Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks ALEPH/McGill Training Navigator Tips and Tricks 1. Netscape Communicator 4.7 -The Front End ................................ 2 2. The Title Bar...................................................................................... 3 3. The Menu Bar.................................................................................... 3 File............................................................................................... 4 Edit.............................................................................................. 8 View............................................................................................. 9 Go................................................................................................ 11 Communicator............................................................................ 11 Help ............................................................................................. 13 4. Navigation Toolbar ........................................................................... 14 5. Location Toolbar .............................................................................. 15 6. Personal Toolbar .............................................................................. 16 7. Information Toolbar.......................................................................... 17 8. Saving Files with Navigator ............................................................. 17 9. Bookmarks ........................................................................................ 20 10. User Preferences ............................................................................ 25 Show Option............................................................................... 25 Preferences ................................................................................ 25 11. Dealing with Frames....................................................................... 31 12. Netscape Shortcuts........................................................................ 34 Conclusion ...................................................................................... 35 1 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks 1. Netscape Communicator 4.7 -The Front End Figure 1 Title Bar Navigation Toolbar What’s Related Indicates title of Click to view sites and Look may be customized at currently displayed pages “related” to the your request page current page Menu Bar Bookmarks For saving and Location Toolbar organizing URLs For entering URLs and Internet keywords Personal Toolbar Builder Click and drag to personal Personal Toolbar toolbar to “hotlink”current page Useful for “dragging and dropping” frequently used sites for ease of access Security Information Shows status of encryption of the current Web page Online/Offline Switch Status Message Area Floating Component Toolbar Indicates what task the browser Shortcuts to newsgroups, Netscape e-mail, an HTML is performing, displays link editor etc.. information etc. 2 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks 2. The Title Bar Figure 2 The Netscape Title Bar (Figure 2) indicates the title of the currently loaded Web page and as such provides a valuable source of navigational reference. However, one must be careful since the title is created by the page’s designer and may not be a reliable reference point. As well, when a framed site is loaded into the browser the title will continue to be that of the frameset and not necessarily the documents loaded into the various frames. The Title Bar is also important since it is this information that is saved when a page is bookmarked. Bookmarking will be discussed later. One other item of note on the Title Bar is the Netscape Navigator symbol which, when clicked, provides several options to resize, minimize, maximize and close the browser. 3. The Menu Bar Figure 3 Menu Bar The Menu Bar (Figure 3) provides the usual “Windows” type of dropdown menus for file managing, editing, and viewing the documents within your browser window. Several features are of particular interest. 3 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks File Figure 4 Under the File option (Figure 4) the Open Page menu item enables access to a WWW page simple by typing the URL. As well, saved Web pages may be opened by browsing to the location on computer, floppy or network drives. Speaking of saved Web pages, it is very simple to save the current browser page for future use. Click Save As which brings up the standard Windows’ box (Figure 5) where the user can specify the directory into which an HTML file or text file may be saved. The default file name is the URL of the document being saved but any name may be designated. If choosing to save the document as a text file the user must append the extension .txt to the file name. It is recommended that Web pages be saved as HTML files since they are easier to read. Remember that saved documents will not contain the graphics associated with the Web page. 4 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks Figure 5 Sometimes printing of a Web page is required. The File menu items Page Setup, Print Preview and Print make this process easy and customizable. Page Setup (Figure 6) enables the user to specify the look of the printed product. The user has the choice of including such things as URLs, title information, and background graphics (not recommended). Margins may also be set using this function. 5 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks Figure 6 Once the print setup is complete, a document may be previewed by clicking on Print Preview (Figure 7). At this point it is possible to see how many pages are to be printed, to magnify the document, and to access Print as well. 6 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks Figure 7 By clicking the Print option the entire document or parts thereof may be specified for printing (Figure 8.) Figure 8 7 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks Edit Figure 9 The Edit menu (Figure 9) also contains useful features and looks much the same as any edit menu list. Copying text from a Web page is simple. Click and drag the mouse cursor across the text, then select Copy from the menu. This will copy the selected text to the system clipboard for “pasting” into another application such as Word, WordPerfect or Notepad. A Select All option is also included under the edit menu for selecting all of the text within a Web page. Remember, however, there can be only one “chunk” of information stored on the clipboard at a time. Find in Page is also a useful tool when using Navigator. By clicking on Find in Page a box appears which can be used to find a word or phrase on the current Web page (Figure 10). This is particularly useful for locating search queries from within long documents retrieved by search engines. Figure 10 The other important item under Edit is Preferences that will be looked at later. 8 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks View Figure 11 The View menu (Figure 11) provides information on changing the look of the browser and browser window. Under the Show option (Figure 12) the various toolbars may be exposed or hidden by a simple click of the mouse. The Increase Font option enables the user to increase the font of the current window to a comfortable size. Alternatively, if the font is too large, the Decrease Font option allows the user to decrease the font size. Be careful, however, since the increase or decrease will be maintained until manually changed or the browser is closed. The Reload menu option retrieves the current page from the host server and loads it again within the browser window. This is particularly important when viewing pages which update information on a continuous basis since the current page is “cached” on the computer for speedier access (therefore, it doesn’t “know” that a newer version is available.) 9 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks Figure 12 One other important View menu item is the Page Source (Figure 13). This enables a user to see the HTML coding that is used in the current page. Figure 13 10 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks Go Figure 14 The Go menu (Figure 14) is a navigation menu where the options are fairly obvious. Of course, Back, Forward and Home are more easily accessible on the navigation toolbar. However, a listing of previously visited pages makes using this menu item a better bet than navigating backwards or forwards through numerous pages. Communicator Figure 15 11 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks The Communicator menu (Figure 15) provides ready access to several Netscape Communicator applications and Netscape Web-based services. The Navigator option when clicked instantly opens another Navigator browser. This is useful when a user wishes to have two pages available for comparison purposes without having to navigate forwards and backwards. The most useful option in the Communicator menu is the Bookmarks option which will be discussed in greater detail later. Bookmarks can be effectively used to organize favorite pages in a coherent directory structure. Figure 16 The Tools option under the Communicator menu (Figure 16) contains an important option called History. The History file (Figure 17) stores a link to every page visited during the last n days (according to the preference the user sets.) Using the History file can help locate a previously visited Web page or to retrace browsing steps. The list of items can be reordered according to the options under History’s View menu. 12 Aleph/McGill Training Browser Tips and Tricks Figure