Page 1  Home

Page 2  BDays n Pics

Computer tips

Household tips

don't click here

Find out ip information from http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/ Felipe's fixes

Back to top

Translating Text In Opera 6
Opera 6 is a great browser for translations--we've already mentioned that you can translate from one currency to another, so now we're going to look at translating text into another language. Since it seems to us that we often run across what appears to be interesting information in German, Spanish, Italian, and French, we could use a quick translation. It doesn't have to be a perfect translation--just good enough to get the gist of the article. When you use Opera 6, all you have to do to translate text is highlight the text and right-click it. Choose Translate and then select the necessary language pair.

- Sue Whitehouse  

Back to top

Default Stationery For Outlook Express
This tip is based on Outlook Express 6. If you'd like to always send your mail messages with specific stationery, here's how. Run Outlook Express and choose Tools|Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Compose tab. Now, under "Stationery" select the check box labeled "Mail." Click Select and double-click the stationery you want to use. Click OK to close the dialog box and apply your stationery selection.

- Sue Whitehouse

Clear The Microsoft Internet Explorer Autocomplete History
The AutoComplete history for forms, etc. can get full (or corrupted). To clear the AutoComplete history, run Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (or greater) and choose Tools|Internet Options. When the dialog opens, click the Content tab. Click AutoComplete button to open the AutoComplete options. Now you can click Clear Forms to clear your AutoComplete history. A dialog box will open asking if you want to clear all the forms. Click OK to continue. Click OK to close the AutoComplete Settings dialog box. Back in Internet Options, click OK.

Back to top
- Sue Whitehouse

Speed Up Microsoft Internet Explorer 5x
You can speed up navigation in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5x or 6 by disabling page transitions. To make this change, run IE and choose Tools|Internet Options. When the Internet Options dialog box opens, click the Advanced tab. Deselect the check box labeled Enable Page Transitions and click OK to close the dialog box and continue.

This will help speed up some pages. Don't expect miracles,  though -- not all pages will benefit from this change.  

Back to top

Starting Outlook Express
Since you most often want to read the new messages in your Outlook Express Inbox when you run the program, why not have Outlook Express open at the inbox? To do this, run Outlook Express and choose Tools|Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the General tab (if necessary) and select the check box labeled "When starting, go directly to my inbox folder." Click OK to close the dialog box and accept your new  selection.

Using The Address Book's Folders And Groups View
You can choose the way you want to view the Address Book. Just open the Address Book and choose View|Folders and Groups. This switches the Address Book to a double-pane view similar to Windows Explorer. The various folders and groups will appear in the left pane and your contacts in the right pane.

To switch back choose View|Folders and Groups again. This command acts as a toggle and will switch you back to the  original view.  

Back to top

Disable The Personalized Favorites Menu
We were recently asked why a portion of the Favorites folder disappears after awhile in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. Bt default Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 (maybe even 5) hides Favorites that are seldom used. If you don't like this feature, choose Tools|Internet Options. When the dialog box opens, click the Advanced tab. Now, deselect the check box labeled  "Enable Personalized Favorites Menu" and then click OK.

Setting The Microsoft Internet Explorer Cache Size
The size of the Microsoft Internet Explorer cache can determine how fast you can surf the Web. However, since the cache resides on your hard disk, its size depends on how much disk space you can afford to use.

In this brave new world of super-sized hard disks, you may want to increase your IE cache size. To do this, run IE and choose Tools|Internet Options. When the dialog box opens, click the General tab (if necessary) and then click Settings. When the Setting dialog opens, adjust the "Amount of disk space to use" slider to increase (or decrease, if necessary), your IE cache size.

After you make your changes, click OK. Back in Internet Options, click OK again to close the dialog box.

- Sue Whitehouse  

Back to top

Creating An Icon For Favorite Shortcuts
If you're building a Web page, you can add your own icon to the page so that people who save your page to their Favorites folder (using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or greater) will automatically use the icon. To do this, you need to create (or locate) an icon of 16 X 16 pixels and 16 colors. Name the icon "favicon.ico" and upload it to the root folder of your Web site.

- Sue Whitehouse

Archiving Your Outlook Express Messages
If you have some really full Outlook Express folders that you'd like to empty out without losing the messages, you can use the program itself to save your messages. Just run Outlook Express and select the folder you want to save. Now, click Create Mail and enter a name for your backup in the Subject line. Next, drag all the messages you want to save from the selected folder into the new mail message. You can use Ctrl + A to select all the messages.

Dragging the messages to the new mail message will attach all the files to the new message. Choose File|Save As, locate a folder for your file and click Save.

Now, you can double-click your new file to read any of the saved messages.

- Sue Whitehouse  

Back to top

WebCrawler
You're not in any way limited to the search options offered by your browser. We use Google as our primary search engine. However, one search engine that we've always liked is WebCrawler. At least take a look just to see their cute spider logo.

You'll like WebCrawler. It's been around a long time, and does an excellent job. It's our second choice after Google.

WebCrawler is at http://www.Webcrawler.com/.

Google is at http://www.google.com/.

- Sue Whitehouse

Adding Favorites In Microsoft Internet Explorer
In Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can choose Favorites|Add to Favorites to save the current page. If you want to save the page in a particular folder, you simply click the folder you want to use and click OK.
If you want to add a page to Favorites quickly, you can press Ctrl + D. The saved page will go into the main folder.
- Sue Whitehouse  

Back to top

Modified:         Sun 7/22/01 9:41 AM

Outlook Express Email Store Root

All your mail, news, folders, etc. are stored in a single folder called the Store Root. Its usual location is C:\Windows\Application Data\Outlook Express\{GUID} where {GUID} is a Global Unique IDentifier that is used to specify an Identity.

Now, here's the good part -- you can change the Store Root folder. What we like to do is put a Mail folder on our Drive D so that the folder remains inttact even if the system crashes. To change your folder, first create the new folder. Now run Outlook Express and choose Tools|Options. When the Options dialog box opens, click the Maintenance tab. Click Store Folder and then click Change. Select your new mail folder and click OK. Back in the Options dialog box, click OK.

All your mail will now appear in the new folder.

Back to top

Disable Autocomplete In Internet Explorer
With IE's AutoComplete function active, many of the sites you visit that have forms will end up automatically filled in. If you don't want others using the computer to view your personal information, you need to turn off AutoComplete.

To do this, choose Tools|Internet Options. When the Internet Options dialog box opens, click the Content tab. Click the AutoComplete button deselect "Forms" check box. Click OK to save the changes and exit the dialog box.

- Sue Whitehouse

Fine-Tune Your Microsoft Internet Explorer Searches
You don't have to accept the standard searches in Microsoft Internet Explorer -- all you have to do is click Search and, when the Search Assistant opens, click Customize. Now you can tell Microsoft Internet Explorer which type of searches you would like to have appear in the Search Assistant and which search engines to use.

- Sue Whitehouse

Back to top

If you like using the Quick Launch toolbar but wish it didn't take up so much room on the taskbar, you can easily move it to any corner of the desktop.