Internet Basic Tips

Navigation

Go to the Previous Page

You can click on the leftward facing arrow on your toolbar but it's easier to just press the Backspace key. To go to the next page, press Shift+ Backspace.

Easy Entry for .com Websites

When visiting a .com site, just type the root domain name (e.g. MistyWindow or yahoo) into the address box, press ctrl - enter. This will automatically add the rest of the address — http://www. and .com. Only works for .com sites.

Searching Basics

Narrow your searches

To reduce the number of irrelevant results when searching the internet, place quotation marks around phrases. This restricts the search to the specific phrase, rather than to the individual words. e.g. glasgow opera house brought up 1,760,000 results. "glasgow opera house" brought up only 10.

Upper case (capital) letters are not required in search engines. Upper and lower case are treated identically.

Restrict your searches

If you know the URL (website address) suffix include it at the end of your query. For example: .net, .com.au, .co.nz, .org.uk. or restrict it to a country: .ca, .za. You still get some rogues, but it helps.

This works even more efficiently if you insert the search restriction instruction - site:

Here's an example of the site: restriction in use: cambridge site:edu - this would search for references to Cambridge within educational institutes. You would get a predominance of references to Educational bodies called Cambridge and/or such bodies in places called Cambridge.

Other examples of this usage:

Finding definitions

In the Google search bar type define: followed by the word you want defined or "a specific phrase" between quotation marks.

Examples

Very useful for that computer term which I haven't entered in http://www.MistyWindow.com/glossary.htm yet!

Favicons

You'll have noticed that some websites that you save to your Favorites have their own distinctive little icons instead of the standard little Internet Explorer icon.

These are called favicons, they're useful in helping to pick sites out from a list and brighten up your display. windows doesn't handle them very well and they often disappear. Internet Explorer is patchy with support for these icons – another good reason to follow the lead of most computer professionals and use Firefox as your internet browser.

If you don't wish to switch to Firefox, there's a great little PC Magazine Utility called FavOrg available here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Bookmark-Managers/favorg.shtml.  It zips through your Favorites in a couple of minutes, restores all favicons from the original sites and it tags lost, moved and invalid links.

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