Breaking from my seeming tradition of discussing white LEDs, I thought it might be helpful in this period of increased traffic on the Greenspun servers to describe how I browse posts without much difficulty if I manage to get to the list only once. This is written for newbies but the old hands will probably recognize the technique.

To do this, you'll need to have a desktop resolution that's high enough to have the room you'll need to have to open more than one browser window. 800 x 600 will work, but 1024 x 768 is the ideal resolution for most people. If you have the hardware and monitor to do it, higher than 1024 x 768 is good.

 

Now, open one browser window (Netscape or IE, makes no difference) and DO NOT make it full-screen. You should be able to see your Desktop behind it. Resize the window to be about 85% of the screen size at 800 x 600 resolution, or about 75% of the screen size at 1024 x 768. Travel to the TB2K forum's posting list page. You might have to try a few times to get the list depending upon traffic conditions at the time. When you get the list loaded, resize the window to make it as small as you're comfortable with as you're going to need the extra screen real-estate.

Now that you have that all-important list in view, you need not reload it for the remainder of your visit to the TB2K forum unless you want to check for new posts. To start things off, select a post to view, press and hold the Shift key on your keyboard, and click the link once. A new browser window should appear that will contain the new link. If it appears in the window that held the post list, click Back, RIGHT-click the link, and choose the open-in-new-window option.

Now that you have a window open with the post list and another that shows the post, position these comfortably so that you can switch from one to another by clicking its titlebar (top of window) or status bar (bottom of window). I like to place the list in the upper left and post in the lower right. You should be able to see either the titlebar or status bar of the other window (whichever one that is) when you have one window on top. A click to the other window will bring it to the top of the stack.

All you need to do now is drag a link from the list window to the other window to load it, and switch back and forth between the two to browse the entire post group without having to reload the list and stumble across a server-busy message. I find that refreshing the list window occasionally helps me track which posts I've read as these will change color when the page is reloaded. New posts would also appear at this time.

 

This simple multiple-window approach makes browsing lists of pages or posts a lot easier and much faster than doing it all from one window. It'll also cut down on the hit to the post list page since they browsers aren't hitting it as often. (When you click Back and return to the page, some browsers or browser versions will check the page to see if it's changed before loading from cache.)

 

Some of the other more experienced folks might have other ideas to contribute on how to make the most out of the TB2K forum while decreasing the server load as much as possible...

He spends WAY too much time on the Internet, that darn...

-- OddOne (mocklamer_1999@yahoo.com), September 23, 1999

Answers

thanks! that's new[s] to me!

-- sarah (qubr@aol.com), September 23, 1999.

I just right-click the link and choose "open in new window" for each of the links I wish to view... close em when I'm done. This way I keep the main forum page up to select another link.

-- Forum Regular (Here@Y2k.com), September 23, 1999.

OddOne Am I understanding you to say you keep more than one window open at partial size on the clipboard at the same time?

Have you tried leaving the first page of posts at full size, opening the second page (say with a particular thread) at full size, then using ALT TAB to go back and forth between windows? (You can do this with more than two windows that might include other posts, the clipboard and, say, your email software.) Thus, when you finish reading a post and ALT TAB back to the posts page, the next thread you click on should automatically open in the second window.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), September 23, 1999.