Don't you hate it when you click on something while you are surfing and you get the dreaded 404 message - NOT FOUND. I have discovered a way which sometimes helps me find what am looking for. Websites are made up of directories and sometimes, subdirectories. For example: the url for this page will be http://www.monicaworks.com/internettips.html

So, /internetips.html is a page on the MonicaWorks website.

Look at the top of your browser screen and you will see a location or address bar which should contain the url in the previous paragraph. Try erasing the last bit of the message so that it reads http://www.monicaworks.com . Now click on it then press your enter key. There, that should take you back to the MonicaWorks homepages.

So next time that you get a page not found and you have an url like www.something.com/folder/folder2/page.html, you can erase everything but the www.something.com or even try www.something.com/folder/folder2/ and see what you might get.

Don't forget to rightclick to see what menus pop up for various things. Right clicking means to click the right button on the mouse. When I am on a page that has a lot of interesting stuff on it and want to look at one of their links but don't want to leave the page, I rightclick and select open in new window.

It's not uncommon for me to have three or four windows going at once.

Also if you find an image that you would like to keep, right click on it and select save as. A box containing your file manager will pop up and you can select which file to put it in and if you want, you can change the name of the file.

Remember that most images on the net are copyrighted and belong to whoever's website you are taking it from so you can't use it on your website or for anything else without their permission. If you want a certain type of image to use for something go search the free clipart sites. There are lots of them.

 As I said in the last section, I usually have two or three pages open at once. I am fairly impatient when waiting for a particularly large page to download so I usually have a couple of other sites open.

To do this in Netscape go to the FILE menu and click on NEW WEB BROWSER or
Control+N. In Internet Explorer go to the FILE menu and click on NEW PAGE or Control+N

As long as you have enough RAM (and most systems do these days) you should be able to have 2 or 3 Browser windows running at once with no performance degradation. The Internet does not usually transfer data to you PC at anywhere near the full speed of modern modems, so you can often be downloading 2 or 3 web pages at once without any reduction in transfer speed.

Any of us who spend any time at the keyboard are aware that after a while we start feeling strains and aches in some areas of our bodies. Ergonomics seems to be the study of musculoskeletal disorders and discomfort.

Here is a really good website which discusses ways to deal with this problem

Office Ergonomics - includes info on hand/wrist basics; back pain basics; eyestrain
basics and lots more.

Ergonomic Guidelines for arranging a Computer Workstation - 10 steps for users

Healthy Computing - computer-related health and safety information

Below are some shortcut keys for both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer:
Shortcut keys

Alt-Left Arrow: Goes back to the the previous page
Alt-Right Arrow: Goes forward to next page
Ctrl-B: Opens the Organize Favourites or Bookmarks window
Ctrl-D: Instantly adds the current Web pages to your Favourites or Bookmarks
Ctrl-H: Opens the History Folder
Ctrl-O: Lets you open a new Web page
Ctrl-N: Opens a New browser window
Alt+Tab to move between 2 or more windows)
Ctrl-R: Reloads the current page
Ctrl-W: Closes the active window
Home: Brings you to the top of the page
End: Brings you to the bottom of the page

F1 Help
F2 Rename
F3 Find
F4 Displays the combo box. (Explorer)
F5 Refresh
F6 Switches between panes in Explorer
F10 Goes to menu mode

Microsoft Keyboard Shortcuts

To quickly select the entire contents of a Web document, press Ctrl-A. From there, you can press Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard or Ctrl-X to cut a selection.. press Ctrl-V to paste.

I don't generally copy a whole page as there is usually a lot of stuff on the page that I don'twant....advertisements...graphics...etc. But if you do want the whole page why not save it by clicking File....Save As...and typing in a name which you will recognize and then saving it in an appropriate folder in your computer. This way you are saving the html file and so you will have to look at it in your browser.

If you just want to copy a section of the page, position your cursor at the beginning of the selection you wish to make, hold your left mouse button down and drag it to the end of the selection you wish to copy. Then right click it. Select copy. Then go to the program you wish to paste it to. Position your cursor where you wish to paste it. Right click and select paste. You can also use the Edit menu or the above keyboard shortcuts instead of rightclicking.

Online Tutorial on Copying and Pasting

 My favourite search engine is Google. I find that it comes up with the best results. In my research, I think the best Canadian Search Engines are:

Google
Yahoo Canada
Alta Vista Canada
Canada.com

I used to use a blank page as my start page. That way when I open my browser, it didn't automatically try to connect to the internet and since I use my browser a lot off line, I find this works best for me.

Now, I have created my own home page. I put all the websites on it that I go to on a regular basis and have it installed on my harddrive so I don't have to connect to see it.

Wanna see? If you would like your own home page, contact me and I'll create one for you.

If I was going to have a regular online start page now, I might choose The Hunger Site so that I would remember to click on their donate button every day.

 If you are anything like me, you feel like an absolute dunce when people are talking about the mechanics of the computer.....the stuff inside the box.

I found this great site which gives a tour of what everything is and what it does and best yet it is all in layman's terms that even I understand.

Kid's Net shows the innards and you can click on any part for a detailed explanation in layman's terms.

Email can be very confusing when you are just starting out. It really isn't all that difficult to catch on.

Here is a good site on the basics of email.

Email Programs

Outlook Express home page

Netscape Messenger homepage

Eudora homepage

Email Back Up Programs

E-Mail Saver XE - a very easy to use program which will back up your email data; identities, e-mail, news messages, address book, accounts, message rules, signatures and blocked sender's list. This program works for Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, Incredimail, Pegasus Mail, The Bat, and Pocomail.

Outlook Express Backup Wizard - an easy-to-use utility that allows you to backup and restore Outlook Express email messages, accounts, rules, address book, signatures,and blocked senders.

Email Tutorials

Tutorial - How to send an attachment by Email using Outlook Express.

One of the most annoying things that I've been dealing with lately is the amount of junk mail (Spam) that I get in my inbox everytime I download my emails. I've done quite a bit of research on it and in the last year the amount that I have been getting seems to have quadrupled. Not only do I get a tremendous amount of stuff that I have no interest in whatsoever but I have been getting an increasing amount of mail that is embarrassing.

After discussing it with other internet professionals, I've discovered that I'm not the only one that's getting this stuff and so I went on a quest to find out how to get rid of it.

I've come up with a couple of solutions.

The first is to download a very good free program called Mailwasher. Check it out. I open this program before I want to get my messages and it allows me not only to delete everything I consider Spam but I can bounce the messages back to the sender as undeliverable. Many of the programs that create spam will automatically remove your email address from their list.

When you get spam, a lot of it has an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. DO NOT click on this unless you are sure that this is a reputable company. The majority of the time, clicking on that link will just let the advertisor know that you are a real email address and they will turn around and sell it to countless other spammers.

Another good program for dealing with Spam is McAfee's "Spamkiller" I've heard excellent things about it but it is a bit of a cost.

The second thing that I am in the process of doing is removing my email address from all my websites and replacing it with a very cool bit of code that I found. The email address still works but the programs that spider around the net harvesting email addresses from websites will not recognize it as an email address and will pass it by. Here's a link to a site which will generate the code.

Basically a Domain name is an address that you type into the location bar of your browser to go to a site. Fpr example: google.com, My domain name is monicaworks.com.

A domain name works like an address forwarding service.

All of your Web site content sits on a computer with a unique address. This is called an IP address. An IP address is made up of a series of numbers, such as 123.23.234.45. Your domain name directs visitors to your site using this IP address.

We use domain names instead of IP addresses because most people find it easier to remember a name rather than a series of numbers.

Register a domain name