Hints & tips

Internet browsing

How do I decide which browser to use?

Don’t stick with older versions of Internet Explorer, eg v6 or worse. They look pretty sad beside modern browsers. Internet Explorer 8 or 9 (IE8 or IE9) is probably the most used one and most compatible with the greatest number of web sites. Against that it’s got some design flaws (I find it pretty clumsy compared with Firefox) and is also the prime target for malicious web sites trying to find security holes and install malware on your computer.

Firefox is also pretty popular and works well with nearly all sites. The fact that it doesn’t allow Active-X installs (potentially dangerous) is an advantage. It also has lots of neat add-ons available, eg a little flag shows where each site I visit is hosted. Firefox also seems the best at multi tab browsing, even from links within pdfs.

Safari, Opera and Google Chrome are less well used and perhaps less well finished than IE and Firefox. All have more compatibility issues with some web sites than the big two, but Chrome is gaining market share quite fast. On smartphones you may get a cut-down version of one of these, eg Safari or Opera, or a different one, eg Webkit for Android.

Personally I use Firefox 6 most of the time. IE, Opera and Safari I use just for testing web sites I build. Chrome I use for testing plus playing Angry Birds offline (much better on a big screen). Sometimes, eg Napster mp3 downloads, I have to use IE because it doesn't work with Firefox. In Firefox I particularly like the way it does tabbed browsing and makes it so easy to build up your own menus of favourite sites. If I had to rank my browser preferences it would be Firefox then Chrome then IE then Safari and Opera.

There’s no cost angle in choosing a browser – they’re all free. Apparently one reason they all want you to use their browser is because they get millions from Google from users typing searches into the little Google box. Personally I just flick to the full Google page instead because I might want to search images, groups, news etc.

How can I improve my search results?

Use double quotes.  Copper wire bars in Google gets 1,000,000+ hits (anything containing all 3 words). “Copper wire bars” in quotes gets just 42,000 or so hits – only pages with that exact phrase. Put –ingots after it (a word with a leading minus sign) and it drops by half again.  If you are not sure about spelling etc use OR, eg “color palette” OR “colour palette” gets many more hits than either phrase alone.

If you get too few results, a tilde before a word finds synonyms too, eg ~bug gets 4 times as many results as just bug, including insect, pest etc.

In Google, remember that sponsored links at the top and right are there because they paid to be, not because they matched your search well.  Eg search for a long discontinued camera and you’ll get lots of sponsored links, none of which are actually offering that model for sale. You should generally assume that sponsored links are only for outfits trying to sell you something. Try “free software” and you’ll get sponsored links from all sorts of odd sources and one site offers free software such as Firefox via a mandatory payment stage!

Use the best option for each search you make, eg in Google the news or images options are useful and map based searches are becoming excellent. I use mappy and viamichelin to plan road trips round Europe, streetmap for local UK maps, Google maps to find tyre sellers nearby and so on. On Google maps in many areas you can double click your way into street view, allowing you to travel along a street as if you were there - the pic shows the end of my road.

How do I keep my Google list when searching?

The key is when you want to investigate a link in your Google search results list do not click on it. Instead right click on it and choose Open in New Tab. That way it comes up in another tab in the same browser window. When you close that tab, your Google list is still there, just as you left it. Ctrl left click does the same thing but quicker.

In all the modern browsers clicking a link with the middle scroll wheel button opens it in a new tab too (or sometimes a new window in a badly set up or designed browser). You can also close a tab by clicking on it with the scroll wheel button.

How do I shop online?

First find your retailer and establish that they are trustworthy. This could be by reputation (amazon, hmv, ocado etc), by doing a Google search (eg on “XYZ Gifts” problem) or via shopping sites such as pricerunner and kelkoo. If buying on eBay look at their feedback scores/comments and check how long they’ve been selling. After that it’s basically choosing what you want to buy, keying in your credit card details and waiting for delivery. If your letterbox is small it might be worth fitting a bigger one so more things can be delivered through it.

I'm a great believer in user reviews online - it's hard to give poor service and hide it from all those forums and review sites. I wrote so many amazon reviews that they invited me to do advance reviews of new products, which I get for free.

How do I grab an image from a web page?

Make sure it’s not copyright restricted, especially if your use is at all commercial. Then tap the PrtScn (Print Screen) key to load what’s showing on the screen into memory (or Alt PrtScn for just the current part screen window). Then run an application to receive the image. A word processor will just about do, as you can crop and resize the imported image. But a proper image processing application is best. Eg in Photoshop Elements you choose File, New from Clipboard, then crop to what you want, add text, resize or whatever and save as a jpg, gif or png which can then be used in all sorts of ways. Right clicking on an image then Save Image As is often an alternative. There are also some excellent screen grabbers you have to pay a bit for, eg the superb Faststone Capture (free back when I found it).

How do I change my home page?

Visit the page you want as your new home page (google.co.uk, bbc.co.uk or whatever) then go to somewhere like Tools, Internet Options, General, Use Current (Tools, Options in Firefox). Some browsers can be set to load pages from your last session or multiple tabbed home pages.

How do I put a web address in an email or document?

Go to the site/page you want then click on the http… address to highlight it. Then Edit Copy (or Ctrl C) to load it into memory. Go to the email or document (or wherever you want to use the link) and Edit Paste (Ctrl V) to insert it. Tap the space bar whilst at the end of the link and it will turn blue/underlined in many applications and take anyone to the website with a click of the mouse.

How can I get notified when something new happens?

Click on More then Even more then Alerts in Google and set up a search. When Google finds that in anything new on the web it emails you a link to the page.

You can also get RSS feeds which tell you what’s changed on web sites you’re interested in. This could include news headlines or updated podcasts. But you can easily receive just too much information!

What are Facebook and Twitter for?

Search me. Facebook seems to be a way for young people to tell the world in far too much detail what they're doing. And it seems to have a very cavalier attitude towards privacy. Twitter seems very one-sided: you need to be Stephen Fry or Joan Rivers to get anyone to pay any attention to your tweets.

What are the best travel sites?

There are so many but ones I use a lot when looking for or planning holidays include:

• Tripadvisor - if a hotel has plenty of reviews and rates 4 or above it's going to be good 
• Roomatlas - specify a place, say Paris, and you get hotels on a map of the city. Click on one and you can click to Tripadvisor reviews then remove it from the map if you see anything bad. Soon you've got a shortlist of well reviewed hotels exactly where you want to stay. It used to take me ages doing that, jumping between a variety of websites
  
• Skyscanner - great for Europe especially, showing who flies where, what are cheaper days etc
• Kayak - really good for longer haul flights, eg how can we get to Vietnam? Sign up to get date flexibility
• Travelzoo - an interesting selection of holiday bargains but when you check some of them (eg on Tripadvisor) you can see why they are being sold off cheap!

How do I install software from the net?

Basically it's knowing where the install package is downloaded. Depending on browser and past choices it could be to the desktop or to a downloads folder which you need to find via Windows Explorer to launch the install/setup program which will install the software.

How can I increase the viewing area in the browser?

Most browsers respond to F11 to switch between normal view (where they occupy a lot of your screen space) and full screen view (where the website gets the full screen area). This is particularly important with modern laptops and notebooks with their wide but horribly shallow screens. Great for watching movies but not ideal for most other things. New versions of browsers tend to take less screen depth for themselves than older ones

How can I find favourite websites quickly?

You can always put favourite sites in your favourites or bookmarks list - make sure you make subfolders to keep them tidy. But I like having my real favourites in a personalised toolbar. Internet Explorer makes this quite difficult but it's dead easy with Firefox. Here's a portion of my personal toolbar, with lots of sites under the folders:

How best to keep kids safe online?

There are software solutions which aim to formalise parental control of children’s online browsing. But kids tend to bypass these quite easily (if only by going round to a friend’s place or just using your password to sign on).

With the growth of wi-fi networks feeding multiple computers in houses, trust and discussion is becoming the only realistic option.