Since high-speed Internet access like DSL is unlikely to be in our neighborhood anytime soon (read: never), those of us with slow connections have come up with a few simple ways to make our Web browsing more bearable.
The first thing you can do is open more than one window at a time. I'd never thought of doing this, but my husband pointed it out to me. Opening more than one window at a time makes a huge difference in your browsing experience. For example, in Internet Explorer, press the Ctrl key and then press the letter N to open a new window. Then click in the new window's address bar and type a new Web address (called a URL).
Or here's my favorite quick tip, you can open a link in a new window by either right-clicking the link and choosing Open in New Window or (even easier) by holding down the Shift key while you click on the link. This technique is great for checking out sites that have lists of links. You don't have to click the Back key and wait for that list of links to reload every time you want to check out another link.
Once you have all these browser windows open, you may feel like things are getting out of hand. You can see all the windows listed on the Taskbar at the bottom of your screen. Just click to move from one window to another. Or if you press Alt+Tab, you can toggle among your various open windows.
To view all of the windows at once, here's another sneaky trick. Right-click on the time in your System Tray, which is located at the bottom right corner of your screen. Now you see options to Tile Windows Horizontally, Tile Windows Vertically, or Cascade Windows, which stacks the open windows.
After you are done surfing around, you can quickly close windows just by right clicking them on the Taskbar and choosing Close. Or to close a bunch all at once, hold down the Ctrl key and click the windows in the Taskbar you want to close. Once they are all selected, right click on any one of them and choose Close. |
