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As you start opening all your windows, raking the yard and scrubbing away a winter's worth of woodstove/fireplace soot, you may also want to give some thought to cleaning up your home PC. Over time, you may notice that your computer seems to be slowing down and performing more sluggishly. Here are some maintenance tips to get things back in shape. This week we'll look at how to clean up your web browser.
A browser's cache prevents poor performance from repeated downloads of the same page every time you visit a site. However, checking if a page is current can also become a performance drag. There are several options for managing your browser's cache:
In most browser you will find a setting under Tools - Options (or Edit - Preferences in Netscape) for checking cache. Set "Compare the page in the cache to the page on the network" to "Once per session" to make sure you have updated pages from the site you visit.
Browsers default to a large amount of cache, but this is unnecessary and wastes disk space. In most browsers you can adjust this amount to a value between 4 Mb and 8 Mb. Here is the location of this setting in some popular browsers:
Internet Explorer: Tools - Internet Options- Temporary Internet Files. The default setting of 10% of the total disk space is unreasonable with the size of today's disk drives.
Netscape: Edit - Preferences, Advanced - Cache
FireFox: Tools - Options - Privacy - Cache tab
Opera: Tools - Preferences, Advanced - Cache
When you surf the Internet, your web browser keeps track of the sites you have visited, the addresses you have typed in, the words you searched for and other evidence of what you were doing. This information is kept to allow the software to make it easier and faster for you to revisit those sites or make another search using the same terms but it can also build up and slow performance.
To clear this web history in some of the most popular browsers:
Internet Explorer
- Click on Tools - Internet Options.
- From the General tab, click Clear History.
- You may also want to click Delete Files... and Delete Cookies...
Internet Explorer also stores information you have entered in forms (including search boxes) so that it can save re-typing the same information. This feature is called AutoComplete. To clear the AutoComplete list:
- Click on Tools - Internet Options.
- Select the Content tab.
- Click AutoComplete...
- Under Clear AutoComplete history, click Clear Forms.
Firefox
- Click on Tools - Options.
- Select Privacy.
- For History, click Clear.
- You may also want to clear Saved Form Information, Download Manager History, Cookies and Cache.
Netscape and Opera
- Click on Edit - Preferences
- Under the Category listing, select Navigator .
- From the History area, select Clear History .
- Click OK to erase history.
For more help with these features, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith) or faculty mentors Tony Basilico or Kathy Beauchene.
This YouTube video clip from the TV show The Office was sent to me by Leigh Martin from our Lincoln campus. If you have ever spent time trying to convince students that they can't trust all the information they get from the Internet, you'll appreciate this funny little clip at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRlXZ5W8lTs
Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this site in the Teaching Forum message board.
These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology
instructional support team. If you
have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to
contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips
at
http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.
This
page developed and maintained by the Information Technology
Department at CCRI. Send comments and suggestions to
edowling@ccri.edu. ©2007,
Community College of Rhode Island.
