Several keyboard / mouse shortcuts are listed in the
program-menus. Here are some others which come in handy when editing input
fields. They are either not documented or not obvious:
-
CTRL-u removes previous input from
the field.
-
ALT-a highlights the input and
thus sends it to the clipboard. Which means you can paste it somewhere else.
-
CTRL-v inserts the last line copied
in Navigator using CTRL-c. That's convenient for non-linked URLs: highlight
one of them, press CTRL-c, ALT-o, (CTRL-u if necessary) and CTRL-v.
If you want to insert lines copied from outside Navigator, use the
middle mouse button (there seems to be no button combination for this, which
is quite annoying). Don't ask me why CTRL-v only works within Navigator :-\.
It doesn't work either if you just highlight the selection, you have
to use CTRL-c!
-
TAB cycles through the buttons
and options clockwise, SHIFT-TAB counterclockwise.
-
CTRL-a moves the cursor to the
beginning of the line, andCTRL-e to its end.
-
Two clicks on the 'Location' field let you overwrite
the currently displayed address.
Note that in some 6.x versions, these might not work.
M tried to remap the shortcuts to their Windows equivalents via 'Netscape.ad',
but that didn't work out well. To get the original Unix shortcuts back, you
have to rename or delete the file '/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Netscape.ad'.
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These options are especially useful in combination with
the Communicator suite. They allow you to start parts of the suite without
having to go via the browser:
- Start Netscape Mail with inbox:
netscape -mail
- Start Netscape Messenger and open default news server:
netscape -news
- Start Composer (with optional file):
netscape
-edit [URL]
- Show command line options:
netscape -help
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You can control much of Netscape's functions from the
command line. This feature is called Remote Control.
For instance,
netscape -remote 'openURL(http://home.netscape.com)'
will open 'home.netscape.com' in the active Netscape
window (for Remote Control to work, there has to be a Netscape process already
running). To open the URL in a new window, type
netscape -remote 'openURL(http://home.netscape.com,
new-window)'
Another possible use of this feature is bookmarking
pages which do not have <title> tags:
netscape -remote 'addBookmark(http://home.netscape.com,
Netscape Home)'
would add the URL 'http://home.netscape.com' with the
title 'Netscape Home' to the Bookmarks list.
Alternatively, one could write a primitive shell script
like this:
#!/bin/sh #nbsm - adds bookmarks echo -n "Enter complete URL to bookmark: " read a echo -n "Enter name for bookmark: " read b netscape -remote "addBookmark($a,$b)" echo "Added"
To make entering the URL less painful, click at the
URL in the location bar, hit ALT-a. Now you only have to press SHIFT-INS
at the first script prompt and supply the name for the bookmark at the second.
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The Junkbuster
gives you fine-grained control over what your browser tells which servers
about you (browser type, referrer headers) and what content which servers
are allowed to put onto your machine (cookies, ad-banners, images, URLs).
It works on every major operating system and is well documented.
Note that it doesn't work out of the box for the new
Mozilla browser, since this browser uses version 1.1 of the HTTProtocol.
You have to configure Mozilla to use HTTP 1.0.
Also make sure you've got the latest blockfile for maximum
effect.
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The invention of the <blink> tag is probably one
of the worst crimes Netscape ever committed. It is non-standard and obnoxious.
Luckily, it is very easy to get rid of. Add the line:
Netscape*blinkingEnabled: False
to your ~/.Xdefaults file and run
xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults
Restart the browser and there will be no more blinking
text.
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Ever wondered why your home directory keeps growing
and growing? Run
du -m --max-depth=3 | sort -n
in your home directory and you might discover that the
'.netscape/cache' directory is around 100 MB (or even larger). What has happened?
The size of the disk cache is configured in 'Edit-Preferences-Advanced-Cache'.
Usually it is set to five MB. The problem is that every instance of the browser
opens its own cache sub-directory. So you've got a growing amount
of directories in '.netscape/cache' which are just below five MB ... Pressing
the 'Clear Disk Cache' button only clears the currently used directory,
but not the others.
To cope with this brain dead behavior, I've added this
command to my '/etc/rc.d/rc.local':
rm -rf /home/tom/.netscape/cache/*
(Adjust the path to your setup.) This empties the cache
directory on each reboot.
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I don't have the whole communicator suite on my disk,
just the browser. I'm using mutt for my
mail, Pan as my newsreader and write
my HTML by hand ;-). One disadvantage was that 'mailto:' links didn't work
(those links which bring up an instance of Netscape Mail with the address
already entered).
No longer! muttzilla allows you
to use mail programs like mutt or Pine as a substitute for Netscape Mail.
Compile, install, configure '/etc/muttzilla.conf' and off you go. Next time
you click on a 'mailto' link, your favorite mail program will open.
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