In this month’s article, I would like to talk about how to speed up your internet browsing experience. The majority of people use Internet Explorer but more and more people are starting to use Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Google Crome, or Opera.
There are many advantages and disadvantages to each of the above. My advice is, have a few with you just in case you want to switch. Many people are use Internet Explorer because it is installed by default when you get your new computer. However, Internet Explorer very often disappoints you by crashing and noticeably slowing down other computer processes when opening a website. The advantage of using IE over the others is when your company uses Microsoft collaboration servers like Exchange Email or SharePoint systems. Even though the new version Internet Explorer 8 has been released, I personally still wouldn’t use IE as my default browser. For people who want to speed up their Internet browsing experience, I always recommend Mozilla Firefox which can be downloaded for free from www.mozilla.com. Firefox has numerous Add-ons that you can fully customize. One Add-on, colorful browsing tabs, allows you to open new pages in one window rather than opening a new window for each, helping you to save space on your taskbar and time. The bookmark toolbar is brilliant because you can simply drag a website address to it and instantly create a shortcut. (Tips: with your new bookmark like gmail.com on the toolbar, right-click and choose property, delete the name then ok. Now check out the b-toolbar again. You should be able to see the icon of the website rather than wasting the space with long names.). To organize your b-toolbar into categories, you can also create folders and have the ones alike into the same folder. Finally, Firefox has the best file download management in comparison to the others.
Google Crome is known for it’s small and fast during start up and closing of the programs. Use Crome if you are running a lower spec PCs. Crome can be downloaded from google.com/chrome. Crome also has a special feature called the Most Visited Website Thumbnail which is shared by IE version 8 and Opera browser (www.opera.com). Opera lets you personalize the program so you own it. Similar to Crome’s thumbnail, Opera call it as Speed Dial which lets you build your own startup page shortcuts. In addition to Add-ons like Firefox, Opera also provide tools that you can use to view website info and list hyperlinks inside a page by default which I think is pretty cool.
In conclusion, Firefox and Opera are the geek’s choices. However, these programs might also demand just a little bit more computing power. If you are looking for an improvement of your 3 years old laptop for browsing the Internet, I would like to recommend Google Crome. My last tip for this month is one shortcut key that you might not know possible to do in your browser before. To enter www.google.com, this time try typing google in the address bar and then hold down Ctrl + Enter on your keyboard. All above programs support this command so enjoy.
