The best time to surf. After midnight (between 2AM and 7AM) is a great time to surf the web. Unfortunately it's even a greater time to sleep.

Bookmarks. If you find a web site that you will want to visit again, make a bookmark of that site. In Netscape Navigator click on the word Bookmarks at the top of the screen and then click on Add Bookmark.   Whenever you want to return to this web site, click on Bookmarks and then click on the name of the site on the pulldown menu. In Internet Explorer click on the word Favorites at the top of the screen and then click on Add To Favorites. When you want to return to that site, click on Favorites and then the name of the site in the pulldown menu.

Error loading the web page. If you an error message or receive only part of the page, hit the Reload (or Refresh) button or try again later on. If you don't get through, the page may no longer exist or the site's webmaster may be updating the page and preventing you from getting in. Bookmark the page and try to visiting it again at some other time. It is also possible that Surf Shop's link to the Internet backbone is down (although this rarely happens). You can test this by visiting popular sites that seldom goes offline, like www.yahoo.com or www.cnn.com.

Stop button is very useful. If your browser cannot connect to a page at all, try hitting the Stop button and then clicking on the hyperlink again. You will often connect immediately. If you are able to connect to a page but it is taking a long time to load, the page probably contains excessive graphics which are sometimes fun but often annoying. Click on the Stop button and you will see most of the texts on that page. If you want to see the full page, you can always click on Reload or Refresh.

Downloading. Be careful when downloading programs from an unknown source where you may get computer virus. We recommend that you frequently visit our Download Zone where you can safely download programs and games that are available on the Internet. We update the Zone at least every week to give you the most popular and most current versions of downloadable programs.

Location of downloaded files. Be sure to remember where you put your downloaded files. The best way to do this is to create a "download" folder in your hard disk and always choose that folder when downloading programs. You can move them around later if you want to keep them somewhere else.

Virus protection. You must have a good virus protection program installed in your computer. If you still don't have one, we recommed McAfee Virus Scan program that you can get from our Download Zone. Since hundreds of virus programs are being concocted by nasty programmers every month, you must update your virus program on a regular basis. Beware of attachments in e-mail from well meaning friends. Computer viruses are much like real viruses --- you can catch them from the ones you love.

Guessing a web address. Most big corporations (especially the popular ones like Disney, BMW, Microsoft, and 3M) have their names as their web site addresses. You normally have to add www. before the name and .com after the name (i.e. www.disney.com, www.bmw.com and www.3m.com). However, other sites use different domain name suffix like .org for non-profit organizations (such as www.pbs.org), .gov for U.S. military or governement offices (such as www.nasa.gov), and .edu for universities and colleges (such as www.harvard.edu).

Quick searches using the address box. If you are using MS Internet Explorer , type ? (question mark) or find or go in the address box followed by the word/name you are looking for (make sure there is space between ? and the word). If the site you want to find has two or more words, you don't have to type ?. The browser will assume that you want to search for the site if there is a space between the words that you typed in the address box.

Search the loaded web page. Sometimes web pages are very long and it's hard to find what you are looking for. Most browsers have a Find button at the top of the screen. Click on Find and type in a word. Your browser will take you to that word on the currently displayed page and highlight it wherever it appears as well. In Internet Explorer, click Edit on the menu bar and choose Find in the pulldown menu.

Avoid fancy e-mail messages. You may have an e-mail program that can do a lot of fancy colors, sounds and hyperlinks. If the person to whom you are writing doesn't have the same program to read your e-mail, your letter will still be readable but will look quite different and possibly quite bizarre.

Use the same password. Several websites insist on a password even though they are free. Since you will be visiting a lot of sites that require password (and you may visit them again), always use the same password so you won't have to rack you brain trying to recall the password that applies to each site. If security is important (such as logging on to Surf Shop's server) then by all means use a unique password.

You can have two or more browser windows. Any browser will allow you to visit more than one website at the same time. This is particularly useful when you are downloading a large file or graphic-heavy webpage. To open a new browser window, click File on the menu bar, choose New, then click Window. If your computer can multitask, simply start your browser program again while leaving the originally started browser program open.