Back to Help Index

This section is devoted to the those individuals who work on an IBM computer while on the Internet. It provides handy tips on how to use the Internet to its full potential. It also explains short cuts which allow you to perform specific functions much more rapidly and far more easily than step-by-step procedures.

Simply click on an underlined link below to gain access to the explanation:

RELEASE NOTES:
Choose Help/Release Notes while running Netscape on Windows for new feature listings, status reports and other platform-specific reference information.

MULTIPLE OPEN WINDOWS:
To create a shortcut to view multiple windows that are open on Netscape, simultaneously press the Ctrl and Tab keys to consecutively bring to the front each open Netscape window.

SAVING FILES:

To Disk
Choose File|Save As to save a page locally (to your disk) in source, text, or PostScript format (UNIX only). Source format produces a text file encoded with the HTML necessary to reproduce the formatted text or image faithfully; Text format saves text without the HTML code. Where some Links, such as many FTP links, automatically download and save a file to disk, Save As manually saves page files.

You can also save a page to disk without displaying the page on screen. Position the mouse over a Link or image, then click the right mouse button to produce a pop-up menu with the items Save this Link as and Save this Image as for saving a file. Clicking on any Link with the Shift key depressed also produces a save dialog.

To Hard Drive
Saving a file to your hard drive allows you to display the page's information without any network connection. You can choose File/Open File to display the HTML-formatted text or graphic image of any local file saved in Source format (though a page's Inline Images might be replaced with icons).

On Windows, you'll need to select All Files for GIF, JPEG, or other nontext files to show up in the Open File dialog.

The pop-up menu item View this Image lets you see an isolated image file. The pop-up menu item Copy this Image Location copies the URL of the image file to the clipboard. Once you have the URL, you can open the image and save the image to your hard drive in Source format using File|Save As or the pop-up menu. You could also use View/Document Source to find the URL of Inline Images embedded in HTML code).

VIEWING HTML:
To use Netscape (rather than an external viewer) in order to view an HTML source document, leave the View Source field blank in the Options/General/Helpers panel.

Windows 95 shortcuts
Internet shortcuts are available on the Windows 95 version of Netscape. These shortcuts let you double-click on a desktop icon to open Netscape with a particular page automatically loaded. The desktop icon functions as a stand-alone Bookmark, opening the Netscape application (if necessary) and displaying on screen the page whose URL is stored as part of the shortcut.

CREATING INTERNET SHORTCUTS:
To create an Internet shortcut for any page, press the right mouse button to display the pop-up menu and select the Create Shortcut item. This displays the Create Internet Shortcuts dialog box containing a Description field and a URL field.

By default, the Description field is preset with the words Shortcut to be followed by the title of the page you are viewing and the URL field is preset with the page's URL. You can modify the contents of either field to specify any page you wish. Click the OK button to create the Internet shortcut. The icon appears on the desktop.

To create an Internet shortcut for a page in your Bookmark list, drag the page icon from the Bookmark window onto the desktop. You can also create an Internet shortcut for a particular page by dragging and dropping a page link onto the desktop.

Once you have created the Internet shortcut icon, you can drag and drop the shortcut icon (like a Bookmark) onto the Netscape window to automatically open the shortcut page. Even if the Netscape application is not running, you can drag and drop the shortcut icon on top of the Netscape application icon to open Netscape with the shortcut page automatically loaded.