Internet > World
Wide Web > Advanced
Use >
Miscellaneous Web Tips
A few miscellaneous
web tips not included elsewhere are described below:
- Location shortcut. With
most
browsers, you can put the cursor in the URL location field in one action by pressing
the <tab>
key or <shift><tab>. The current URL will then be highlighted, and
you can start typing a new URL or edit the existing one. Remember that you don't
need to type the "http://", since it will be added automatically.
- Finding phrases. There are so many pages
on the Web that they include many odd combinations of words. Try searching
for odd phrases of words, any real or nonsensical phrase, and see if someone
somewhere has written it. A few examples
are shown below:
- Protocol change. You can sometimes
change the "http" to "ftp" in the location field to access an Internet site running
the
file transfer protocol, as in:
http://www.twenty.net/index.html
--->
ftp://twenty.net/
If
the site is running an FTP server, then this will display all of the folders and
files on the site without the web structuring, letting you explore the underlying
structure of the site. - Searching yourself. You can search
for names and numbers that identify yourself. For example, you can search for
the digits of your phone number, your name, your address, and related information
and see what you find. Is the data you find related to you, or is it shared
by
someone else?
- Hidden words. Pages with a large blank
space at the end are sometimes loaded with repeated text to bias search engines
towards those words. These words are often hidden by making them the same colour
as the background of the site, but you sometimes reveal them by selecting "select
all" with the command <ctrl>-a, which will cause the browser to highlight
and reveal all of the text on the page.
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