The Catalog Styler Help Guide

Appendix A. Information for Newbies

To enjoy using our site, and the Web, you should be familiar with two very important features of your browser:

The Back Button

Multiple Windows

If you are not familiar with these, please read on. You'll be glad you did.

The Back Button

This button usually appears near the top left of your browser window. It takes you back to previous pages you have viewed. Browsers keep a long list of pages viewed, so you can press the Back button over and over again, until you get all the way back to the first page that appeared in the window.

The Back button has a sister, the Forward button. You can guess what it does.

If you right-click the Back  button, you will get a list of previously viewed pages, and you can jump right to any page on the list.

On #app_shortname#, the back button is very handy if you are working on your site and need to view a help page. You can always use the Back button to get back to where you were.

The Back button does not undo changes or transactions you have made. For example, if you order a product on the web, and then change your mind, using the Back button to go back to a previous page won't cancel the order. The rule is, if you enter data in a form on a web page, and click the button, it's gone to the web server. Even so, good web sites will give you a way to correct mistakes or undo something. At least they will tell you when you can't.

The Back and Forward buttons both have keyboard shortcuts, usually Alt-Left Arrow and Alt-Right Arrow.

Sometimes the Back button is grayed out and you can't use it, even when you know perfectly well you are not looking at your first page. Usually, that means you have stumbled on the second important browse feature...

Multiple Windows

Just about every browser will run in more than one window. This lets you display a lot of different web pages at the same time. Multiple windows come in very handy on the Web, but new users are often confused by them, because they often pop up when you're not expecting them.

There are several things that cause new windows to open up:

1. You started your browser when it was already running
2. You used the File New Window command from the menu
3. You right-clicked on a link
4. some links always force a new window to open
5. some web sites use Javascript to open new windows automatically

To see what windows are open, view them, and close them, use your operating system. If you have Windows, use the Task Bar. It is usually at one of the edges of your screen, and may be  visible only when you move your mouse pointer towards it. The Task Bar will have a button for each browser window.

If you run your browser so that it covers your whole screen, new windows may pop up and hide the window you were looking at. This can trick you into thinking you are still looking at the old window. To get back to the old window, close or minimize the new window, or use the Task Bar to switch to it.

You can right-click any link on the Web and make it open up in a new window. When you left-click a link, it will usually display the a new page in your current window, replacing the page that contained the link. But if you right-click the link, a menu will pop up; choose 'Open in New Window,' and the new page will do exactly that.

Here are some very good reasons to use multiple windows:

• you know a page is going to take a long time to download. Open the page in a new window, then use your original window to surf around while you wait for the new page to finish loading.
• you want to refer to a page over and over again. On our site, for example, you can open pages with lists of available images. Then you can refer back to these images as you use another browser window to build your site.
• you want to follow a link to another page, but you haven't finished reading the current page. Just open the link in a new window, then switch to it when you are ready.

Some links always cause a new window to open. Web page designers can create links that open a new window whether you left-click it or right-click it. Considerate designers will alert you to this, but not all of them do.

The Catalog Styler links never open new windows unless you tell them to. For certain links, we do recommend it, though.

Some sites open new windows for no apparent reason. Web pages can include Javascript code that cause new windows to pop open after a time interval, or in response to an event like clicking on a checkbox. Netscape's site, for example, pops open a small window with an ad banner or two. Other sites automatically create a small table of contents window.

Other sites really go to extremes. Many porn sites, for example, are designed to open dozens of windows, often faster than you can close them.

The Catalog Styler never opens any new windows without telling you first.

Here's one more quirk about multiple windows. Not only can web sites be programmed to open up new windows, they can also affect browser windows that are already open, even windows that are hidden or minimized.

For example, a commerce site may have a home page with a bunch of links to different products. Suppose you click on a product link, and it opens up a new window with the product displayed in it. You go back to the window with the home page, so now the product window is hidden. You click on another product ... and nothing seems to happen!

Actually, the new product was displayed in the same window that had the first product. But you had hidden that window when you went back to the home page, so you never saw the product window change.

This happens because web designers can assign targets to links. Targets tell the browser which window to use to display the link. The first time a targeted link is clicked, a new window is opened to display it. Once it is open, any other link that uses the same target will appear in the same window opened by the first link.

This is an example of bad site design. These days most sites cause target windows to jump to the front of your screen whenever they change. But sites that don't do this can drive you crazy.

On the next page we'll tell you more about browsers and how they affect #app_shortname#.