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Tips On Surfing

Tips & Tricks for a Better Surfing(Browsing) Experience

The Basics

Browsers

Browsers are the software that allows you to access the World Wide Web. The most popular browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Apple's Safari, and the latest Google Chrome.

Double-Click Madness

Here are some tips and tricks for increasing the value of your web surfing experience. For most of us, the most important one is: be patient- there are so many variables to making the website pop up before your eyes, even with high speed internet, sometimes it's not as fast as we want it to be. Do not click more than once on any button or link. This has been a major cause of slowness and even more frustration.

After you have clicked on a link or button, you should see some kind of indication that the browser got your request and is trying to download the next page. These indicators include an animation in the top right corner of the browser window or indicators in the address bar or the bottom left corner of the window.

If you do not get these indications that something is happening, then click the button or link again. If you get impatient and you want to click on some other link or button, click the Stop button first. If you feel that the information retrieved by the browser is incomplete or wrong, click the Reload or Refresh button.

Errors loading a web page

There are a number of errors you might encounter when trying to load a web page. The first problem might be "The specified server could not be found." This means that you either have a bad URL or the server is off line or no longer exists. This could be the result of an outdated link, a server that has been discontinued or a mistake in typing or pasting the URL into the address box.

If you get a "file not found" error, check to make sure you didn't type or paste the URL incorrectly. A valid URL may start with "http://" or "www" or just the domain name (i.e., "about-the-web.com"). The URL will usually end with either ".htm" or ".html" but may contain other characters as well. Another common ending is the slash ("/") character. The URL will not contain quotation marks, commas or any of these ( < > ). The other possibility is that the page you requested no longer exists.

Other errors usually have to do with not having authorization to view the page. If it is a page you think you ought to have access to, check with the website administrator and find out what you need to know.

Other Ideas to Make Your Internet Browsing Better

• Increase your browser cache