Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
I use the Internet a lot both for work and recreation, and I encounter numerous links throughout the course of a day that interest me for one reason or another. But instead clicking each link to open the underlying page, I simply hover my mouse pointer over the link and hold down the Shift key to display a small preview window.
How do I do it? By using a fantastic Chrome extension called CoolPreviews. [Read more…]
Question from Kenneth O.: I started using Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer a while back, and I really like it.
But starting last night I can’t get to certain websites in Chrome even though I can get to them just fine in other web browsers.
As far as I know I haven’t changed any settings or anything. What could be the problem?
Rick’s answer: There are a number of possible causes for this problem Kenneth, but the two most common (and most likely) are having your browser set to use a proxy server or corrupted cookies on your hard drive. The following steps will eliminate both possibilities: [Read more…]
Most people have several websites they visit throughout the day. For example, I check my email at Outlook.com fairly often while occasionally checking for updates on Facebook and Twitter.
If you do the same, it’s easy to have several of your favorite websites load automatically in separate tabs every time you load your web browser. That way you’ll be ready to get down to business just as soon as the browser finishes loading.
Here’s how to set multiple homepages in Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Firefox (simply skip to the appropriate section): [Read more…]
I recently downloaded and began testing a Chrome browser extension I read about called Grammarly Lite, and let me tell you, it’s awesome! Once you install the extension you’ll see a little green “G” in the lower right-hand corner of every text box letting you know that Grammarly Lite is loaded and on the job.
Grammarly Lite works in real time, highlighting misspelled words and punctuation errors on the fly. Simply hover your mouse over the underlined word or text snippet and Grammarly Lite will suggest a short list of possible fixes. Click on the appropriate one and the error is fixed right then and there. If the highlighted word is correct but unrecognized by Grammarly Lite, adding it to the dictionary is as easy as clicking “Remember this word”. [Read more…]
Question from Judy L: I’ve been using Google Chrome as my primary web browser for about 3 months now and I really like it. But a couple of days ago it started taking forever to begin loading a web page. What could be causing this?
Rick’s answer: Judy, when you try loading a page, does it say “Resolving proxy” in the lower left-hand corner of the browser? If so (and I’m sure it probably does), something or someone has configured Chrome to access websites through a web proxy.
If you’re the only person that uses this computer I’m guessing that your system has malware on it that initiated the change without your knowledge. The first thing you need to do is adjust the settings in Chrome to prevent it from using a web proxy. Here’s how: [Read more…]