Ok, so you've now toddled around the Internet finding things and its well.... slow, really. This article gives you some hints and tips on how to make the whole thing go a lot faster. Some of them are obvious, and you're probably already using them. Hopefully however a few of them will be new to you. Try them out and see if they work.
If you're using a slow modem, you're going to get slow downloads. Think of your modem as a doorway; if its a large doorway, you can get people (or data) going backwards and forwards with no problem. If its a small doorway then people have to start forming orderly queues, and the whole thing slows down. Your modem is a little bit like that; the faster it is, the more data can go backwards and forwards. A 56k modem is ok, but thats about all. Better to go for a broad band connection if you can afford it. Its cheaper in the long run if you can!
Now, I only really use Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), because its the one that I grew up with. Consequently, all of these tips are going to be ones that specifically work with that. If you're using another browser, it probably does the same things, but perhaps in a slightly different way, so be prepared to explore and experiment!
MSIE has a neat feature as one of its buttons, called Find - Control F,
or Edit - Find. Click on that and type in what you're looking for, and it'll
take you to the first mention of the word you're interested in. You do have to
wait for the page to load for it to work properly however; an incomplete page
just confuses the poor thing.
Use your page up and page down keys! Its
suprising how many people forget that they exist when they start playing around
on the Internet.
File and print options allow you to print off a page. You don't need to
wait for the print to finish; once its gone to the print buffer, you can move
off somewhere else.
Use one of the offline readers such as WebWhacker
(http://www.bluesquirrel.com/products/whacker/index.html)
hoover up a page or site and read it later, off line at your leisure and at no
online connect charges. (I'm all in favour of giving BT as little money as
possible!)
This is an obvious one, but turn your autoload images OFF by using the
Options menu. This ensures that those large, pointless graphics don't get
loaded. A good Web designer will ensure that an alternative text is displayed
in place of the graphic. If they don't, you can try moving your cursor over the
image and look in the bottom left hand corner of the screen; you might see a
new URL, which might give you some idea as to what will happen if you click on
the graphic (presuming of course that it's a link, rather than a picture of the
cat). If you decide that you do want to see the images after all, you can turn
the load images option back on again.
You can use more screen space by
turning off some sections of the interface, by using F11.
Take a look at the location or go to: box at the top of the screen. See
the little arrow to the right hand side of it? Click on it, and you'll be
presented with a list of recently accessed sites, which makes it easier to go
back to a previously visited site. This works independently of the Go pull down
option in that it's not limited to the current session.
You can also use
a right mouse click, instead of the usual left one; this brings up a little box
which allows you to move backwards or forwards to other pages, which is quicker
than moving up to the Back option, although you'll still be better off using
the Go pull down option if you want to go back more than a few pages at
once.
Open up more than one copy of the browser. If something is taking
a long time to download for example, and you want that data, but don't want to
hang around doing nothing, carry on searching by opening up a second window.
Simply place your mouse over the link you want to go to, but instead of left
clicking, right click. You'll get a little box coming up with an option to
'Open in a new window'. Chose that and a new window will open, and start
loading the new page, while the slower one continues to load in the background.
Use your Favorites facility properly! its very tempting just to add
bookmarks without giving any thought to it, but you very quickly end up with a
huge number of the things, in no particular order. Keep them in some sort of
order, delete old ones and so on.
Choose a new home page to start from.
You don't need to always go straight to Microsoft's home page if you don't want
to. For example, I spend a lot of time using Google as my search engine, and I
got fed up of typing in the address and going there every single time I started
up the browser. If you want to always start off at one particular site, choose
Internet Options Home Page and edit the option Startup/Browser starts with by
typing in the address of the page you want to start at. Alternatively, why not
make your own page? Create it locally on your hard disk with links to the
places you're likely to want to go to and start with that
instead.
Choose the most appropriate search engine. If you know exactly
what you're after, together with appropriate key words or phrases, and you want
a global, comprehensive search, use Google. If you're not sure of exactly what
you want, or what the best terms are, use Yahoo. If you want something which is
within a specific subject area or geographical location, choose a subject
specific search engine, or a UK specific engine instead.
Guess! Not an
infallible method certainly, but its worth trying. Become familiar with the
major domain identifiers such as .com, .co.uk, .gov and country codes such as
.uk, .de, .jp and so on. If you're looking for a UK organisation, try
http://name_of_organisation.co.uk and if that doesn't work, just try it as a
.com address instead.
Shorten the URL. We have all experienced this one
- you find the perfect web page with a search engine, and the summary looks
perfect, but when you try it, it's not there any more. It may have been
deleted, or it might just have been moved within the site. Shorten the URL one
stage at a time and work your way back up the chain. Eventually you'll arrive
at a page of some sort, which might give you an index to what else is on the
site, and you might find the page you're actually after listed at that
point.
Keep up to date with changes to web pages. There is little point
in continually going back to a favourite page to see if its changed, since
there is a nifty little utility which will do it for you.
Watch That Page keeps a track of
the web pages you are interested in and sends you an email when it changes. Its
a perfect resource for monitoring URL's on your behalf.
Your browser works by using what's called a 'cache'. This is essentially
a storage area used by MSIE to store the pages which it has downloaded onto
your hard disk for you to view. Thats why you'll often find that when you go
backwards and forwards using the browser pages you've already visited come up
quicker, because you're viewing them from disk, not going back out onto the Web
to collect them again. There are two sorts of cache - one for hard disk, and
one for memory. Both of these can be changed to provide you with more memory
and space. Visit Internet Options - General - Temp. pages - Settings.
To
change the amount of space that the browser will use to store files on the hard
disk follow the same procedure as above and increase the amount of hard disk
space to any figure that you feel appropriate, even up to something like 20Mb
if you have that available.
This depends very much on where the site is that you're interested in
going to. If, like me, you spend a lot of time using American sites, you'll
find its best to search them either first thing in the morning (up to about 12
o'clock) or later in the evening. This leaves the middle of our day (morning
their time) for the Americans to log on and get their news and mail etc. Its
suprising how much of a difference it makes!
While the Internet doesn't
really care about local/global issues, you may want to, as I've already
indicated. Remember what the different time zones are; if you can get the same
file or information from a site in the US and one in Australia for example, my
advice is to go to whichever country is currently 'asleep', since you'll get a
faster response rate.
Searching for sites in the UK? Try and do it at
odd hours; if you're awake, its a fair bet that most of the rest of the UK is
awake as well, and some of them will be trying to access the same sites as you.
The more you can do first thing in the morning or late at night, the quicker it
will all be.
If you run the same search on the same search engine on a
regular basis, bookmark the first page of results. You can then return to the
page at any point in the future and the search engine will re-run the search
for you. Unfortunately, this will not always work, due to technicalities which
are a pain to explain (which means that I don't fully understand them myself).
Check the URL of your page, and if it contains the phrase 'cgi-bin' and has the
words you entered within the string, you'll be able to re-use it. AltaVista is
a good example here. If you're not sure, take a copy of the URL (cut and paste
it) and wander off elsewhere. Paste the URL into the Go to box and if it takes
you there and re-runs the search, you can bookmark it secure in the knowledge
that you can run it whenever you want, and get updated results.
Word order. Some search engines take account of the order in which you
input your words to search for, and will concentrate on those which are entered
first. So, if you're interested in a particular car for example, don't type in
car, cars, automobile, automobiles, jaguar - put jaguar first. In other words -
key concept first.
Don't search the Web. You may find it is more useful
to search newsgroups rather than Web pages if you are searching for really
current information, or information on people (film stars for example) or
hobbies. Choose a search engine like Google Groups which gives you the option
of searching Usenet rather than the Web.
This article is © Phil Bradley, 2004 and was last updated 27th February 2004