Netscape Navigator 3.X Tips #1



*1.   PAINT THE TOWN RED 

Last time we talked about how to change Navigator's browser 
background color. However, the colors in the default palette 
are often too dark to make a suitable background. It may be 
better to mix a custom color setting yourself. 

To do so, choose Options, General Preferences. Click the Colors
tab. In the Background area, click the Custom radio button and 
click the Choose Color button. When the Color Chart appears, 
click the Define Custom Colors bar. 

In the big rainbow color box, click around a bit to see the 
variations. The color you're actually choosing will appear in 
the smaller Color/Solid box below. Now click the small arrow to
the right of the graded color bar and drag it up near the top 
where the colors are lightest--maybe about one-fifth or 
one-sixth of the way down. Now, when you click around in the 
big color box, you'll see paler colors in the Color/Solid box. 

When you find a color you like, click OK to make your selection 
and close the Color dialog box. (As a safeguard, you can first 
click Add to Custom Colors to save this color for future 
reference.) Now click OK to close the Preferences dialog box. 


*2.   RAINBOW COALITION 

In the past few tips, we've discussed options for background 
colors. If all this color talk is old hat to you, you may be 
interested in some more advanced information. Netscape has 
prepared a short FAQ about its color palette and how to choose 
colors so your Web pages don't look awful on visitors' monitors: 

http://help.netscape.com/kb/client/960513-14.html 


*3.   OOH, EE, OOH AH AH 

We've been talking about changing the background color of your 
Netscape browser, and it's worth mentioning that you can also 
use an image file as the browser background--though it would 
have to be pretty pale and nondescript to pass muster as an 
all-purpose background. Any other sort of image would almost 
certainly induce dizziness and nausea. 

On the other hand, it could be a fun trick to play on a coworker.

To use an image file as a background, choose Options, General 
Preferences and click the Colors tab. Under Background, select 
the Image File radio button and then click the Browse button to 
open the Select a Backdrop Image box. After you select the file 
you want, click Open. Click OK to close the Preferences box. 

Now check your Netscape Mail to see exactly what you've wrought. 

(To undo the damage, go back through the steps described and 
just delete the file name from the Image File text box, then 
click OK.) 


*4.   REDECORATING THE WEB 

Have you ever been frustrated by a Web page background so loud 
and busy that you couldn't read the text on the page? You can 
always send a cranky letter to the Webmaster, of course, but 
there's also a quick workaround you can use to get your 
reading done. 

To remove a distracting background, go to Options, General 
Preferences and click the Colors tab. At the bottom of the box, 
put a check in the box that says Always Use My Colors, 
Overriding Document. Click OK. 

Back at the offending page, click Reload. Your default 
background, which is presumably a little easier on the eyes, 
replaces the yucky background. Once you're ready to surf on, 
repeat the steps above, this time unchecking the box. 


*5.   YOU'RE SO VAIN (I BET YOU THINK THIS SEARCH IS ABOUT YOU) 

Have you ever heard of a "vanity search"? That's what it's 
called when you enter your own name into a search engine and 
see how many listings come up. If this sort of behavior appeals 
to you, don't feel bad--you're not alone! 

Note that you'll get better results from many search engines if 
you surround your name with double quotes. 


*6.   HOOKING UP 

We've been talking about how to find yourself online. Usually, 
there's not much urgency involved in locating yourself. But 
sometimes you really do need to track down someone else. 
Whether you're looking for a person or a business, near or far, 
Switchboard at 

http://www.switchboard.com 

can be a immensely helpful resource. Bookmark it. 


*7.   REVERSAL OF FORTUNE 

Ever use a crisscross directory? Instead of looking up a 
person's name and finding out the address and phone number, you 
can do the opposite: find out the person's name based on the 
address or phone number. This is helpful, for example, when 
you've got a stray phone number in your pocket and no other 
information. To be honest, it's also a gold mine for marketers 
and other people who like to annoy you for a living, but 
there's no reason the rest of us shouldn't take advantage of it. 

Reverse Lookup operates on the crisscross directory principle, 
except that instead of covering a single city, it covers the 
entire United States and Canada. Give it a try at 

http://www.infospace.com/_1_169174148__info/reverse.htm 


*8.   WHEN HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF 

When you'd like to return to a page you visited several sites 
ago, the quickest way is to open the Go menu and choose the 
page title from the list of Web pages at the bottom. Bam! 
You're back. 

But even after a page has fallen off the Go menu, you can still 
get to it. The painstaking way is to click the Back button a 
gazillion times--it has a longer memory than the Go menu. 
Another way is to access the History window using Ctrl-H. It 
displays your travels for the open browser window only. This is 
a good way to keep track of your history when you've been 
surfing for hours with several browser windows open. 


*9.   SECOND CHANCE 

Okay, what if you forget to right-click the URL you want, and 
you end up with your new page stuck in the frames? You can just 
hit the Back button and try again (this time, right-click the 
URL and choose Open Link in New Browser Window), or you can use 
this workaround: 

On a blank area of the page you hope to free up (not the mean 
ol' frames page), right-click and choose Add to Bookmarks. Open 
your Bookmarks file (Ctrl-B) and double-click the last entry. 
Now the new page will load without any reminder of the 
previous site. 

This trick is a bit more cumbersome, but worth using if you're 
going to bookmark the site anyway. 


*10.   PEEK-A-BOO, I SEE YOU 

You want to know what's wrong with this country? Spend a little 
time with a search engine voyeur and you start to get some 
ideas. Just don't spend TOO much time with these voyeurs, or 
you might lose faith in humanity and stuff like that. 

Okay, so maybe we're exaggerating. Judge the collective 
consciousness for yourself by checking out Magellan's Voyeur at

http://voyeur.mckinley.com/cgi-bin/voyeur.cgi 

There's also a Search Ticker at WebCrawler:

http://webcrawler.com/SearchTicker.html 
