BOOKMARK YOUR HISTORY
Bookmark your global history so you don't have to remember the command. One of our most popular tips, typing
about:globalhistory
in the Location field will bring up a list of sites you've previously visited. With the list onscreen, right click the window and choose Add Bookmark. Now whenever you want to take a look back, just choose the command from the Bookmarks menu. You can use your precious memory (the kind in your head) for something else.

WRITTEN BY ANONYMOUS
Even though anonymous FTP sites will let you access them without identifying yourself (after all, it's anonymous, right?), it's considered good Netiquette to do just that by using your e-mail address as a password every time it's required. Netscape Navigator allows you to automatically send your e-mail address every time you log on to an anonymous FTP site. To do this, open Netscape and select Options|Network Preferences. Click the Protocols tab, then check the option Send Email Address as Anonymous FTP Password. Click OK to close the box. If you have Netscape Mail configured as your mail client, you're all set. Your e-mail address is already in the Identity of the Mail and News Preferences box.

create a custom toolbar
Navigator 4.0 includes a new toolbar, called the Personal toolbar, that makes it easier to manage the Bookmarks folder. (The Mac version of Navigator doesn't include the Personal toolbar.) The Personal toolbar displays the links from the Toolbar Folder of the Bookmarks file. To see the Personal toolbar, select View/Show Personal Toolbar from the main menu; if the toolbar is currently minimized, click its small horizontal bar to display the bar. To add the current Web page to the Personal toolbar, move the cursor over the Page Proxy icon next to the Netsite box in the Location toolbar. When the cursor turns into a hand, drag the Page Proxy icon onto the Personal toolbar. To move an existing bookmark into the Personal toolbar, click the Bookmarks icon, select Edit Bookmarks from the drop-down list, and then select the appropriate bookmark and drag it into the Toolbar Folder. It will immediately appear in the Personal toolbar. You can even add your Messenger Inbox--or a desktop folder--to your customized toolbar. Just drag and drop its icon onto the toolbar.

search the Web from anywhere
You no longer need to go to a search site to perform a Web search; Navigator 4.0 lets you start searches directly from the Netsite box in the Location toolbar. Simply type in a phrase of two words or more and press Enter; Navigator automatically executes a search with Magellan, Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek, or Excite. If you want to search on just one word, type a plus sign (+) and a space before the word.

Trim the Fat
Slim down your e-mail archives by removing big attachments. Go to your mail folder, click on the Size column to sort by size, and use Shift+Delete to kill the space hogs.

Personal Look
Create a custom look in e-mail by selecting the Format menu in the Composition window and then choosing Page Colors/Properties. You can change the background color or add a texture or tiled-image. Click on Make This Default to use the same background for all new messages. You also can follow these steps within a new message, then choose Format/Save These Settings for New Pages.

NO GOING BACK
Have you ever browsed from site to site, then suddenly found that your Back Button is grayed out, preventing you from backing to the previous site? This likely happens because Navigator supports the Target element in HTML, which is used to open separate browser windows. If you have your browser window at full size, the second window sits on top of the first, thereby obscuring it. You don't even know you have the second window open. If you suspect this is the case, press Ctrl-Tab to cycle through the currently open Navigator windows. You can also resize or move the second window or just close it.

NATURAL SELECTION
If you want to quickly highlight everything available on a Web page, press Ctrl-A from the keyboard. All that's "selectable" is selected, making it easy to copy to the clipboard (for example).

Order Your Columns
To change the order of columns in the mail Inbox, grab the column header and move it. Messages will sort according to the first column, so you can arrange messages by sender, subject and so on. If a subject line is partially obscured by a column, place your cursor over the subject and the full text will appear.

Create a Sent Record
IMAP users can create a Sent folder that lives on the server by setting mail preferences to send you a BCC: copy of all outgoing attachments, then creating a filter to automatically file all messages from yourself to an IMAP folder.

Get Attached
When replying to a message, you can include another message as an attachment. Just drag and drop the message you want to attach onto the envelope header and send the message.

Bypass Trash
In Messenger, hit Shift+Delete to remove a message without copying it to the trash folder. It's especially useful when deleting large messages.

Indirect Downloads
Netscape Communicator lets you download the page behind a hyperlink without actually navigating to that page. Place your cursor over the link and right-click; select Save Link As from the Context menu. You'll get a window that asks you to specify the folder and name to save it under; from the Save As Type drop-down list, select either HTML or plain text format for the saved page.

Hover and Uncover
When you're using Communicator's Messenger mailbox, sometimes the subject line on a message is longer than the column width that you've allotted within your Inbox window. Don't resize the column; just hover your mouse pointer over the subject line, and its entire contents will be revealed.

NOW, WHERE WAS I?
Want to know when you (or a loved one) last visited a bookmarked site? Pull down the Bookmarks menu and choose Go To Bookmarks. When the Bookmarks window pops up, right-click the bookmark you want to check, and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. The Bookmark Properties dialog box tells you not only when the site was last visited but also when the bookmark was created.

Clear the Deck!
In Netscape Navigator, the 10 most recent URLs you typed into the Location: field are stored so you can later click on the arrow at the right and select them from a list. If you want to clear this list, first close Navigator. (Note: This tip involves editing the Registry, which can potentially harm your system if you edit or delete the wrong entries. Make sure you have current backups of your system before you try this.) In Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, run REGEDIT.EXE and double-click on HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Drill down to Software/Netscape/Netscape Navigator/URL History. For each entry listed under URL History, leave the Name field alone but clear out the Data field. When you're done, close the Registry Editor and start Netscape Navigator up again.

DOUBLE YOUR FUN
OK, you're at the coolest page in the world and you find a bunch of links you want to check out. But you want to leave the cool page onscreen and open up a new link in a new browser window. Well, you could pull down the File menu and choose New Web Browser and go from there. But you're too cool for that. No, what you do is right-click the link and choose Open In New Window.

HEADS UP
Tired of all that header information that appears with every newsgroup article you read? Go to the Netscape News menu and select Options|Show Headers, then choose the option Brief. Rather than all those lines of header stuff, you get a single line telling you the subject, who it's from, and the date posted. Conversely, if you feel you don't get enough information in the header, choose the option All from the same menu. This gives you a few more lines of information about the article. Why would you want this? Well, it may help you figure out the true origin of the article if this is in question, or it may help you figure out some technical glitch with the message.

DESTINATION: UNKNOWN
Often when you download a file, you get a dialog box called "Unknown File Type." All this means is that no helper application or special action has been configured for the file type in question. You can configure Netscape Navigator to handle these files automatically. To set this up, click the More Info button in the dialog box. You can also configure an application that will run the file right away once it's downloaded. To do this, click the Pick App button. Your other option is to save the file without running it right away. To do this, click Save File, then save the file to your computer's hard disk.

Quick URL Copying
Do you often share links with others? URLs can be a pain to transcribe, especially those really long ones. A better solution is to copy the URL to the clipboard and paste it into your e-mail message or word processor. If you're accustomed to doing this by highlighting the URL in the Location field and choosing Copy from the Edit menu, you're doing it the long, hard way. See that little chain icon to the left of the Location field? Just double click that, and you'll put the current page's URL in the clipboard. Now, paste it where you like.

TOOTHY INDICATIONS
When you view a secure document in Netscape Navigator, the number of teeth on the key icon indicates the type of encryption used. If there are two teeth, the document uses high-grade encryption, which cannot be exported from the U.S. to other countries. If it has one tooth, it uses low-grade encryption, which is allowed for U.S. export.

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T
Press Ctrl-Alt-S to turn the status bar on or off (that's the bar at the bottom of the Navigator screen that contains security, document, and mailbox status).

WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?
Enter "about:" (without the quotes) in the Location box and you get information about your Netscape software.

TAKE A MEMO
You don't need to be in the Netscape Mail window to write a message. Press Ctrl-M any time you have Navigator open--whether you're in the browser, mail window, or news window--and the message composition window opens.

THE INSIDE FRAME STORY
Frames are sort of like pages within the page. You know how Navigator allows you to see source code for a page? Well, you can do the same thing with a single frame. Click once inside the frame and choose View, Frame Source from the Navigator menu. The frame's inner secrets are revealed.

monitor message threads
Want to cut down on email and newsgroup clutter? Messenger lets you monitor specific discussion threads in email or discussion groups. This allows you to quickly cut through the noise to get only the messages that are important to you, an option that can be particularly useful in newsgroups with lots of traffic. To monitor a thread, highlight a message and choose Message/Watch Thread from the main menu. Then, to view only messages relating to watched threads, simply select View/Messages/Watched Threads With New from the main menu.

rebuild your mailboxes
If you suspect that any of your mailboxes are corrupted, you can force Communicator to rebuild them:
1. Close the Messenger Mailbox.
2. Use Explorer or File Manager to get to c:/Program Files/Netscape/Users/.
3. Open the folder with your username, then open the Mail folder inside.
4. Delete all files with an .snm extension.
5. Close Explorer and reopen the Inbox.

auto-filter your email
Communicator now allows you to set up mail filters. Setting up a filter lets you do things like store or change the priority of a message based on certain criteria. One example would be to change the priority of all messages coming from your boss to "urgent." To create a filter, select Edit/Mail Filters from the main menu, which brings up the Mail Filters dialog box. For each action you want performed, you will need to set up a separate filter.
To set up the filter described above:
Click the New button in the Mail Filters dialog box.
In the Filter Rules dialog box, give the new filter a name, such as "boss." Then select "sender" from the drop-down list to the right of "The," and "is" from the drop-down list next to "of the messages." Type your boss's email address in the box to the right of that. Select "Change priority" from the list to the right of "then," and select "Highest" from the list that appears. When a message is from your boss, it now will automatically be marked as highest priority.
Click OK twice to save the filter.
The next time a message heads your way, it will run through the filter. Experiment with the various drop-down lists in the Filter Rules dialog box to see all your options.

make better bookmarks
Navigator 4.0 makes it a little easier to organize your bookmarks. Move the cursor over the Page Proxy icon next to the Netsite box, and the cursor turns into a hand. Simply click and drag the Page Proxy icon to the Personal toolbar or the Bookmarks folder. (This feature is not supported by the Mac.) You can also click the Bookmarks icon and select Edit Bookmarks to create folders and reorganize your existing bookmarks.

make your bookmarks buttons
You can turn your bookmarks into toolbar buttons with just a few clicks. First, click the Bookmarks button and choose Edit Bookmarks; then drag your favorite bookmarks into the Personal Toolbar Folder. Your bookmarks will now show up as buttons next to (or in place of) the default buttons on your personal toolbar, so you can link to your favorite sites in one click.

create a custom toolbar
Navigator 4.0 includes a new toolbar, called the Personal toolbar, that makes it easier to manage the Bookmarks folder. (The Mac version of Navigator doesn't include the Personal toolbar.) The Personal toolbar displays the links from the Toolbar Folder of the Bookmarks file. To see the Personal toolbar, select View/Show Personal Toolbar from the main menu; if the toolbar is currently minimized, click its small horizontal bar to display the bar.
To add the current Web page to the Personal toolbar, move the cursor over the Page Proxy icon next to the Netsite box in the Location toolbar. When the cursor turns into a hand, drag the Page Proxy icon onto the Personal toolbar. To move an existing bookmark into the Personal toolbar, click the Bookmarks icon, select Edit Bookmarks from the drop-down list, and then select the appropriate bookmark and drag it into the Toolbar Folder. It will immediately appear in the Personal toolbar. You can even add your Messenger Inbox--or a desktop folder--to your customized toolbar. Just drag and drop its icon onto the toolbar.