by Susan Easter
Surfing on the Internet can be loads of fun. You can get all kinds of video, animation, sounds, news, live chat, and more, while cruising the Info Highway. The only problem is that when you have work to do, and you need information in a hurry and want to keep your actual time online down to the bare minimum, these bells and whistles can bog down your cruising speed severely. Serious searching for information requires that you analyze your needs, and get that browser set up to run best for your situation .
In my recent search for information on canning and freezing, anticipating the large quantities of ripe fruits and vegetables I will be putting by this summer, I spent the better part of two days surfing the Internet looking around. Luckily, even during t he daytime usage hours when most sites are lightly used, I was able to cut my online time by more than half. Today we will go into some of the methods that you can use to cut down on actual online time.
First, I make sure that my browser has the working directory set up to default to my E:\webpages directory. That way I can go directly to the correct directory to save pages in. Today I was used the Canning directory to save pages in.
Next, I made sure that I set up my browser NOT to load images. Images, whether small icon files or bitmaps that make up background pictures, can take a bit of time to load. When I need information, I generally don’t care about pictures or any of the other frills that make viewing web pages “fun”. On a search for i nformation, text is generally all I care about. I do this in my version of Netscape by choosing Options and turning off the Auto Load Images choice near the bottom of the pull down menu. I am going to see all future web pages loaded without images, thoug h I can click on the image icon that Netscape puts in place of the image, and it will then load that one image. Occasionally, my curiosity gets the better of me.
Next, I learned a neat little trick from Tip World’s “Tip of the Day” for Netscape Navigator. I went into the Options/General Preferences window, and in the center where it says: Startup/Start With: I chose the Home Page Location, and put in the path and filename of my Bookmark file. For me, that is: E:\Netscape\Bookmark .htm
This will automatically load my bookmark file, as soon as I start up Netscape, and shows it as if it was a web page, which it technically is. This gives me the ability to scroll through the screen, and instantly click on addresses that I might want to vi sit on the web.
There are a couple of other settings that, depending on your browser, can help to speed things up. I keep Java and Javascript turned off because these are programs that will be automatically downloaded to run on my system. They will take a short period o f time to download, but any time that I can squeeze out of my connections is a plus. This can be turned off in Options/Security Preferences, and on the General page. Personally, I only like to use Java when I know I am on a site that has security measure s in place. Java is still in its infancy, and there are still bugs to be worked out with security measures.
On Options/Network Preferences, I go to the Cache page, and set the cache up to the optimal setting for my system. Since this varies according to your CPU, Ram, and hard drive size, I will skip over this part. However, you will note that at the bottom of the page there is Verify Documents and several choices. I choose to verify documents Once Per Session. Netscape will verify the information in a web page only once during a session with this setting. I may visit a web page, go to check out a link I find interesting, and then go back to that first page to look up another link. I may visit a single page 10 or more times, and if I have Netscape set up to verify every time, and the page is a big one, it could add a considerable amount of time I don’t want to spend online.
Lastly, I go to the Connections page on Options/Network Preferences, and I make sure that I have no more than 4 connections at a time. This allows me to have several separate web pages being loaded at a time, so that if it takes a bit of time to load one , I already have another one loaded and ready for viewing. I can then go back and forth between these web pages, gathering information quickly, and moving around the world in separate directions. This can be extremely helpful if I have more than one subj ect I need information on at one time. Having four connections at one time can allow me to download a file from one site, while visiting up to three other sites at once. Anything more than four can slow everything down to a crawl, though I rarely do more than two things at once.
Speed and streamlining is the key to gathering information on the Internet . Looking at all the pretty pictures, listening to sound, and being entertained can be fun. However, if you are really using the Internet for information gathering, setting your browser up properly will make all the difference in the world. Saving that i nformation to disk, or printing it out as you go, can really help in the gathering stage, and give you the ability to read everything at your leisure. This is making good use of the resources available.
Susan Easter, a HAL-PC member currently on assignment in Ohio, can be contacted at seaster@raex.com.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.