Ah, the web browser. Quite possibly most used program on your entire computer. You use it to read interesting content, interact with friends, watch videos, share pictures, and much more. Here are 12 things you can do to simplify and speed up your web browsing.
1. use a minimal browser. There are a lot of great browsers out there, but few can truly claim to be minimalist. I personally prefer Google Chrome, but there’s a lot to be said for Opera as well. Both are speedy, light browsers.
2. browse with few tabs. I’ve seen multi-taskers browse with 20+ active tabs. While it may seem more productive, you can get more done when you focus on one thing at a time.
3. cut down on addons and extensions. Extensions can be awesome, but having more than a couple can slow things down and clutter your toolbar. I personally have none, but that's not for everyone. If you can’t part with all of them, try getting down to as few as possible and disabling the rest until you need to use them.
4. minimal homepage. Your homepage is the very first thing your browser loads, so choosing a light/minimal page is important. Sites like AOL and Yahoo may give you a lot of useful information, but they don’t make great start pages. I recommend using Google, about:blank, the New Tab page – anything that's simple and loads quickly.
5. click to play flash. Flash is frustrating. It’s slow and crashes frequently. Awkward! Only use it when you have to with the “Click to Play” setting in Chrome. Find the option in the Content/Plugins section of Settings. You can even turn it off completely if you have a mind to. If you use another browser, use Google to find out how to configure Flash.
6. readability. Amazing little bookmarklet that lets you read articles without clutter. Drag the bookmark to your toolbar to set it up, and click it when you want to read something in peace.
7. pocket. Formerly called “Read it Later”, Pocket is an awesome bookmarklet that saves articles, videos, and all links in general for later reading. Very helpful if you don’t have time to read something right away. I actually prefer it to keeping bookmarks.
8. keyword bookmarks. Talk about ninja-like surfing! I set up a few keywords like “gm” for gmail, “gr” for google reader, “yt” for youtube, and so on. I’ve just recently started accessing my favorite sites this way, and I love it. I got the idea here 3 years ago, but didn’t figure out how to do it in Google Chrome until a few months ago. It’s made my browsing so much faster and simpler. No more typing full links into my address bar or keeping up with a bunch of bookmarks. Whew.
9. learn to type faster. The keyboard is essential to smooth and fluid web browsing. There are a couple ways to improve your speed. You can take various typing courses (paid or otherwise), or you can practice typing on your own. Get on Google Docs and type out a book chapter a day, or listen to music and try to type out the lyrics as you hear them.
10. full screen browsing. You may not be able to efficiently browse in full screen mode (F11) all the time, but it’s awesome when you are going to be on a single page for several minutes (checking your email, watching a long video, catching up on social networking, etc).
11. teach yourself basic keyboard shortcuts. A few simple, but time-saving shortcuts are:
Ctrl+L to go to the url bar
Ctrl+T to open a new tab, Ctrl+W to close it
F5 to refresh
Ctrl+1-9 to switch between open tabs
Ctrl+Shift+T to open a recently closed tab
Alt+left or right arrow to go back or forward
12. disable unnecessary effects. Dig through browser settings to switch off things you can do without. In Chrome settings, there are options to disable: images, flash, plugins, javascript, & cookies. Doing so will give you a pretty much text-only browser, but if you don’t mind that, help yourself!
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