, BOOKMARK! Whenever you come across a site that MIGHT interest you later, BOOKMARK it (or put it in your Favorites Folder if you insist on using Internet Explorer). You can put a URL in that folder by simply dropping down the Bookmark menu and releasing the mouse button when the cursor hits "Add Bookmark." If you decide later, for whatever reason, that you really don't want to go there again, it takes but a single click to remove it. Plus, by organizing your bookmarks (using the edit feature) you can keep the bookmark section compact and easy to use. This is your key to browser customization and is well worth the trouble. In particular, BOOKMARK this site! Now!
- To ease the pain of lengthy downloads, remember that you can, at any time, launch extra copies of your browser and carry on multiple downloads simultaneously. This is especially useful if you have a fast machine, since the rate of downloads is trivial compared to the rate at which the central processing unit (CPU) is operating. You can even play games while the browser is downloading.
- Try to use your local cache as much as possible. This is disk space set aside on your local hard drive to store pages and graphics that you access on the Web, so that they load MUCH faster after the first time. If you have a lot (more than a hundred megabytes) of free space on your hard drive, enlarge the size of your cache to 25 MB or larger. This can be done with the View/Preferences/Advanced/Cache option (menus at the top of the browser) in Netscape Navigator and with View/Internet Options/General in Internet Explorer. The more space you allocate, the faster the pages will appear AFTER THE FIRST DOWNLOAD.
- If you think you will be re-visiting a page, make sure that you wait until the page is completely downloaded the first time you view it. This will insure that the graphics and the page are completely stored in your local cache.
- Try not to view the pages using the full screen, especially if your screen has more than 640x480 pixels. That way, you will be able to have multiple windows and applications running simultaneously. However, if you would rather use the full screen for viewing, remember that you can minimize the window you are viewing (by clicking on the dash in the upper right corner), so that you can see any windows that might be behind it on the screen. It will shrink to an icon in the task bar on the edge of the screen...the same one that holds the "Start" icon...and can be remaximized with a single click of the mouse on that icon.
- Right clicking (the OTHER mouse button) on an image or link in a page will drop down a menu which will allow you to do several cool things with the image, including reloading it, setting it as wallpaper, copying it, copying a link (if it has one), etc. Try it!
- If you are only displaying 256 colors (or less), you may occasionally get a page with obviously messed up colors. This is because the browser is "confused" about just what set of colors to use. Often (but not always) this can be remedied by reloading the page.