● Browser Tricks (Part-1)

Using online computer technology comes with a lot of little tricks to learn, especially when it comes to browsers. Even though the list of available free browsers is becoming larger everyday (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.), most of them have common features that you should utilize.

MULTIPLE TABS OPENED
By now you are probably well aware that users can have multiple browser tabs open at one time (just like having multiple Windows or Mac windows open at the same time). Be sure to take advantage of this during both your home prep time and while presenting in front of your class. In my case, while I was jotting down this blog, I had several browser tabs open.

A cool features of many browsers is saving all the opened tabs under one bookmark name. This allows you to open up all the tabs again as you had previously arranged them. Speaking of arranging, it is also nice to drag the tabs horizontally in the order you want them from left to right.

BROWSER WINDOW ZOOM
A feature of browsers that is a must is the keyboard zoom. This allows you to zoom in or out the browser window. In a browser this feature is unlike a zoom of a photograph where zoom in results in the crop…instead browsers restructures the layout of the pages (including the font and image sizes). This often causes scroll bars to appear both at the bottom and right margin. So, next time you are in the LMS and you need a larger image, try using your browser’s keyboard zoom feature. Most browser use “Control –“ & “Control +”.

BROWSER FORCED REFRESH
The LMS system certainly takes advantage of cached web pages to reduce the load time of lesson pages. The LMS system also utilizes a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that in addition to the multiple data and webservers of the system, there are several data centers across the U.S. that again caches the webpages that do not change…therefore reducing loading time. BUT there comes times when a student’s workstation seems to not let go of the local cached page. Of course you can hit the refresh icon of your browser…but in some situations this is not enough. A forced (hard) refresh makes the browser dump the local cached page and retrieve all the items on the webpage.

The table below lists how to do a Forced Refresh for most browsers. Ask your students to do this if they are having issues with a page within the LMS…or they want to be assured they are getting the latest version of the page. The following are a few webpages to further understand Forced Refreshes.
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/refresh-webpage-with-soft-or-hard-reload-in-web-browsers/
http://www.refreshyourcache.com/en/cache/
http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Hard_Refresh
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-hard-refresh.htm#didyouknowout
http://www.code-pal.com/quick-tip-clear-cache-hard-refresh-on-chrome/