#4 - Backward Surfing

Recall times when you’re casually surfing and seem to be passing by too many ‘excellent’ sites? It can feel like travelling on a tour bus where there’s too much to see and no time to explore. Often, you move past a good site without favouriting or bookmarking anything simply because:

1. You’re not able to tell from a cursory look whether the page or site is worth flagging compared to what you might encounter in a few moments.

2. You’ve been hopping through many sites in a ‘linear’ fashion (i.e. following a trail of links) and so it’s hard to compare the current and previous sites.

3. You much rather finish identifying all the dozens of ‘good’ links first before going back for a second round of deeper exploration.

In essence, backward surfing works for the many situations when you’re tempted to start clicking Backspace, the browser Back button or surf the history bar because you think you’ve missed something. So here’s the tip: don’t break your surfing momentum; simply “save” your current status by duplicating your current tab or window. In the original window, you can start backward surfing to all the ’stops’ on the journey you would have in retrospect wanted to make. At each of these ’stops’, duplicate the window again before continuing backwards. 

At the end, or rather the beginning, you should now have all your interesting sites open in separate tabs without needing to use bookmarking. This means that when you finally do bookmark sites, they would really represent the best of your surfing efforts.

Browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7.0: Alt+Enter while in address bar (duplicate window)
• Mozilla Firefox: Alt+Enter while in address bar (duplicate window)
• Opera: Shift+Enter while in address bar, Hold Right+Down-Up mouse gesture (duplicate window)

Speed Value: +120%

Rating: 4 Stars

Tips: Intro  #1  #2  #3  #4         Exit (ipodmusic)

#3 - Mouse Gestures

This lesser known but distinctive innovation of Opera’s is really worth featuring at no.3. If you have been practising the first two tips, you’ll realise it demands the use of both hands. Now that’s ok for most situations except when, like me, you sometimes want to relax and surf with mouse in one hand and cup of coffee in the other!

Link Gestures

  Open link in a new window in the foreground

1. Point to link
2. Hold down right button
3. Gesture down
4. Release

  Open link in a new window in the background 

1. Point to link
2. Hold down right button
3. Gesture down-up 
4. Release

Gestures take some retraining of surfing habits as we’re programmed to automatically head to the browser toolbar or use a keyboard shortcut. However the investment does pay off handsomely. For example, instead of having to repeatedly navigate your mouse precisely over the ‘close tab’ button on the tab corner, just gesture an ‘L’ while holding down the right mouse button from anywhere on the screen. And if you have dozens of tabs opened from using speedsurfing tips 1 and 2, you’ll find closing and scrolling through them a stroll in the park.

Again as mentioned, Opera is not for everyone. It’s a techie’s dream browser though still worth knowing about as I suspect IE and FF are dying to rip it off.

Browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7.0: Click Wheel+Move Mouse (panning)
• Mozilla Firefox: Click Wheel+Move Mouse (panning)
• Opera: Hold Right+Click Left (back), Hold Left+Click Right (forward), Hold Right+Roll Wheel (jump tabs), Hold Right+DownRight (close), Hold Right+DownUp (duplicate). See Full List

Speed Value: +180%

Rating: 5 Stars

Tips: Intro  #1  #2  #3  #4         Exit (ipodmusic)