July 20, 2001

In this discussion I would like to talk about some techniques to make using your Internet browser a little easier.

Are you getting tired of all the typing to get to web sites? Well, there are some shortcuts which can help. People might think those really long complex domain names are really cool but they are sure a pain to type in, right? Well, to make life a little easier, if you are going to a dot com site, instead of typing everything in, type in the main name, for instance, microsoft, now hold the Ctrl key down with your left hand and tap the Enter key with your right hand, voila!, the browser will fill in the http://www. and the .com at the end for you. This makes life a little easier.

Try some of these search techniques:

Who links to whom? Search sites such as AltaVista and Northern Light can tell you. In place of a keyword, simply type link: followed by the URL, or address, of any Web site or individual Web page to find out if anybody out there links to that site or page. This is a handy way to find other Web sites on the same topic.

Want to search a single Web site? Go to AltaVista and type host: followed by the URL, or address, of the site in question. Then, type a keyword or two and click Search.

The minus (-) sign can be quite helpful. If you seek information about bass fishing, for example, a Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) search using keyword bass is going to yield Web sites devoted to both fishing and music. But a search using keywords bass -music will reduce the list to mostly fishing sites.

Putting quotation marks around two or more keywords tells the search site to look for that specific phrase or name. Yahoo! found 30,600 Web page matches for Cool Hand Luke, but a search for "Cool Hand Luke" narrowed the field to 2,940.

If you use multiple keywords, some search sites automatically look for Web pages that include all the keywords listed. Some don't. To ensure results that include all your keywords, put a plus (+) sign before each keyword. Example: +President +George +Bush.

AltaVista (www.altavista.com) can be told to look just for images if you click on the "Media/Topic Search" link.

Looking for a certain subject on one site in particular? Try this, for instance, say you want to find some information about Windows shut down problems on the Microsoft web site. In the search engine type: shutdown articles 95 -98 site:microsoft.com This will produce a search for all shutdown articles on the Microsoft site.

The newer versions of browsers continue to make the task of browsing easier as time goes on. There are many search engines to choose from with new ones coming online all the time, and some of the old ones going out of business.

There continues to be differences of what you see on a web site between the different browsers. I recommend everyone have at least Internet Explorer and Netscape, but don't fall into the trap of getting the latest and greatest. You want IE 5.5SP1 and Netscape 4.7.

Dead links, or links which don't work anymore are getting more common all the time especially since there are so many web sites going out of business or being abandoned. The newer computers also attempt to load things faster so before you give up on a link, try hitting the refresh button to make sure it doesn't load before you go somewhere else.

If you have any questions or comments, click