Effective searching
on the internet begins with knowing your browser..
The main two browsers in use these days are Netscape or Microsoft's Internet
Explorer.
I'm going to deal with Internet Explorer mostly because I believe most people
start out using it these days. It is also so integrated in Windows that it's
hard to use Windows without using it at some time.
Your preferred browser is often just the one you know how to use. There are not in my opinion any significant differences between the two.
First, a note about screen resolution
Most web pages are designed to be viewed at a resolution of 600x800 or higher. Screen resolution is often the problem when people complain about having to scroll sideways to see all of a page
For example here is the ABC news site viewed at 640x480. As you can see even on a 17" monitor some of the site on the right is not visible. Even more would be hidden off screen on a smaller monitor.
The same site viewed on a monitor at a resolution of 1024x 768 pixels
As you can see the actual page now takes less than the entire window so I could adjust the IE window to be smaller than the entire monitor screen if I wished. This makes it easier to do things such as compare the contents of two pages at the same time.
To change the screen resolution Right click on your desktop and select settings.
Change the screen area setting. If you don't like it, or your video card doesn't
like it, it will either change back automatically or you can click and change
it easily.
Discover IE
Microsoft internet Explorer (IE or MSIE) comes with a range of preset time and space wasters. Customising these areas to suit your browsing needs will improve your time and resourse usage.
The Favorites frame is the worst of the space wasters. The same favourites menu will drop down from the menu bar at a single click of "Favorites." Why have it on the side too? Click the X in the favourites frame to get rid of it. (To get it back click favourites on the standard toolbar)
Toolbars:
There are 4 toolbars. The Radio bar is usually hidden and only needed if you
want to waste bandwidth listening to web radio online.
You can turn toolbars on and off by using View > toolbars.
Click customise to remove or add buttons to toolbars.
Place the cursor over the dotted lines to get the double headed arrow to shorten or lengthen a toolbar.
Click near the left hand edge to
grab and drag a toolbar into another toolbar. As you can see below I've moved
the address toolbar to share a line with the standard toolbar. By sliding the
dotted line to the left of address to the left, I can expand the area for typing
the URL and hide some of the standard icons under a >>. (see below)
At the bottom of the customise window you can select large or small icons and whether to show text or not in the toolbars. This can save a lot of space on a small screen.
The standard toolbar contains more
buttons than the average user needs.
You can hide buttons by shortening a toolbar and have two toolbars in the space
of one.
You can access hidden buttons by clicking the >> on the toolbar.
Right click on the toolbar to see a list of available toolbars. Tick or untick to show or hide.
Click Customise on a toolbar to edit the icons visibl and choose large or small ocons and text options.
The links toolbar is a handy place
to store your most used sites.
First, right click on each link listed and select delete for the sites Microsoft
THINK you want but that you'll probably never use. Then open an often used page.
Click on the IE icon in the address bar and drag the link into the links bar.
Easy.
Right click to rename or delete the link if you wish.
You may also edit the Links toolbar within the favourites folder. (See Organising Favourites below)
The status bar appears at the bottom
of the IE window. On the left is the address of the page that is loading, showing
how many pictures are still to be loaded. If you put the mouse over a link while
viewing a page the status bar will show where that link is heading. It will
also show the email address if you put it over an "email me" link.
The blue bar shows if a page is loading. When a page is completely loaded it
says "done" if the bar stalls for a while you may be better off to
click reload (or refresh) and force the page to load again. The right hand side
of the status bar shows the location of the page you are viewing, whether it
is on the internet, or stored on your computer etc.
The key to finding sites quickly is having organised favourites or bookmarks.
Favourites are like any other file system on the computer. They can be organised into folders. Folders can go in folders and so forth.
The arrow at the bottom of a list means there are more links hidden below, hold the cursor over the arrow to view them. I try to keep my lists less than a page long because scrolling for links is time consuming and erratic. It's so easy to miss the link you want as it scrolls over the edge of the screen.
To organise them: Click organise favourites (second option in the favourites menu)
A screen like below will appear. Highlight a link, and choose an option.
This can be time consuming, but once it's done it's much easier to find the link you want.
One way to avoid massive sorting exercises is to sort the bookmark as you save it.
Go to Add to Favorites in the Favourites menu.
Click the "Create in" button to see the full screen as in this picture. Choose the folder and the name you wish your link to have and okay it.
If you'd like to read a web page in more detail at your leisure (even when you aren't connected to the Internet)there are two ways to save it to your hard drive so you can access it off-line.
For a single web page you'd like to store with your documents (eg a recipe or craft instructions)
Open the web page you want.
Go to the File menu and select Save Page As...
A file dialogue box will pop up. Find the folder you want to store the page in and select save.
This will save an html file that will open later in your browser. It will also store a new folder named the same as the file. The folder contains the images and other attachments that were on the page. If you move either the file or the folder to a new location you must move the other as well.
To open either click on the html document in windows explorer or open IE, got to File > Open > Browse and find the page in your folders.
Go to Add to Favorites.
Check the square for "Make available offline."
Then Click Customise. This will start a wizard which will ask you how many links
you want to save.
Remember , this is saving the page as a file, with all it's components (pictures, colours, animations, etc) onto your hard drive.
To view an offline saved page you need to go to File > Work offline. Then click favorites. (Don't forget to go back to uncheck work offline when you finish or you'll be wondering what's wrong with the internet.)
You can see the sites that have not been saved for offline viewing are greyed out.
If you do not save any level of links, you can only view the front page.
For example here, you could read the introduction, but not go any further into
the site. Saving level 1 links, would mean ALL the links from this page are
saved onto your computer (a single page deep) So offline you could read the
contacts, sales, research and meeting pages, BUT, because the meeting page has
another link, to the actual topics of general meetings, you couldn't read that
offline. For that, you'd have to save 2 links deep. (Or, if you just wanted
the topics available offline you could open that page and save it.)
You may download up to 3 links deep. In the case of this page if you saved to the 3rd level of links that would mean you would be saving our page, the links page (level 1), Cyndi's list page (which is on the links page) (level 2) and the front page of every site listed on the main page of Cyndi's list! Hope you have a big hard drive and some time to wait while it all saves.
Regardless, if you Need to do reading offline and you have the hard drive capacity, save away. It may be cheaper than spending hours reading online.
Getting Up to Date.
Automatic syncronisation means your computer will try to update all offline files at certain times every day, or you can go to tools and select synchronise to update an offline site from the internet.
Very important to remember when you've finished with a site on your computer.
Go to Tools >Internet
Options > General > Delete files.
Note this will delete all offline files, so if there was anything you particularly
wanted, follow the steps above to save to my documents or somewhere similar.
Other Options to be aware of: (see above)
Home Page: Most setups will automatically assign a 'home page', often that of the ISP, or Microsoft.
Some nasty invasive sites will sneak in and reasign your home page when you visit them.
To set, or reset your home page, go to Tools >internet Options > General.
Have the page you wish to use open, or the URL handy.
Use current sets the home page with whatever is open. (or paste in the URL of choice.)
Use blank means it won't load a page at all. This can be a big time saver on slower connections, or where you don't feel the need to find out how many modems your ISP has added this week every time you open up IE.
Use blank is also handy if you do a lot of offline work as it won't be trying to open an internet connection everytime you open the program.
History: This records where you ave been on your travels.
In internet options set history for the highest possible. This means that even if you come back to a page 3 months later you can see which links you followed on your last trip(they change colour when you visit them)
If you wish to view your history - click the history button in the standard toolbar
A History frame will appear. This is very handy if you forgot to bookmark the 'perfect' site last week and want to find it again. Go to the approximate time you last visited the site, and browse.
The HOME and END keys on the keyboard will take you to the top and bottom of any page.
CTRL + W Will close an open window.
CTRL + F will find a word on an open page. Note: it will only find the word in the loaded page. If a page is long, check it has loaded before searching or results may not be accurate.
Right click on a link and Open new Window. - This means you can still read the original page while waiting for the linked page to open in a separate window.
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