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From...
Enhance Navigator's performance with simple cache-management
July 15, 1998
Web posted at: 2:30 PM EDT
by Jim O'Donnell
(IDG) -- Customizing your cache is one way to improve Navigator's performance. These tips tell you how to clear your cache, find the optimal settings for your memory and disk caches, and discover just how much space is being used. For good measure, we've thrown in two navigation tips that will help you easily travel back and forth between pages.
Disk Full of Cache
Even if you've set your browser cache to a relatively high value, you might find it full before you know it. One solution is to clear the cache on a regular basis. To do this, go to Edit, Preferences, Advanced, Cache. Click the button that says Clear Disk Cache.
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Cache and Carry
So how much space should you allot to your disk and memory cache settings? It really depends on how much unused disk space you have on your hard drive and the types of Web pages you visit daily or weekly. If you're a frequent surfer (that is, you visit many sites over and over again), your best bet is to set the size at a higher value than the default.
Go ahead and experiment, though. If you tend to hit the same handful of sites over and over, or if you don't mind waiting a bit longer to download Web pages, you may not wish to give up so much precious space to the cache.
To change your cache settings, go to Edit, Preferences, Advanced, Cache.
Tango and Cache
A quick way to find out which files are living off your, um, FAT, is to type about:cache in your URL Location box. To see the memory cache, type about:memory-cache. Finally, to see just the images stored in your cache, type about:image-cache. You'll get stats on how much disk space is being used and a list of the files stored.
I Get Around
The Back and Forward buttons on the Navigator toolbar are a great way to move among Web pages. If you're a keyboard fan, here's how you can go back and forth between viewed pages without using the mouse: Press Alt-left arrow to move back a page and Alt-right arrow to move forward a page.
Get Back to Where You Once Belonged
Do you ever find yourself stuck on a page? That is, no matter how many times (or how fast) you click Back, it just reloads the same page for its own perverse amusement? Well, the fancy code that's keeping you there may be pretty quick on the draw, but you can beat it. Just head on up to the Go menu and select the entry next to the number 1 (the entry beside 0 ought to be the page you're stuck on, so 1 would be the page just before it). You'll go immediately to that page and from there you should be able to navigate back and forth as normal.
Edited by Lisa Moskowitz.