50 Killer Browser Tips

Take Control

Who's in control, you or your browser? Feeling outgunned? These tips help you make your browser of choice act exactly how you want it to.

Locked Out of Internet Explorer?

You activated the Content Advisor in IE 4 and promptly forgot the password. There's no way around it: You need to edit the Registry, or certain sites will remain out of bounds for as long as the Content Advisor stands guard.

Before you start, back up these Registry files: system.dat, system.da0, user.dat, and user.da0. You'll find them in your Windows folder.

Select Start, Run, type regedit, and click OK. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\Ratings. Next, click the Key entry in the right pane, and press Delete. Exit the Registry and restart your PC.

When you're back at your desktop, right-click the Internet Explorer icon; then select Properties, click the Content tab, and click Disable Ratings. Don't enter anything when prompted for a password; click OK. Note that you've effectively eliminated all your Content Advisor settings, so you'll need to reenter them (and this time, make a note of your password).

Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

Do you ever find yourself stuck on a page? That is, no matter how many times (or how fast) you click Back, it just reloads the same page for its own perverse amusement? Well, the fancy code that's keeping you there may be pretty quick on the draw, but you can beat it. Just head on up to the Go menu and select the entry next to the number 1 (the entry beside 0 ought to be the page you're stuck on, so 1 would be the page before it). You'll go immediately to that page and from there you should be able to navigate back and forth as normal.

Dispatching Wild Browser Windows

Are you tired of Web sites that keep opening new browser windows? Try a $10 shareware program called PopAway from Triceris Systems. This tool prevents sites from opening multiple copies of your browser. It works with IE 3.x and higher and with Navigator 4.x.

Get Automatic Web Site Updates

Some sites can e-mail you news alerts or updates. Like this idea? You can get a similar service from any Web site if you use Internet Explorer 4.x. You can instruct the browser to regularly log on to Web sites that you frequent, and either download updates for reading offline or notify you when there's something new on the site. To perform automatic updates, Internet Explorer must be running.

Go to the Web site and select Favorites, Add to Favorites. In the Add Favorite dialog box, select either "Yes, but only tell me when this page is updated" (in which case Internet Explorer will notify you by adding a red gleam to the site's icon or by e-mailing you) or "Yes, notify me of updates and download the page for offline viewing."

Click the Customize button to designate whether you want to download just the current page, or the current page and all pages linked to it, and to schedule when Internet Explorer searches the site; then click OK. Click the "Create in" button to tell IE where to download pages. IE will send you a note via e-mail when your favorite pages are updated. To read them offline, select Favorites, Manage Subscriptions, then click a site's icon to read it.

Alternatively, you can manually update your subscribed-to sites by selecting Favorites, Update All Subscriptions.

The Long Good-Bye

Many people tell us that they used to get a prompt to disconnect from their Internet service provider when they closed Internet Explorer 4, but they no longer do. In most cases, it's because the automatic disconnect feature has been disabled.

To restore this function, choose Start, Settings, Control Panel. In the Control Panel, double-click the Internet icon. In the Internet Properties dialog box, click the Connection tab. Click Settings and select the check box labeled "Disconnect If Idle for [X] Minutes." Click OK and, when you get back to the Internet Properties dialog box, click OK again to close the dialog box and record your change.

This option controls the number of minutes of inactivity required to disconnect automatically, and it tells IE to prompt you to disconnect when you exit the program.

Downsize the Toolbar

When IE 4.x is crammed with icons and you're tired of resizing windows just to see them all, you can shrink the buttons. Choose View, Internet Options, and click the Advanced tab. Scroll down to Toolbar and select the Small Icons button. If you don't use the Font button very often (it's off by default) you may save some space by deselecting the Show Font Button check box. Then click OK. You can still modify the font size by choosing View, Fonts and making your selection.

"Ding" When It Starts and "Bang" When It Stops

IE 4.x adds two entries to the Sounds settings in Control Panel: You now can tell the system which sound to use when the browser begins navigating to a new site and when it gets to the new site.

Click Start and choose Settings, Control Panel. When Control Panel opens, double-click the Sounds icon. Look through the Events list for Start Navigation. Select it and then click Browse. Locate and select a suitable sound. Now select Complete Navigation in the Events list. Click Browse and then assign another sound. When you're finished with your selections, click OK.

Purge URLs From Navigator's Location Box

If you don't want snooping colleagues to know what you've been up to, cover your tracks. To clear visited sites out of Navigator's Location box, follow these steps.

For Navigator 3.x: You'll have to edit Windows' Registry, but before you do, back up these files: system.dat, system.da0, user.dat, and user.da0. To open the Registry Editor, select Start, Run, type regedit, and click OK. To find a URL you'd like to hide, press Ctrl-F, type the URL into the Find What box, and click Find Next. You'll eventually arrive at a list of URLs at HKEY_CURRENT_USR\Software\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\URL History. Pick through the list on the right side of your screen (stay away from the left side!), and delete the revealing URLs.

For Navigator 4.x: In Notepad, open the file prefs.js (look in Program Files\Netscape\Users\YourName or Netscape\Users\YourName). The URL lines look something like this:

user_pref("browser.url_history.URL_1", "http://www.pcworld.com/")

Delete the ones you want to keep private and then save prefs.js as a text-only file.

To prevent Navigator from writing any more URLs to that file, make it read-only: Find prefs.js in Windows Explorer, right-click it, select Properties, and check Read-only. Click Apply and then OK. Be warned that making this file read-only means that your other preferences won't be recorded.

Let Cookies Go Stale

In most cases, cookies help a Web site remember useful things about your computer from session to session, such as a particular color configuration. A cookie can send the Web site information, such as which operating system and browser you use. It can also record the number of times that you visit the site and the amount of time you spend there. But don't fret too much about security or loss of privacy. Cookies cannot tell the Web site your name or e-mail address unless you specifically register at the site.

Here's a simple way to keep your cookie file from being scrutinized: Delete its contents and save it as a read-only file. If you use Navigator, head to the cookies.txt file in the Netscape directory. Within the Navigator folder, right-click the cookies.txt file and select Properties. Change it to read-only and click Apply. If you're running Microsoft's Internet Explorer, you'll find a cookies folder in the Windows folder. Right-click it, select Properties from the menu, and check Read-only in the Cookies Properties dialog box.

Stay Up to Date

Both Navigator and IE get updated from time to time--usually to address bugs or security issues. Luckily, both browsers can point you directly to Web pages that help you determine whether you need an update (and if you do, these pages will help you get a download started). In Navigator, select Help, Software Updates to go to Netscape's SmartUpdate pages; in IE, choose Help, Product Updates to arrive at Windows Update.