Setting Up The Browser
By Dave Nienberg, President/CEO
Copyright © 1998 Dave Nienberg. All rights Reserved

Setting up your browser optimally is the first step in designing great pages. The preferences I describe here are for Netscape but virtually all browsers have similar setups. Only the way in which you change them differs.

The Appearance Tab


The Toolbars section should be set to "Text." This gives you more vertical space in which to view web pages. The other two options, "Pictures" and "Pictures and Text" take up too much room and do not provide more information or make it easier to navigate.

In the Link Styles section you should uncheck the links are underlined checkbox. Underlining text to differentiate it as a link is simply not necessary unless you have a black and white monitor. Give this a try and I'll guarantee you'll never go back.

The Fonts Tab


The fonts and sizes you choose here depend on whether you are an author or just a browser. Authors should use the fonts which most of the audience uses. Browsers can use whatever their heart desires.

Authors
The "Proportional Font" on most users systems is 12 pt Times and the "Fixed Font" is 10 pt Courier. For widest possible support use these to design.

Browsers
Use whatever turns you on. Just be careful to use high quality fonts such as those made by Adobe.

The Colors Tab


This is where you can make the most difference in your browsing experience. The default settings for Netscape couldn't be worse if you tried, so almost anything you do will be an improvement.

Links
I remember once in drivers education hearing that red cars are most likely to be pulled over for speeding. The reason for this is not that drivers of red cars speed more than others. Rather, red gets people's attention more than any other color. For this reason I think it makes much more sense to make your links red. I personally prefer a Red, Green, Blue value of 204,0,0. You can set this by clicking the "custom" checkbox and then clicking the choose color button.

Followed Links
Once you have viewed a link it should not compete for your attention as much as the text or the links. Try a RGB value of 102,0,204 which is an off blue.

Text
The only color Netscape got right was the color for text, black. Leave this option alone.

Background
Pick up the nearest book, magazine or catalogue you have laying around. What color is the paper? White. There is a reason for this. White backgrounds and black text provide the most contrast and legibility. If pure white (RGB of 255,255,255) seems too harsh try an off white such as RGB 255,204,255.

Finally, leave the "Always Use My Colors, Overriding Document" checkbox unchecked. If the page designer went to the trouble of specifying colors at least give them a chance.

The Cache Tab


The default values for the memory and disk cache are woefully small. The purpose of these two different types of cache are to speed up the display of pages. When you view a page it is copied into both caches. Then, when you go back to a page which has not changed it will be retrieved first from the memory cache and if not there, the disk cache. Set these values based on the amount of RAM and hard drive space you have available.

Memory cache
Set the memory cache as large as you can afford. Personally, I have 64 Megs of RAM and set this cache to 10 Megs. If you have 16 Megs go for around 4 Megs.

Disk cache
Set the disk cache fairly large, around 10 Megs. Disk caches much larger than this tend to be fairly slow since the search of the cache tends to be slower than just getting a new version over the modem.

The "Verify Documents" radio button by default is set to "Once per Session." Leave this alone if you are just a browser. As an author you should change it to "Every Time." Your browser will be a little slower, but you will always have the most recent version of whatever page you're looking at. Browsers can do the same thing by doing a "super reload." Simply press the <Shift> (Windows), <Option> (Mac) key at the same time you click on the reload button. This reload only works on Netscape 2.0 and higher.

Final Tips
The last piece of advice I have for you is the first thing I change on most peoples machines: resolution and bit depth. Resolution refers to the the size of your display. Many people do not realize they can change this. If you don't know what I'm talking about it's pretty safe to say you are using 640 by 480 (640 pixels across by 480 pixels down). Look into your operating systems documentation to find out how to increase it to 800 by 600 or even 1024 by 768. The benefit of doing this is that you can show much more information on your screen at one time. Be careful not to maximize your browser in these larger resolutions. It just looks bad. Try to keep the browser window width at around 640 pixels and make the length as long as you can.

Bit depth refers to how many colors your monitor can display at one time. Odd are, unless you changed it, you can only see 256 colors at a time. Change this immediately! 65,000 colors or 16 bit (they mean the same thing) is as much as most people need. This will do more than anything to improve your browsing experience.

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