Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Most of us are used to refreshing the current web page in our browser by either clicking the Refresh icon or pressing the F5 key, but there is a better way to refresh a page: Press the Ctrl+F5 key combination.
Why is pressing Ctrl+F5 to refresh the current page better than the other two options? Because it clears the browser cache for the page before reloading it into the browser. [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…]
Microsoft recently released Windows 8, and along with it they also released Internet Explorer 10 as part of the package.
The guys and gals in Redmond are boasting that IE 10 is 20% faster than IE 9, and several independent tests have confirmed that it is indeed speedier than its predecessor, although by how much varies considerably from test to test.
I haven’t performed any speed tests of my own, but after using IE 10 during my normal work day for a while I can say that it is noticeably faster. I still prefer using Google Chrome as my primary browser, but I find myself using IE 10 more than I ever used IE9. [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…]
If you have friends or family members who love all things Apple, they have probably mentioned more than once how “superior” Safari is to the popular web browsers that Windows users run on their PCs.
What they probably have not told you however is that you can run Safari just fine on your Windows PC! It’s available as a free download from a number of popular download sites with Apple’s blessing.
I’ve been testing Safari for a while now and I can report that I’m happy with it. I haven’t noticed the massive speed advantage that many Apple enthusiasts claim (which could be because it’s running under Windows instead of in its natural environment of a Mac or iPad), but it’s a speedy browser for sure.
If you’d like to give the latest version of Safari a test drive on your own PC, you can download it for free right here.