Tips & Tricks
Netscape Navigator 3.x

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newWatching the market
Nobody needs to tell you how interesting the stock market has been in the last month or two. Now you can keep track of live, continuously updated financial market information from Netscape through the Slingshot plug-in. Whether you have real money on the line, or just watch it for entertainment, Slingshot lets you keep close tabs on the markets. You can get it at

http://www.slingshot.net/demos/index.htm

To test the Slingshot plug-in go to

http://www.slingshot.net/demos/demo.htm

When you check the left frame under "Plug-in Demos," you'll find several examples of Slingshot being used in different types of financial applications. You can demo all plug-in features, such as interactivity and real-time updating.

newGroup addressing
If you have a group of users that you want to send e-mail to, Communicator allows you to create a Mailing List. Your mailing list group can be represented in the Address Book by one nickname, making addressing even easier for a group. To create a mailing list, select Address Book from the Communicator menu, which opens the Address Book window. Click on the New List button and the Mailing List dialog box opens. You can give the list an "official" name in the List Name field, a nickname in the List Nickname field, and add a description. Now just add the entries in the mailing list field. The easiest way to do this is to enter the nickname, as the rest of the e-mail address fills in automatically. When you're finished, click on OK to close the Mailing List dialog box. Lists are distinguished from single entries in the Address Book by having a two-card icon, rather than the one card.

newSizzlin' animation
Wanna see Web pages come alive with animation and sound? Check out the Sizzler plug-in from Totally Hip Software. This plug-in displays PICS, QuickTime, AVI, and DIB files that have been converted into animation with the sprite format. Also, SND and WAVE audio files can be integrated with the animations to make sound effects, background music, and speech. You can find out more about the Sizzler at

http://www.totallyhip.com/Products/Products.html

If you downloaded the Sizzler animation plug-in, you can see it in action. Totally Hip Software has a gallery of animation examples at

http://www.totallyhip.com/hipstuff/animsamples.html

newDown memory lane
Here's a neat plug-in that allows you to revisit the Web pages of your past. HindSite automatically indexes every page you visit, then keeps the indexes for months afterward. You can use HindSite to search for specific words and phrases that appeared in those long-forgotten pages. You can find out more about HindSite at

http://www.isysdev.com/products/hindsite.htm

newUniversal viewer
Wouldn't you like to preview files that Navigator doesn't support before you download them? Well, a plug-in called KeyView allows you to do just that. KeyView supports virtually any file type on the Web; and in addition to viewing the files, you can print, copy, manage, convert, and compress any file of any type. If you do much surfing and downloading, you'll want to find out more at

http://www.keyview.com

After you downloaded the demo version of KeyView, you'll want to see it in action. You can test it by visiting KeyView's sample page at

http://www.keyview.com/coolsamples.html

newMusic in a flash
Music files are often huge, and it can take forever to download them. Thankfully, there's a plug-in called RapidTransit Player that allows high-quality audio files to be downloaded quickly-- even if you have a pokey 14.4-kbps modem. It works through a proprietary technology called Adaptive Wavelets Transform (AWT) that combines high-performance file compression with high-quality audio. RapidTransit is available for downloading at

http://www.fastman.com/rapidtransit/g-index.html

Once you have the RapidTransit Player plug-in downloaded and installed correctly, you can give some tunes a try. If you go to

http://www.fastman.com/rapidtransit/booth/index.html

you'll find a bunch of sample files ready for downloading. When you click on one of the sample links, the file begins to download, and should start playing automatically when it finishes. If it doesn't play automatically, right-click on the RapidTransit icon (this appears when the file begins to download), then select Play Downloaded File.

newSearching for a long lost love e-mail
You know you get a lot of e-mail. Only you can decide whether that's a good thing, but most people find all those messages clutter up the mailbox fast. Locating a message you received two weeks (or two days) ago can be a real challenge. Fortunately, you can use Communicator's search function to find specific messages.

Open the Messenger Mailbox and choose Edit, Search Messages to open the Search Messages dialog box. (It looks just like the search box you used to search for directories in the last few tips). Choose the folder you wish to search in the field titled Search For Items In (Inbox, for example). Now use the search criteria boxes to refine the search.

The first two boxes contain predetermined keywords you can select, while the third box allows you to enter any keywords you want. You can further refine the search by clicking on the More button, which adds another row of search criteria fields. Click on Search and any messages containing your search words will be displayed.

newColumn rearranging
If you want to change the order of the columns in the Navigator mail message pane, just grab the column heading and drag it to a new location (to the left or right). You might, for example, want to see your messages by Subject or Date first, rather than Sender.

newFlag on the play
You can flag certain messages to make them stand out from the crowd in the message window. This is useful to remind yourself to reply to certain messages. To flag a message, select it and then click on the dot in the "flag" column. A little red flag icon appears next to the message. (To make it go away, just click on it again.)

newBeen there, done that
When you get new mail, the new messages appear in the message window in bold and there's a green "unread" icon in the unread column. When you open the message, it removes the green icon and the bold, marking the message as "read." You can, however, make read messages revert back to unread status. Just click on the dot in the read column--the green icon pops up and the message information appears in bold. (If you change your mind, just click on it again.)

newHeader the class
An e-mail message is full of information about the route it took to your mailbox. You usually see a truncated form of the message header, which generally shows the sender's name and address, the date and time sent, and the subject line. If you want to really see where the message has been, select Options, Show Headers, All from the Netscape Mail menu. A long list of domain names and other fairly useless stuff appears.

newLess filling
Of course, sometimes you don't need to see much header information at all. To get a downright terse header, select Option, Show Headers, Brief from the Netscape Mail menu. Now, only important information--such as the sender's name, the time sent, and an abbreviated subject--appears in the header.

newHidden message trick
Scary inbox, eh? If you only want to see messages that you haven't read yet, select Options, Show Only Unread Messages from the Netscape Mail menu. Now that's better, isn't it? The read messages haven't disappeared, they're just hiding out. Select Options, Show All and they're back.

newCleaning the clutter
Mailboxes can get pretty full pretty fast, which eats up your disk space. This is why you should periodically free up some space in the mail folders. One way to do this without deleting anything is to compress a folder, which gets rid of wasted space and bytes. To do this, select File, Compress Folder from the Netscape Mail menu.

newFinders, keepers
Looking for a specific word, name, link, or what have you in a Web page? Press Ctrl-F, which brings up the Find dialog box. Enter what you're looking for in the Find What field, then select the direction for the search (based on where your cursor is now). Now click Find Next to initiate the search. For a more specific search, choose the Match Case option, which ensures that only those results with matching capitalization are returned. If you use the Find command while you're in the Netscape Mail window, you can search both mail headers and individual messages.

newQuick out
Press Ctrl-W to quickly close the Netscape Navigator browser window. Make sure you've saved or bookmarked the page you're on, however, because the browser window closes immediately.

newTake a demo
You don't need to be in the Netscape Mail window to write a message. Press Ctrl-M any time you have Navigator open--whether you're in the browser, mail window, or news window--and the message composition window opens.

newJust scrolling through
If you have more than one browser window open at the same time, you can scroll through them. To do it, press Ctrl-Tab. Just remember to keep tabs on which browser you're in as you do this!

newMake your mark (book, that is)
There are a few ways to add a bookmark, but the quickest way is to press Ctrl-D while you're at a Web site. The URL is added to yourbookmark list immediately.

newFollowing bread crumbs
Want to go back a few steps in your Web browsing? Press Ctrl-H when you're in the Navigator browser. The History window box opens,showing your most recently visited sites.

newMoveable walls
Using frames is a good way for the Web page designer to organize the content of the page, but they can be a little inconvenient sometimes.Here's a flexible way to play around with the frame size. Just point your cursor on the frame border. When it becomes a double-arrow icon,click and drag the border to move it left or right (or up and down, depending on the location of the frame).

newThe inside frame story
Frames are sort of like pages within the page. You know how Navigator allows you to see source code for a page? Well, you can do the same thing with a single frame. Click once inside the frame and choose View, Frame Source from the Navigator menu. The frame's inner secrets are revealed.

newOut of frame
Navigator allows you to separate an image from the frame in which it resides. To get the image out of the frame and into a browser window of its very own, right-click the image and select View Image from the context menu. The image appears by itself in a new browser window. Just click Back to return to the frame.

newRefresh, reload: you make the call
Navigator has two ways for you to update the contents of a Web page. Select View, Refresh, and the page updates with information stored in your disk cache. But select View, Reload, and Navigator returns to the Web server for the most recent version of the document. The former is quicker but may not contain the latest information, while the converse is true for the latter.

newBookmark your addresses
Tired of going to the Address Book every time you want to send e-mail messages to your favorite correspondents? Create a bookmark list for your e-mail addresses. To do this, open the bookmark file and select Item, Insert Folder to open the Bookmark Properties box. Enter a name for the folder, such as "Address Book." Click OK, and the Address Book folder is added to the Bookmarks list. Now you need to add the e-mail addresses. Select the Address Book folder and then select Item, Insert Bookmark. In the Bookmark Properties box, enter a name for the bookmark. Now, in the URL field, enter the e-mail address preceded by mailto: (for example, mailto:gaz@fullmonty.com). Click OK to close the box, and then close the bookmark file. Now just click the appropriate bookmark when you want to send an e-mail message.

Windows 95  Windows NT  NS Communicator  Security

Archie's place
FTP is a terrific way to get files over the Internet. However, there's so much information out there that finding what you need can be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. In other words, you need some good search tools. One of the oldest and best is called Archie, an Internet service that allows you to search the indexes of most files available at anonymous FTP sites. These indexes are kept on special Archie servers around the world. To get to Archie, enter the URL

http://www-ns.rutgers.edu/htbin/archie

That'll bring you to the host Archie site. Scroll down until you get to the actual Archie Request Form area that contains the search information. Follow the prompts to initiate a search.

The Searchers
The last tip introduced you to the Archie search service for FTP servers. It's a pretty effective search tool, and in most cases you only need to know a part of a file name to search on (in fact, you can even make a reasonable guess as to the characters it contains). Let's say that you want to locate WinZip 6, but can't remember the exact file name. You can make a reasonable guess that "winzip" appears somewhere in the file name, so you can enter this character string and search for that. Archie fills in any gaps.

Exact FTP
If you know exactly what you want from an FTP server, you can get there directly without going through the server itself. Just enter the full directory into the Location box as you would any URL, for example,

ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/then press Enter. You can include specific file names in the URL as well

.

Alphabet soup
Here's a quick rundown of some of the most common file formats that you run into when surfing the Internet: GIF, JPEG, and TIFF refer to graphics files. GIF and JPEG graphics are usually used for inline images in Web pages, while TIFF files are commonly found in desktop publishing programs. AIFF, AU, MIDI, and WAVE refer to data types that contain sound--music, speech, or whatever. AU is the native sound on Sun computers, and WAVE is the native sound on Windows computers. QuickTime, AVI, and MPEG refer to video data types. QuickTime was developed for Apple, while AVI was developed for Microsoft. Finally, VRML refers to the programming language of virtual reality (Virtual Reality Markup Language), which allows for interactive 3D worlds on the Net. You usually need plug-in applications to display or interact with any of these data types, so look for information about plug-ins in upcoming tips.

Preloaded plug-ins
Plug-ins come in all varieties and from a long list of sources. Generally, you need to find the plug-in and install it yourself on your computer. There are, however, a bunch of plug-ins that are already installed with your Netscape Navigator browser. These deal with the most widely used data types on the Internet: AIFF, AU, MIDI, and WAVE audio; AVI and QuickTime video; and VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) for interactive 3D files. These already loaded plug-ins let you play or display these data types with no extra steps or installation.

Embedded in the page
An embedded plug-in is probably the most common plug-in type. It is actually set in the HTML page (embedded in it), and loads when Navigator displays the page. Embedded plug-ins are similar to inline graphics, except that they're live. They are generally used for controlling and displaying multimedia files. An example of this is the MPEG player, which displays an MPEG video as a part of the Web page, along with the usual graphics, text, and other designs.

The full-page Monty
A full-page plug-in is similar to an embedded plug-in, but it does not appear in the page along with the other images, text, and files. Rather, the full-page plug-in opens and fills in a new Navigator window when activated, which happens when the user clicks on a hyperlink to the plug-in file or opens a local file that the plug-in recognizes. Full-page plug-ins are used most often to display documents created with word processing or desktop publishing programs, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0.

Stream of consciousness
Many plug-ins use a feature called streaming, which reduces the amount of time it takes to view multimedia files from the Internet. If a plug-in supports streaming, the entire file doesn't have to load before you can see it. Once a part of the file has loaded, the plug- in implements a progressive viewer. One advantage to this is that you don't need to wait for the entire file to load if you decide you don't want to see it in its entirety. Just click on Stop and you're all set.

As many browsers as you need
Sometimes you just need to work on more than one Web page at a time. If this is so, remember that you can open several Navigator browsers simultaneously. Just select File|New Browser, or press Ctrl-N. The new browser window opens with the previous one underneath.

Written with your own hand
Here's a plug-in that allows you to create and send handwritten e-mail and drawings through the Internet. The plug-in is called NetWriter Viewer and is available at

http://www.paragraph.com/netwriter/

This cool tool allows you to get creative with your e-mail messages or Web page designs.

Picture this
Once you have the NetWriter plug-in installed, check out some examples of what you can do with it. You'll find a bunch of sample pictures at

http://www.paragraph.com/netwriter/pictures/


Windows 95  Windows NT  NS Communicator  Security

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Get back to where you once belonged
Don't reach all the way up to the toolbar to click the Back button. Just right-click on any page and a pop-up menu will appear offering an easy way back. With this menu, you can also bookmark the current page or create a Windows desktop icon for the current page.

Hey Copy !
Do you often share groovy links with others? Web URLs can be a pain to transcribe, especially those really long ones. If you write it down or ype it, you might make a mistake. A better solution is to copy the URL to the clipboard and paste it into your e-mail message or word processor. If you're accustomed to doing this by highlighting the URL in the Location field and choosing Copy from the Edit menu, you're doing it the long, hard way. See that little chain icon to the left of the Location field? Just double click that, and you'll put the current page's URL in the clipboard. Now, paste it where you like.

Double your fun
OK, you're at the coolest page in the world and you find a bunch of links you want to check out. But you want to leave the cool page onscreen and open up a new link in a new browser window. Well, you could pull down the File menu and choose New Web Browser and go from there. But you're too cool for that. No, what you do is right-click the link and choose Open In New Window.

To upgrade or not to upgrade?
Are you on the fence about whether or not to upgrade to Netscape Communicator? You can read all about the features Communicator offers and find out if Communicator is for you at http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/
communicator/guide.html

Bookmark your history
Bookmark your global history so you don't have to remember the command. One of our most popular tips, typing
- about:globalhistory - in the Location field will bring up a list of sites you've previously visited. With the list onscreen, right click the window and choose Add Bookmark. Now whenever you want to take a look back, just choose the command from the Bookmarks menu. You can use your precious memory (the kind in your head) for something else.

Image is everything
Want to look at an image all by its lonesome? Right click on any image and choose View Image. There's your solitary graphic.

Image is everything II
Want to know the filename and location of an image? Right click on any image and choose Copy Image Location. That copies the file location of that graphic--and only that graphic--to the clipboard. Now you can paste it where you will.

Keeping the news
Netscape Navigator's mail and news facilities are very similar, and actually look very much alike. There are, however, important differences in the way each handles incoming messages, or articles in the case of the news facility. Essentially, you can automatically store received e-mail messages on your local hard disk or leave them on a server, while news articles are always stored on the server. You can see them displayed on your computer when you access the server online, but you must save anything you want to keep yourself. The easiest way to do this is to select the article(s) that you want to save (while you're in the News window), then choose File|Save Message(s) As. In the dialog box, choose the folder where you want to save it (them) and name the file. Click "Save" and you're all set. Actually, it's usually good policy to save a bunch of articles at once to be read later, when you're disconnected from the 'Net.

All the new sites that are fit to bookmark
Want to keep all your new bookmarks all in one neat package? Not a problem. Select Bookmarks|Go to Bookmarks, which opens the Bookmarks window. Create a new folder called something like New Bookmarks (to create the folder select Item|Insert Folder). Highlight the new folder then click the right mouse button to bring up a floating menu box. Choose the option "Use For New Bookmarks" and you're in business. Any new bookmarks you add are put in this folder automatically, which will appear at the top of the Bookmarks menu.

New news is good news
Most Netscape Navigator users have access to only one news server, which is the one entered as the default news server in the Mail and News Preferences dialog box. (Select Options|Mail and News Preferences, then click the Servers tab.) It is possible, however, to have access to several news servers. If this is the case, Navigator allows you to open an alternate news server without having to monkey around with the Preferences settings. To do this, open the News window and select File|Open News Host from the menu. Next enter the new news server's name in the "Open News Host" dialog box that appears. You're now in business with the new news.

Groovy threads, man
A thread is, of course, a series of newsgroup articles that relate to the same topic. This is a convenient way to read everything posted about a particular topic, but be aware that Netscape Navigator does not thread automatically. However, it does give you the ability to thread articles and set sorting criteria. If you don't turn on the threading option, Navigator lists all articles in the order they were received, which could get quite confusing.To set the threading and sorting, select Options|Mail and News Preferences, then click the Organization tab. To thread, click the Thread News Messages option. Now select a Sorting option. Because you have chosen to thread the articles (you can sort without threading, actually), it's probably better to choose Subject here. Click OK to close the box and save your settings.

(Dont't) take it from the top
You're deep into a site with frames and your significant other calls. After a long, flirtatious conversation, you return to Netscape and wonder if the frame has been updated. You click Reload. Doh! The page reloads at the top frame instead of where you were. Next time, instead of clicking the Reload button, pull down the Edit menu and choose Reload Frame.

One-time thread
The tip before showed you how to set Netscape Navigator to thread and sort your newsgroup articles automatically. Netscape also allows you to thread without actually setting the option through the Preferences box. To do this, open the News window, then choose View|Sort|Thread Messages. The articles immediately get in thread order.

Heads up
Tired of all that header information that appears with every newsgroup article you read? Go to the Netscape News menu and select Options|Show Headers, then choose the option Brief. Rather than all those lines of header stuff, you get a single line telling you the subject, who it's from, and the date posted. Conversely, if you feel you don't get enough information in the header, choose the option All from the same menu. This gives you a few more lines of information about the article. Why would you want this? Well, it may help you figure out the true origin of the article if this is in question, or it may help you figure out some technical glitch with the message.

Decompression Chamber
When you go out on the Internet and get files via FTP, you'll probably notice that many files are compressed. We don't need to get into the technical details of file compression, but let's just say it involves some very sophisticated ways to make files as small as possible. What you do need to know, however, is that most compressed files must be decompressed before they're usable. The compressed file is really only good for storage and transferring. The only exceptions are compressed sound and graphic files, which you can hear or see without running a decompression program. Netscape Navigator, in fact, automatically decompresses them. So, in order to decompress files that need it, you must get a compression/decompression program. One of the best is WinZip 6, which you can get by accessing http://www.winzip.com. Follow the instructions on the WinZip home page to download a copy. (Note: You can download and try WinZip free of charge. If you decide to keep and use the program, it costs $29. Volume discounts are available.)

Throbbing beat
Although Netscape Navigator remains very cool, aren't you just a little tired of that capital "N" getting showered by meteors every time you do something? Well, suffer no longer--you can replace that little icon with yet another "throbber." (Don't you just love these technical terms?) There's a way cool site called Throbbers at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/hughes/throbbers that gives you the lowdown on how to do this and provides the throbber material. Check it out.

Graphic compression
When you look at various FTP sites, you may notice a curious thing. Although many files are compressed (or zipped), graphic files, such as .GIF's, are not. This is because .GIF and other graphics files are already compressed in their standard format. They have to be because graphic files contain so many repeated bits of information (like background colors), that presenting every pixel in its exact location would result in an enormous file size. GIF files are, in fact, compressed almost as much as they can be, and running a compression program, such as WinZip or PKZIP, on them may actually make them bigger. Why? Rather than squeezing a few more bits of space, the compression program adds information to the file. This is usually information such as how the file was compressed and how to decompress it.

No going back
Have you ever browsed from site to site, then suddenly found that your Back Button is grayed out, preventing you from backing to the previous site? This likely happens because Navigator supports the Target element in HTML, which is used to open separate browser windows. If you have your browser window at full size, the second window sits on top of the first, thereby obscuring it. You don't even know you have the second window open. If you suspect this is the case, press Ctrl-Tab to cycle through the currently open Navigator windows. You can also resize or move the second window or just close it.

Destination: unknown
Often when you download a file, you get a dialog box called "Unknown File Type." All this means is that no helper application or special action has been configured for the file type in question. You can configure Netscape Navigator to handle these files automatically. To set this up, click the More Info button in the dialog box. You can also configure an application that will run the file right away once it's downloaded. To do this, click the Pick App button. Your other option is to save the file without running it right away. To do this, click Save File, then save the file to your computer's hard disk.

Get shocked
Plug-ins have rapidly become essential Netscape Navigator extras. These are the extra programs that integrate with Navigator to do things that it can't on its own. Lately so many plug-in programs have come on the scene that it makes your head spin. The next few tips will let you know what you really need. The first and most absolutely essential plug-in is Shockwave. More and more sites are involving interactive activities that are built with Shockwave. Most of these fall into the "cool" entertainment site category, but some are actually quite useful. The bottom line: Get Shockwave now. There are several versions now, so you can find the one you want at http://www.macromedia.com.

Full Shockwave
When you install Shockwave (http://www.macromedia.com), you'll probably be asked to install the plug-ins for Director, FreeHand, Authorware, or all three. You should install all three if you want to get the full range of graphics, multimedia, and interactive applications that are developed for the Web with Macromedia products.

Newsgroup search
Ever wonder how you can search for particular newsgroups in Netscape Navigator? Well, you can't! Not directly from Navigator anyway. There are some free third-party search engines available, however. Here are some sites for these:
http://www.dejanews.com
http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/home.html
http://www.tile.net

Mail gurus
If you're like many Netscape users, you probably use at least one other mail program in addition to Netscape mail. If you want help in converting address files among Navigator and programs such as Eudora, Pine, Elm, Pegasus, and MS Internet Mail, go to the InterGuru site http://www.interguru.com, which has some very useful tools.

The real deals
Audio-streaming technology makes it possible to listen to the radio over the Internet. There are several audio-streaming plug-ins out there, but RealAudio was there first and remains the best and most widely used. Now that streaming video is on the scene, RealAudio has been upgraded to handle that, with the moniker, RealPlayer. To get the Real deal, visit the Real Media site at http://www.real.com.

Natural selection
If you want to quickly highlight everything available on a Web page, press Ctrl-A from the keyboard. All that's "selectable" is selected, making it easy to copy to the clipboard (for example).

Captain Video
Video over the Internet doesn't exactly compare to viewing video images on TV. The size of the files can be prohibitive and not always worth the time it takes to download. But there are some really good video files that you may not find anywhere else, so it makes sense to have a video plug-in. The top dog here is QuickTime, which lets you not only see video clips, but also music, MIDI, and audio files. Most of the Web sites that offer video, including such major media sites as CNN, use the QuickTime format. You can get QuickTime at http://www.quicktime.apple.com.

House of 3D
The Internet cyber world involves way more than simple two-dimensional text and graphics. In fact, it's pretty commonplace to travel to 3D virtual worlds and work with 3D objects. You need a plug-in to allow you to do this, and most Netscape Navigator packages now include Live 3D. This technology is changing pretty rapidly, however, so you should make sure you have the latest and greatest version. You can find out more at the Netscape home site at http://home.netscape.com

Viewing PDFs
Many publishers use a format called PDF that provides an electronic equivalent of traditional paper format publications. In order to use this you need a PDF viewer. The best out there is called PDFViewer, which comes as part of a product called Adobe Acrobat Reader. Once installed, you can read PDF files from within the Netscape Navigator browser. Adobe Acrobat Reader is available for downloading at http://www.adobe.com

Plug-In Mania
There are two ways to find out if you have a plug-in installed correctly. You can either choose Help|About Plug-ins, or enter "about:plugins" (without the quotes) in the Location box. Either way you get a list of all the plug-ins that are recognized by your copy of Navigator, including the file name and location of the plug-ins on your computer, the data types supported by each plug-in, and any other information provided by the plug-in developers. If you've just installed a plug-in, it should show up on the page. If you don't see it, try downloading the file again or installing it again.

Latest and greatest
If you absolutely must have the latest version of whatever pages you access through the Web, make sure you set your Navigator to check for document revisions every time. To do this, choose Options|Network Preferences and click on the Cache tab; then select the option Every Time. This means Navigator will check for revisions every time you retrieve the document, rather than using a cached version. Of course, this may slow your performance, so use it only when you must.

The moore the speedier
If you're looking to speed up the time it takes to connect to a Web site--and who isn't?--try increasing the number of connections to your server. When a server has more than one connection to it, Netscape can bring in a Web page's text and graphics (even multiple images) at the same time. To do this, open Netscape Navigator and choose Options|Network Preferences, which opens the Preferences dialog box. Click on the Connections tab and enter the number of connections you want in the field Number of Connections (the default is 4).

Buffer, the slow connection killer
Increasing Navigator's Network Buffer Size is another weapon in the speedier connections game. Basically, the Network Buffer Size controls the amount of data that your computer receives during each transmission. To set this, choose Options|Network Preferences, then click on the Connections tab. The default size is 32K, which is enough for most computers, but you can enter a larger amount if you really want to speed the connection. Be very careful here, however, because you may actually end up slowing things down. The increased buffer size might let so much information through that your computer won't be able to handle it.
 

Windows 95  Windows NT  NS Communicator  Security

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Networld-Project
Westfield, Massachusetts
Email: networld@westfield-ma.com

Last update: 11/09/1999
© 1999 - 2001 Networld-Project