| 1. Surf Safely Protect your identity online. Use common sense when
registering at sites that collect information. Give out as little information
about yourself as possible. Usually not all blanks have to be filled in. Use a
phony name, address and email. Often sites send you a password via email. Get
an email address just for surfing from Excite, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. Use it when
registering for anything online. Keep the spam and junk email out of your
personal account, well try anyway. |
| 2. Choose a portal for your home page. Don't be content with what
your ISP starts you out with. Change your home page in IE with
"Tools/Internet Options/General/Use Current" to set the home page to
the page you're currently browsing. Excite, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos make good portals
|
| 3. Choose a search engine and learn how to make it work for you
Google, Excite, AltaVista |
| 4. Use two or more browser windows when you surf. Shift Click to
open a link in a new browser window. Or Ctrl-N to open a new empty window.
Avoid surfing into oblivion by keeping your search results in a separate
window. Keep surfing while you wait for slow pages to load. |
| 5. Use the History. Backtrack to sites you visited and didn't
bookmark. You can find the sites you visited, today, yesterday or last month.
Caution: so can others! |
| 6. Bookmark or Favorites maintenance. Don't let your favorites get
old and stale. Delete links you never use or don't remember what they are. Use
"Organize Favorites" to add folders to categorize your sites. For
sites you use constantly add them to your "Links" toolbar |
| 7. Use the Refresh/Reload Button When a page doesn't look like it
should or stops loading click the Refresh or Reload button to request the page
again. If a page you go to frequently pops up very quickly you are probably
looking at the cached version on your hard drive. Refresh to make sure you're
viewing the most current version. |
| 8. Keep your software current Don't let your browser and plugins get
too stale or you won't see the content as the creators designed it. But wait
until a new version has been released for 60 to 90 days to get the bugs out.
|
9. Learn and use keyboard shortcuts Look in your browser's help file
to find keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. A few Internet Explorer common
shortcuts:
- CTRL+O Open a site. Type in www.yoursite.com in the dialogue box
instead of the address line.
- CTRL+ENTER Adds http://www and .com to whatever you've typed in. In
combination with the above shortcut, you'd type CTRL+O yoursite, CTRL+ENTER and
your browser would go to http://www.yoursite.com
- CTRL+F Find on the page. Use it to search a text heavy page for a
word or phrase SHIFT+CLICK on a hyperlink to open it in a new window.
- CTRL+N to open a blank new window
- CTRL+R Refresh a page CTRL-D Add the current page to your favorites.
- F11 Toggle between normal and full screen view of browser to make
more room to view large pages
- ALT-HOME Go to your homepage
|
| 10. Have Patience , Patience, Patience What else can I say? Kicking
the computer won't make it work any better. |
