Troubleshooting Ten: Getting More From Your Browser

The key to a good experience on the Internet is your browser. A good browser is helpful in more than performing optimum searches. Below are tips on how to get the most from your browser:

1. Display more than web pages: For example, Internet Explorer and other browsers (IE) can display Microsoft Office and other files as web pages; IE does this by calling the program associated with the file type (like PowerPoint for slide presentations or Adobe Acrobat reader for PDFs) and causing it to display the requested file inside IE.

2. Update regularly: Although many updates are cosmetic or have minor performance improvement, significant performance or security improvements are sometimes available, regardless of your browser. You can tell by the version number. Software often has a three part version number, like 1.2.3. The leftmost number represents the major version (like, in the case of the same, the “first edition”). The middle number represents the second significant (to the programmers) change to the program. The third number represents the third minor change. If the first or second numbers increase (from 1 to 2, say) you should download the new version. A change in the third number is an optional download.

3. Use more than one browser: Most browsers are free or shareware. There are enough good free browsers to ignore the ones that ask for payment. The hot new browser is Firefox, although I have had problems with it, which I’ve also seen with K-meleon and some versions of Opera as well but not with IE and most free browsers.

4. Set the preferences to your liking: Most browsers can look and act differently than when you first install them. All browsers that I have examined for this article have a “TOOLS” menu entry with a submenu entry named OPTIONS or PREFERNCES, which can be used to change how the browser acts. For example, I don’t want my browsers to load a home page when they first start because I use them as much offline as online. Look around and see what is available; you can’t break anything.

5. Make use of “tabbed” browsers: Two potentially useful tabbed browsers are Avant and SlimBrowser, which allow you to open several web pages at once and hop between them at will by clicking on the tabs. This is useful if you want to, say, compare prices from different web or jump from chapter to chapter of an online manual.

6. Make use of tools: SlimBrowser, for example, offers an array of tools, including, many popup and ad blockers and tools to allow you to access e-mail, telnet, ftp, and other outside programs. Many browsers offer a series of tools. In most cases, you won’t need all of them, but they can come in very handy.

7. Make us of popup blockers: Some browsers, like Firefox, have built-in popup blockers, and some, like IE, don’t. For those that don’t, go to Google and download their popup blocker, which installs in IE by itself; make sure that you find the most current version. Some popups are actually not meant to be nuisances. If you know that a website has useful popups, you can temporarily disable the popup blocker for that site and turn it on for everything else.

8. Learn about “add-ons” before installing them: You might come across an add-on that claims to block spyware; however, you need a full-blown anti-virus and anti-spyware suite of programs that is kept running and current to do this. There are a number of capacities that you can “add on” to IE, but as Bill Husted of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution pointed out, add-ons are not unmitigated blessings. Just don’t download them indiscriminately.

9. Maximize speed: Some browsers are faster than others; Opera claims to be the fastest around, but this depends on one’s perception of “fast.” Different browsers do different tasks quicker than others. Avant seems to load pages quicker than other browsers, but other browsers may be quicker when performing “behind the scenes” tasks. Switching to a new browser will never give you the performance increase that upgrading your ISP service from dial-up to broadband will. Even so, most websites use many graphics files, which can noticeably slow downloading with a slow connection. You may be able to tell your browser (check under menu entries like “OPTIONS” or “PREFERENCES”) not to download any graphics and just show you the text.

10. Limit search results: When you search the Internet, you tell a search engine to look in its database for certain information. Search speed depends on the speed of the server, the accuracy of your search description, and other variables. Properly limiting your search will save you time when you are reviewing the search results.