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Developing your websurfing skills

This page is a spinoff from my project of 'hyper-annotating' James Joyce's Ulysses, to share some basic tricks that will make those complex pages easier to study.

1. Get comfortable

Reading in bed is the best place to read, imho. Unless you have a laptop, the only way I know to do this with a computer is to position it right next to your bed... which will probably not be real popular with your significant other!

But at least make sure it's positioned optimally for comfortable reading, with a chair where you can spend all day.

2. Bigger fonts

You have to re-set your browser preferences so the default font is optimally readable for you ...even if this makes some pages display badly. I use Geneva 18 as my variable-width font (my fixed-width is a-little-too-small Courier 14, so that 80-column text still fits my window).

I also use the 'override page-specified fonts' setting.

3. Multi-window surfing

Your browser window doesn't need to fill your whole screen. If you set the default smaller, you can easily juggle multiple windows. This allows you to explore many links from (eg) a Ulysses-notes page without having to hit the Back button after each one.

To open a link in a new window you'll probably have to click and hold down the (right) mouse button over the link, which will pop up a little menu that includes "open link in new window" as one of the choices. On the Mac, command-clicking links has the same effect. [A thread about this trick]

If you make your default windowsize small enough (640 by 480 works best, imho) you can also open links by dragging them from the 'index' page to the target window:

Locating the index-page at the bottom of your screen works nicely because new windows normally open starting at the top.

This trick also means you can read one page while another is loading-- I do all my surfing with a primitive 33.6 modem.

4. Javascript vs 'static' compare

Especially on my Joyce pages, I use two different techniques to split windows into a top-half and a bottom-half, using HTML frames. The 'static' method requires that I create and maintain a special page with its own URL, which gets to be a big headache as I rename and relocate pages. The Javascript method only works if you have Javascript enabled in your browser, and it has no URL of its own (eg for bookmarking). (And God save you if you mix the two...)

Generally the Javascript kind will appear like this: [compare]. In either version if you click a link it should replace the half you clicked from with the (half) page you clicked to.

5. Archives with passwords

In the Joyce section I sometimes link to password-protected mailinglist archives, with a link that looks like this: [password]

6. Take control of your bookmarks

The basic 'bookmarks' menu is a black hole for beginning surfers. You need to learn to sort it, to rename bookmarks within it, to delete them effectively, and to put your own favorites into the personal toolbar.

I use a Mac app called LinkPad for temporary bookmarks (pages I want to come back to later, but then delete). It supports drag-n-drop. (Netscape's 'Edit Bookmarks' window can also be used this way.)

And eventually you'll want to learn enough HTML to create your own start page, and keep it up to date. [tutorial]

7. Look around

My policy is to link to the most useful page of a site, not to its own homepage, so it's up to you to check out the rest of the site.

Sometimes the page I link doesn't even include any obvious link to the rest of the site-- in these cases you can trim the URL starting with the filename, and then climbing the hierarchy of directories:

http://www.domain.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/filename.html
http://www.domain.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/
http://www.domain.com/dir1/dir2/
http://www.domain.com/dir1/

If you get a display of the directory's filenames, look first for index.html or home.html or default.html.

(Sometimes you'll need to do this because I bypassed the site's frames, which I hate. I do this using the popup menu's 'open frame in new window' option, by clicking on the background instead of a link.)

8. Understanding name-anchors

When I link to an etext that Joyce was alluding to, I try to target the exact line, but this requires that the etext have HTML 'name anchors', and most do not. I try to provide some guidance in any case, like an exact quote you can search for.

Some etexts (like Bibliobytes.com's) use a database format where I can specify the top line, but this has the disadvantage that you have to go back one page to see the earlier context.

9. Bibliobytes etc

Joyce's preferred translation of the Odyssey was the Butcher-Lang of 1879, which happily is on the Web in a form that allows links to start at any specified paragraph (which can be a little disorienting): [Homer] So it will be used exclusively, unless there's a specific reason to add an alternate.

You can submit a new URL or any other suggestion for this page by typing it into the box below. It will instantly become visible to anyone at this comments page. I should get around to checking it out and updating it above within a week or three, at which point I'll delete it from the comments page.

If you want credit, include your name and email (otherwise it's anonymous). You can use HTML but you don't have to.

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