2,001 Tips
The Web
Browsers

Netscape Navigator 3.0

All About the Web

Type About: in the location window for information about your browser setup. For a record of the Web sites you've visited, type About:global, or type About: and any URL, and you'll see stats for that site.

Backtrack

If you don't want to update your entire framed window whenever you press the Back button, right-click on the frame where you want to retrace your steps, then select "Back in frame."

To Dither or Not to Dither

If you're more concerned with speed than superb color quality, choose Substitute rather than Dither under Options/General Preferences/Images. Dithering will force Navigator to match the color palette used for a given graphic. If you choose Substitute, the browser will use its own native palette and force a close match. If your graphics are set to true color or high color, you can use Substitute without much loss of image quality.

Cache Transactions

If you're wasting time and money waiting for pages to download, beef up your disk and memory cache. Select Options/Network Preferences/Cache. Change settings under Memory Cache and Disk Cache to allot more of your RAM and hard disk for storing Web documents. If you want to see the most up-to-date pages on every visit, set both fields to 0 or purge both caches.

Open More Windows

Optimize online time by using multiple browser windows to view more than one page at a time. Right-click on a link and select "Open link in new browser window." This will open the page in a new Navigator window, allowing you to browse in your original window while waiting for pages to download to the other.

Resize Frames

Unless the author codes a specific dimension in pixels into a frames-based page, you can resize the frames to your liking. Position your cursor over a frame's boundary. If the cursor changes to a two-headed arrow, you can drag and resize the frames.

Simple Selection

You can select a large block of text by clicking and dragging to highlight it-or you can left-click at the beginning of the passage, release the mouse button, then scroll down to the end of the desired text. Left-click again while holding the Shift key.

No News Is Good News

To remove a newsgroup from your News list, click on the check mark beside it; unchecked newsgroups will not be listed in the future. To remove a news host, select that host and select File/Remove News Host. This will discard all of the Host's related subscription information.

Make Your Mark

If you love your bookmark page, why not make it your default home page? Open your bookmark page (Ctrl+B) and copy its location, or use Explorer and right-click on the BOOKMARK.HTM file to bring up its Properties. Within Navigator, open Options/General Preferences/Appearance, and paste the address in the Browser Starts With window, then check the Home Page Location button.

Make the Right Connection

You can alternate Navigator between a dial-up and LAN-based connection. In Windows 95, go to Control Panel/Internet/Connection and uncheck Auto-Dial when you want to use the LAN. In Windows 3.1x, rename the WINSOCK.DLL file in the Netscape directory when you want to use the LAN connection and change it back when you want to use the dial-up.

A Click in Time

You can save a page or graphic from the Web to your local drive. Right-click on it and select "Save link (image) as," then pick a location on your drive to store it. You can also press Shift while you click with the left mouse button.

Retrace Your Steps

You can access and edit Navigator's global history file of visited URLs. To access the list in Windows 3.1x, open the NETSCAPE.INI file and check the URL History section. In Win95, open the file NETSCAPE.HST.

Find Your Bookmarks

Can't find a buried bookmark? Press Ctrl+B from within Navigator and use the Find command to search for specific text strings.

Straight from the Source

Let users view source code on your page easily by adding the following HTML to your page. (Use your URL in place of www.yourpage.com.) Enter: <a href=view-source:http://www.yourpage.com/>View Source</A>.

Color Your World

If the colors coded into some Web pages give you a migraine, set Navigator to use your own default colors instead. Under Options/General Preferences/Color, set the schemes you prefer and then check "Always use my colors, overriding document."

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