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Some Web Surfing Tips

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This update to a previously published Tips and Techniques page offers some tips for speeding up your Web browsing with Microsoft Internet Explorer and the Mozilla Firefox web browsers. Both support "tabbed browsing" which may be a new concept for those who are used to previous versions of Internet Explorer. Tabbed browsing allows you to have multiple web sites open in only one browser session that appears on your Windows Taskbar. To open a new tab with either browser, you need only click the small tab that appears at the right of the currently open tabs with the page titles on them.  

Installing Mozilla Firefox

Many users believe the Mozilla Firefox web browser is better than Microsoft Internet Explorer. In general, it is faster, easier to use, and is more immune to malware attacks than IE. To read about the Firefox features and download Firefox, go to the site http://www.mozilla.com/firefox.

Entering Web Addresses

To enter a new Web address in your browser's address bar, just click on the existing address. It will become highlighted and you can immediately enter a new one; you don't need to delete the old one first. Then, just press Enter on your keyboard. Also, if you are going to an address that ends with ".com", a good tip is that you only need to type the main part of the domain, for example "ebay". You can then hold down the Ctrl key and press Enter. The computer will add "http://www" to the beginning of your domain, and ".com" at the end, much faster than you can type it yourself. By the way, you never need to type "http://www". You could just type ebay.com and press Enter.

Using Browser History

To return to a Web address you have gone to recently, click the small down pointing arrowhead at the end of the browser's address bar. This will show a list of recent sites you have visited, and you can select one with your mouse. To narrow down the list that is displayed, you can type the first few letters of the site and only those beginning with those letters will be displayed. This tip is handy if the web address is very long.

Your Home Page

Your Internet Service Provider probably sends you to their own home page when you first start your browser. If you would like another page to appear, you can easily make the change. In Firefox, Just go to the page you want (for example www.google.com), then click on the small icon at the far left of the address bar and drag the icon to the home page button with the house icon immediately to the left of the address bar.

In Internet Explorer, click the small arrow next to the home page button in the toolbar, then select Add or Change Home Page. You can make your current page the only home page, add it to a list of tabs that will open when you start IE, or set all currently open tabs as multiple home pages.

Your selected option will then take effect when you start your browser, or you can click the home page button to open the selected home page(s).

No Home Page?

If you don't want to wait for a home page to load when you start your browser, you don't need to have one. For IE, click the small arrow next to the Home Page button in the Toolbar, point to "Remove", then click "Remove All".  For Firefox, click the Tools menu and select Options.  On the "Main" tab, for "When Firefox starts", choose  "Show a blank page", then click OK. 

Viewing Long Pages

If you are viewing a Web page that is longer that your browser window is tall, you can use the vertical scroll bars to move up and down in the page. A faster way, however, to view a complete screen of data at once is to use your "Page Down" and "Page Up" keys. To go to the top of the page, use "Home" and to go the bottom use "End". To go up or down one line at a time, use the up or down arrow keys on your keyboard.

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