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PC Navigator 2.0 Tips & Tricks
Getting more out of Netscape Navigator 2.0 for Windows

Netscape Navigator 2.0 came out this spring, and by now it's on every machine in our campus computer lab. It does a great deal more than 1.1 did: frames, JavaScript, Java applets (on Windows 95), plug-ins, animated pictures, and mail and news built right in. It also confuses a great many people. These are the tips I find myself explaining at the lab help desk most often, collected in one place so I can point people here.

Everything below is for the Windows version. Macintosh users: most of it applies to you too; wherever I say right-click, hold the mouse button down instead.

Jump to: Getting around | Speed | Bookmarks | Mail and news | Security | What's new in 2.0 | Readers' tips

Getting around

  1. Right-click on a link and you get a little menu: you can open the link in a new window, bookmark it without visiting it, save it to disk, or copy its address. Right-click on a picture to view it by itself or save it.
  2. Shift-click a link to save whatever it points to straight to your disk instead of opening it.
  3. More than one window. File | New Web Browser opens a second window, so you can read one page while another loads. On a slow modem this is the single biggest time-saver I know.
  4. Frames and the Back button. NEW! On a site that uses frames, the Back button in 2.0 can throw you clear out of the site, back to wherever you were before you got there. It isn't you. While you're inside a framed site, use the site's own links to move around.
  5. Typing addresses. Click once in the Location box, type the address, and press Enter. You can also use File | Open Location.

Speed

  1. Turn off pictures. Uncheck Options | Auto Load Images. Pages come in as text with little placeholders where the pictures go. When you do want the pictures on a page, click the Images button on the toolbar.
  2. Give it more cache. Options | Network Preferences, then the Cache tab. The disk cache keeps copies of pages you've seen so they come back faster. If you have the disk space, make it bigger. If a page seems stuck on an old version, Clear Disk Cache Now is right there too.
  3. Save your settings. Changes you make in the Options menu, like hiding the toolbar or turning off images, don't always stick unless you choose Options | Save Options.
  4. Hide what you don't use. The Options menu also lets you hide the toolbar, the Location box and the directory buttons. On a small monitor that's a lot more room for the page.

Bookmarks

  1. Bookmarks | Add Bookmark marks the page you're on.
  2. Window | Bookmarks opens the bookmark window, where you can sort your bookmarks into folders and drag them around. Do this early. Two hundred bookmarks in one long list is no fun.
  3. Back them up! Your bookmarks live in a file called bookmark.htm in your Netscape folder. Copy it to a floppy now and then. It's also just a web page, so you can open it in Navigator and look at it.

Mail and news

  1. Window | Netscape Mail and Window | Netscape News open the new mail and newsgroup windows. No separate programs needed.
  2. Before mail will work, go to Options | Mail and News Preferences. On the Servers tab, fill in your outgoing (SMTP) and incoming (POP3) mail servers. Your provider can tell you what they are. On the Identity tab, put in your name and e-mail address.
  3. Once that's done, clicking an e-mail link on a web page opens a message window with the address already filled in.

Security

  1. Look at the little key in the lower left corner of the window. A broken key means the page is not secure. A whole key means the connection is encrypted.
  2. Never type a credit card number into a page unless that key is whole. I'd think twice even then.

What's new in 2.0

  1. Frames split a window into separate panes that scroll on their own. Some sites use them well. Some don't.
  2. JavaScript lets page authors put little programs right in the page: scrolling messages in the status bar, buttons that do things, forms that check what you typed.
  3. Animated GIFs. Those spinning globes and flashing signs. 2.0 plays them. Whether that's an improvement is up to you.
  4. Plug-ins let Navigator play sound, movies and other kinds of files inside the window. Help | About Plug-ins shows which ones you have.
  5. Learn from other pages. View | Document Source shows you the HTML behind any page. This is how I learned, and it's how most people I know learned.

Readers' tips

Thanks to everyone who has written in.

Under construction Coming soon: Navigator 3.0 tips. Version 3.0 is in beta right now, and it looks like it fixes a few of the things above. I don't put beta software on lab machines, so I'll write up 3.0 once the final release is out. Check back!

You are visitor 000233 since April 1996.

Questions, corrections and tips are welcome: Arthur Yee, [email protected]
Last updated June 23, 1996