General Browsing Tips

Favorites / Bookmarks are your friend

No matter which browser you use, you will have someplace to put a list of sites that you go to often. Internet Explorer calls them "Favorites". Firefox, Opera and most other browsers call them "Bookmarks". In either case, they generally allow you to organize and categorize your site lists, so it should be reasonably easy to find what you need. It's also very easy to prune the list.

Put any site you think you might visit more than very rarely in your bookmarks. If you want, create a sublist called "Rarely Used" or something like that, so you don't clutter up your main list too much. This way, you don't accidentally go to the wrong site because you made a typo, or typed the wrong extension (.org, .com etc.) Some of the worst filth-meisters use what is known as the "fat finger syndrome" to lure people to their sites. What this means is that they create site names that are similar to legitimate site names and count on people mistyping their address. But, if you click on something in your favorites list, that won't happen.

Google for testing

The nice thing about google is that it's a text only site, including the search results. It can be made your automatic search engine, which means that if you have Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.x or 3.x you can type a word into the search box near the address bar, and you'll go to Google's page of results. This is good when you want to test your internet connection without going to a page that might be in your computer's cache, or the cache of your internet service provider. If you type a random word into the search bar and your internet access is ok, you will get a new page of results, and you can be sure that it's not be served up from the cache. At the same time you can be confident that even if you did make a typing error, you won't accidentally find yourself at some horrible site.

Enable a Pop-Up stopper

All the major browsers allow you to stop pop-ups. If the built in capabilities are not easy enough to use, eg you need to allow pop-ups on some sites but not on others ans setting that up is complicated, check out what add-on options exist. There is usually more than one option, so you should be able to find something that works reasonably well.

Enable an image blocker

Some sites have acceptable text content, but the graphics range from inappropriate to appallingly bad. Using either the browser's built in tools or an add on to turn off images can reduce these issues. It's not a complete solution, because sometimes you need some of the images, but not the others, which are problematic. Also, sometimes the images are part of something and cannot be suppressed by a standard image blocker.

 

Use any additional tools your browser allows to block unacceptable content

All the major browsers give you some built in tools to block unacceptable content. Make use of them. In addition, both Internet Explorer and Firefox have add-ons to block more content, or to make it easier to use the built in tools. Although you cannot depend on these to always block every bit of objectionable content, a good set up can really make a huge difference.

Think before you click on ANYTHING

Clicking on links is not always a terrible idea. But, it's trouble often enough, that you really need to think twice before you click on a link. If the llink came in email, makes sure that the mail really came from a trusted source. Also, think about what types of content someone might send you. For instance, you could have a friend who would do any favor in the world for you. Or maybe it's a relative who is not (yet) frum. If she doesn't quite get the tznius issues you are concerend about, you may want to check what the link is intended to take you to before clicking on the link. If you are clicking on a link in a web page, understand the policies of the the page owners. If you are looking at the results of a search engine search, use the provided snippet and the address to give you a clue regarding the appropriateness of the site. It's not foolproof, but it can cut down on the number of awful sites you hit.