More Web Tips

* How to open an interesting link on a page of links.

1. So, you have a list of links in front of you and want to open one of them, but you don't want to lose your list.
2. To open up a link, click on it with your right mouse button. This will bring up a little gray box with a few options. Choose "Open in a New Window." This puts an additional window on your taskbar. (The Taskbar is that gray bar on the bottom of your screen in Windows 95 and above with the Start button on it). 
3. To switch between the two windows, just point your mouse at the "button" on your task bar and click on it and that will put that window in front of the one your looking at. Alternatively, you can click on the depressed button and that will minimize that window.
4. Another way to switch between multiple windows is to press ALT and Tab. Hold ALT and press Tab as often as needed to switch to the desired window if you have more than 2 windows up at once.

* How to download music (i.e. MP3's, WAV, etc.) or movie clips/trailers (MPEG, AVI, QT, etc.)

1. Do you find it annoying when you click on "Download" for a song or movie and instead of downloading, it brings up Windows Media Player or another player? So do I!
2. To stop that, right click the download button and choose "Save Target As..." This will allow you to save the file where ever you'd like on your computer.
3. Make sure that the file is actually an .exe, .mp3, .zip, .tar, .avi, .qt or some kind of media file and NOT an htm or html file. If it's one of those latter ones, then you'll be downloading the web page or just a link instead of the file you want.

* How to get rid of most of those annoying pop-up ads

1. The only way to get of these things is to download a program that gets rid of them for you.  This is easy and there's quite a few to choose from. Some are free and some aren't. I recommend No-ads or WebWasher. 
2. They won't get rid of all the ads, but they will get rid of a lot of them. Read the help files or Read-me files that come with them to set them up. Or you can read my separate tutorial.
3. Here's how to get rid of them manually if you don't want to mess with another utility. Look at your taskbar and find that button that corresponds with the ad. Right-click it and click on the "Close" option. If that isn't an option, try to find the "X" in the ad's upper-right corner and click it. Or bring up the ad and push ALT+F4. Some of them have their own button on the ad itself that says "Close" and that's what you'll have to push. 
4. WARNING: Make absolutely sure that you have the ad selected before pushing ALT+F4  or even when selecting it from the Taskbar, otherwise you'll close the window that you were looking at.
5. If you do close the wrong window, don't despair, just click on the Sundial image (in  Explorer) or go to the View drop-down box at the top and go to "Explorer Bar" and click on History, or just push CTRL+H. This will bring up the History menu on the left of the screen. This shows you all the sites you've been to. Just choose the one you were looking at and click on it.

If you need another copy or an updated version of this paper, go to the homeschool website and download it:  http://iowahomeschool.tripod.com