The Illinois
Ornithological Society

Web Browsing Tips & Shortcuts

Helpful tips and shortcuts for browsing this and other Web sites are given below.

To immediately go to the top of any Web page, press the Home key on your keyboard. This tip is especially useful if you are at the bottom of a very long Web page and you don't want to scroll back to the top.
To immediately go to the bottom of any Web page, press the End key on your keyboard.

To find a word or phrase on a Web page while in Windows, press the Ctrl and F keys on your keyboard at the same time. Enter your word or phrase in the box that appears and press Enter. The first instance of your search term will be highlighted on the Web page. For Mac users, press the Apple and F keys on your keyboard at the same time.

To select all the text on a Web page while in Windows, press the Ctrl and A keys on your keyboard at the same time. For Mac users, press the Apple and A keys on your keyboard at the same time.
To select a word, sentence, paragraph or portion thereof, click once with your mouse to the right of what you want to select, and then click to the left of what you want to select while holding down the Shift key on your keyboard.

To bookmark a Web page, press the Ctrl key (PCs) or the Apple key (Macs) and the D key at the same time.

To find an item on a known Web site using the search engine Google, enter the search term (in quotes) followed by the word site: (yes, the colon too) and then the address of the Web site you want to search through. For example, if you were looking for information about Thayer's Gull on the IOS Web site the syntax would look like this: "Thayer's Gull" site:www.illinoisbirds.org. Press Enter and a list of pages with your search term will come up, if of course the search term is found.

Sometimes opening PDF (portable document format) files from Web page links can be difficult. One solution to this problem is to right-click directly on the link that contains the PDF and choose Save Target As from the menu that appears. Save the file to your desktop and double-click it to open it up. The PDF will open up in Adobe Reader. Note: This method also works with other files, such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

To save a Web page with graphics from Internet Explorer or Mozilla to your hard drive, click the File menu in the upper left corner of the browser's Menu Bar. From the drop-down list that appears, choose Save As (IE) or Save Page As (Mozilla). Pick a destination to save the file to in the Save in entry field, and in the Save as type entry field choose Web page, complete. Click the Save button and the Web page, including graphics, will be saved to your hard drive, and you won't have to go online to view it. If you just want to save the text of a Web page without any graphics, select Save Without Picture from the File menu in IE, choose a destination to save the file to in the Save in entry field, and click the Save button. In Mozilla select the File menu and then Save Page As. Choose a destination to save the file to in the Save in entry field, select Web page, HTML only in the Save as type entry field, and then click the Save button. Note that you will have to open the saved file from within Mozilla by dragging it onto the browser window, or by right clicking it with your mouse and choosing the Open With Mozilla command.

The "F" keys are the single row of keys near the top of a standard computer keyboard. These keys are numbered from F1 to F12 and perform a variety of functions. Pressing the F5 key refreshes a Web page. When you refresh a Web page you're getting the most current, up-to-date copy of that page. Pressing the F11 key enlarges the browser window so that a Web page fills the entire screen. Press the F11 key again to return the browser window to its previous size. Note that F Lock must be activated for the F keys to work. To activate F Lock, press the F Lock key at the far right end of the F key row on your keyboard. Note: On some Mac keyboards, the F key commands described above do not work.

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