Browsing the world wide web can be either extremely useful or a gigantic waste of time! Some users are frustrated in their attempts to use the web effectively and efficiently because they do not have their software properly configured. Although this tip does not attempt to cover every aspect of browser software configuration, it does provide three helpful tips:

1. using your bookmark file as your home page,
2. configuring your browser so you can easily send mail to web links, and
3. editing your bookmarks.

Step by Step

1. The figure below shows a screen shot from Netscape 4.7. In this figure, the user's bookmark list is used as his home page. Since your bookmarks are probably your most frequently used links, why not just start your browser session by putting them on the screen? Also, since your bookmarks are stored on your local hard drive, your opening screen (your bookmarks) will display quite quickly.
   
   
   
   
2. Your bookmarks are stored in the file BOOKMARK.HTM somewhere on your hard drive. To use that file as your opening screen, click on Edit, then select Preferences. You will see a window similar to the one shown below. (If you don't see a window similar to the one shown, click on the word Navigator in the lefthand frame.)
   
   
   
   
3. In the box labelled Navigator starts with, click the radio button to the left of Home page. In the box labelled Home page, click on the Browse button, then locate your Bookmark.htm file. When you exit your browser and start a new session, you should see the fruits of your labor! (Note that you may have more than one copy of bookmark.htm on your local drive, so you may have to do some figuring to get this to totally work...)
   
   
4. Now it's time to make sure you are configured properly for sending email. Every once in a while, we hear of someone who tried to click on a web page "email link" but was unable to send mail due to a browser configuration problem. This tip will solve that problem (not that we actually expect that you have the problem, but maybe some of your friends do).

   In the figure shown above, check to see if the label Mail & Newsgroups in the lefthand frame has a plus sign (+) or a minus sign (-) beside it (to the left). If there is a plus sign to the left of the label, click on the plus sign to expand the item (the plus sign will change to a minus sign). You should now see a list of Mail & Newsgroups sub-items. Click on Identity. You should see a window similar to the one shown below.
   
   

   
   
   
5. Enter your name in the textfield labelled Your name and your email address in the textfield labelled Email address.
   
   
6. Click on the item labelled Mail Servers in the lefthand frame. You should see a window similar to the one shown below.
   
   
   
   
7. Enter the name of your SMTP server in the Outgoing mail (SMTP) server textfield. (SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Your SMTP server is the computer that is responsible for sending your outgoing mail.)
   
   
8. You probably already know how to edit your bookmarks, including deleting bookmarks from the list and rearranging items in your bookmark list (if you don't know how to do that, definitely experiment and figure it out; you'll be amazed!).

   At some point, you might actually want to edit what is listed as the text for a specific bookmark. In the bookmark list displayed in this tip, for instance, two different bookmarks are labelled "The Weather Channel - West Point, MS (39773)". These are actually two different bookmarks, one to the local radar, and the other to the 5-day forecast, but it's difficult to tell from the displayed list which is which. Wouldn't it be nice to edit the items so that they could be easily differentiated?

   From the main browser screen, click on Bookmarks, then select Edit Bookmarks.... You should see a window similar to the one shown to the right.
   
   

9. Right-click on the bookmark that you want to edit. Select Bookmark Properties... from the dropdown menu. You should see a window similar to the one shown to the right.

   Edit the textfield labelled Name. When you exit the current browser session and restart, your edits should appear.