Chapter 43. Ten Terrific Online Tips to Help and Traps to Avoid

Many people use computers online more than they use them offline. They surf the Web, manage email, browse newsgroups, and chat with instant messaging. The time consumed by those activities often adds up to be more than the time they spend in traditional computing activities such as word processing, electronic spreadsheets, and financial record-keeping.

This chapter shows you ten ways to take your online experience to the next level without sacrificing safety and speed.

Stay Up-to-Date

Although this chapter’s tips and traps aren’t ranked in any specific order of importance, keeping your computer up-to-date is the primary means of helping most people to ensure their security and to keep their web-browsing experience safe. In addition, you’re less likely to experience problems because your system programs remain up-to-date and running using the latest available versions.

When you select Windows Update from your Vista Start menu, you should see something like Figure 43.1. In the figure, it’s obvious that the computer’s Windows Vista is up-to-date and that no updates are available.

Figure 43.1. Keeping your computer up-to-date is the best way to guard against threats.

Vista offers to maintain an up-to-date computer for you. When you click the Change Settings link in the Windows Update’s left window pane, you can click to select the option Install Updates Automatically and then select a frequency and time that’s best for you. To really keep things updated, select Every Day and choose a time that won’t conflict with anything you’re doing, such as 3:00 a.m.

If you choose any of the other options, you open yourself up for problems unless you routinely and consistently check the updates manually and install them when they’re available.

The great thing about Windows Update is that it checks your computer to see which Microsoft products you’ve installed, such as Microsoft Office and Windows Defender, and updates those when updates become available.

Review Internet Explorer’s Options

Select Tools, Internet Options from Internet Explorer’s menu. Remember, IE displays a menu across the top of your web page when you press Alt. Click the Advanced tab to display the customization list shown in Figure 43.2. Each item in the list describes a different aspect of Internet Explorer that you can control, from browsing tasks to toolbar information.

Figure 43.2. You can completely customize Internet Explorer.

You’ll find options that change the way IE responds as you browse the Internet, and the list of options is huge. Some are technical in nature, such as Disable Script Debugging, and if you don’t know what an option is for, it’s best to leave it alone. For the others, you can change them to suit your preferences.

Many Internet Explorer pros forget about some of the options that would benefit them. For example, the option for printing background colors and images is usually unchecked, so when you print web pages and wonder where the color went, the option to print the background color is turned off. Clicking to uncheck the Do Not Search from the Address Bar option means that you don’t have to go to the Search box to search the Internet; just type your search term in the Address bar where you’d normally type a web address, and IE performs the search.

Pay Attention to That Phishing Detector

As explained in Chapter 37, “Exploring the Internet with Vista and Internet Explorer,” your Address bar changes colors when Internet Explorer senses that you’re viewing a phony website that’s masquerading as another. If you click an email link that’s supposed to take you to eBay.com, but IE displays a red background in the Address bar, you’re almost surely not on an eBay.com page and you should not enter your username or password.

This one tip alone could save your bank and PayPal accounts from being robbed of every cent in them.

Save Your Tabbed Home Pages and Order Them Properly

If you find yourself returning to the same site almost every time you start Internet Explorer, you might want to make that page your home page so that IE automatically displays it every time you surf the Internet. You can have multiple home pages open in tabs across IE every time you start the program.

Adding one or more home pages to IE is simple and many people do it. Just click the down arrow to the right of the Home button at the top of IE’s toolbar and select Add or Change Home Page when you surf to a web page you want to add to your tabbed set of home pages.

Links Take You There Fast

Used less frequently than tabbed home pages but often just as helpful are page links that you can add to the top of your Internet Explorer window. Normally, the links aren’t displayed, but by right-clicking on a blank area of your IE toolbar (such as to the left of the Home page icon), and clicking to check the Links option, the Links bar appears above your tabs.

Your Links bar can hold one or more web page links. Click a link and IE takes you right there. Figure 43.3 shows a Links bar with five link buttons. When you click a button, the corresponding page opens in your current browser page.

Figure 43.3. A Links bar keeps your frequently visited web pages just a click away.

Click your Add to Favorites button to add web pages to your Links bar. (Ctrl+D is the shortcut key for opening the Add to Favorites box.) Instead of adding to a traditional Favorites folder, however, add the link to the Links folder as shown in Figure 43.4.

Figure 43.4. Add a web page to your Links bar from within your Add to Favorites dialog box.

To remove a link, right-click the link and select Delete. One of the first links you now should remove is the one that appears when you first use Internet Explorer: Customize Links, a link to a page that tells how to add links to your Links bar.

Add Your Links to Your Taskbar Too

When you create IE links, Vista keeps track of those links and makes them available on your Windows taskbar, too.

Right-click a blank area on your taskbar, point to Toolbars, and select Links to place a check mark next to the option. A Links area appears on your taskbar and it holds all your web link buttons. Whether or not IE is open, you need only to display your Windows taskbar and click any link to cause Vista to open IE to that link’s site.

If your taskbar begins to get full, the Links buttons won’t all have room to appear. Just click the arrow to the right of the links to display a pop-up list of the rest of your links that there wasn’t room for on your taskbar, as Figure 43.5 shows. Click a link to open that web page.

Figure 43.5. Click any link on your taskbar’s Links bar to open that website.

Keep Windows Mail’s Deleted Folder Clean

Like files you delete that go to Windows Vista’s Recycle Bin, email messages that you delete from your Inbox and other Windows Mail folders don’t really go away; they move to your Deleted Items folder. If you want to free space of unwanted, old email messages completely, routinely open your Deleted Items folder and delete the messages there. You have to confirm the delete because Windows Mail wants you to remember that the files are truly gone when you delete them from the Deleted Items folder.

Keeping Windows Mail’s Deleted Items folder clear keeps hundreds and even thousands of messages from potentially appearing there and slowing down Windows Mail. If you send something to your Deleted Items folder by accident, or later decide you want to keep something there before you empty the Deleted Items folder, you can drag messages from your Deleted Items folder to any other folder at the left of the Windows Mail screen. A clean Deleted Items folder, a folder that routinely gets very large if you don’t monitor it, also decreases the time it takes to back up your computer.

If you select Windows Mail’s Tools, Options menu option and click Advanced, the Settings dialog box opens. Click the Maintenance button in the dialog box’s lower-right corner to open Figure 43.6’s Maintenance dialog box.

Figure 43.6. Keep Windows Mail running smoothly by cleaning up old, deleted items periodically.

At the top of the Maintenance dialog box is the Empty Messages from the Deleted Items Folder on Exit option. If you click to check this option, every time you exit Windows Mail, Windows Mail erases all your Delete Items folder’s contents. This is a convenient way to keep major clutter from piling up in Windows Mail; of course, it also means that if you delete something by accident and realize you’ve done so later, you won’t be able to get the message back. Most users prefer to leave this option unchecked and manually handle the Deleted Items folder.

Your Inbox Should Also Be Cleared

In addition to keeping your Deleted Items folder clear, if you keep your Inbox folder cleared of most of its messages you will be better off. An organized email system is a productive email system. Making it a priority to read each incoming message as soon as you can and moving that message to another folder when you finish with it—or deleting the message—keeps your Inbox clear so that you know that whatever is in your Inbox needs your attention.

If you’d like, create a new folder named Follow-Up and move emails that you need to respond to later, but don’t currently have time for, from your Inbox to there. This maintains your cleared Inbox goal and gives you a one-stop place to go when you have time to correspond and follow-up to emails you’ve received that need your attention. (Some email systems, such as Google’s Gmail, do not use multiple folders to store messages. Because there is only a single Inbox folder, mail organization is done using various sorting and searching tools.)

Check Email More Often

If you receive much email throughout the day, select Tools, Options and decrease the time that Windows Mail waits before checking for new email on the General tabbed page. If you read your email only once or twice a day, you might want to check for new email less often than the 30-minute default so that your system runs more efficiently when you don’t want email. You must have Windows Mail running before it can check for new email.

Windows Mail emits a sound when new email arrives. When you hear that sound, it’s time to check the Windows Mail Inbox for new messages. On the Options General page, check or uncheck the Play Sound When New Messages Arrive option to request or cancel the new message sound. (Chapter 24, “Controlling Windows Vista,” explains how to change the sound that plays every time you get a new message.)

Take an Internet Refresher

With today’s programs filled to the brim with features and options, it seems as though no matter how long you use something, there are commands and features that you miss that could help you do something faster or simpler. In the olden days of computers when software came with helpful manuals, you could skim through the manual every few months, and another new tip or procedure that you forgot about or never knew before would jump out.

Because software no longer comes with comprehensive manuals, you can turn to the Web for the same information. You can get an Internet Explorer refresher from within Internet Explorer itself by selecting Help, Internet Explorer Tour. IE opens the IE tour website window, shown in Figure 43.7, and guides you through a tour of IE features to show you new ways to use the product you might not have thought of before.

Figure 43.7. Use Internet Explorer to learn about features you might have forgotten about or never known.

Chapter Wrap-Up

You’ve now protected yourself while online and you have learned some insider’s secrets to achieving a better online experience.

Your initial Windows Vista education is over, so now it’s time to really get started mastering the operating environment. The only way to really learn Vista is to use Vista. You have all the tools necessary to do just that. After a brief concluding chapter that discusses the future of you and Vista, you’ll be done with this book’s journey.