Netscape 4.x Tips II

Summary:

• Editing Input Fields Faster
• Command Line Options
• Remote Control, Bookmarking Pages Without Titles
• Ad-Free, Privacy-Enhanced Browsing
• Getting Rid Of Blinking Text
• Kill The Cache1.1
• Substituting Netscape Mail

Editing Input Fields Faster ('Location', 'Open Page', 'Find')

Several keyboard / mouse shortcuts are listed in the program-menus. Here are some others which come in handy when editing input fields. They are either not documented or not obvious:

• CTRL-u removes previous input from the field.
• ALT-a highlights the input and thus sends it to the clipboard. Which means you can paste it somewhere else.
• CTRL-v inserts the last line copied in Navigator using CTRL-c. That's convenient for non-linked URLs: highlight one of them, press CTRL-c, ALT-o, (CTRL-u if necessary) and CTRL-v.
  If you want to insert lines copied from outside Navigator, use the middle mouse button (there seems to be no button combination for this, which is quite annoying). Don't ask me why CTRL-v only works within Navigator :-. It doesn't work either if you just highlight the selection, you have to use CTRL-c1.1
• TAB cycles through the buttons and options clockwise, SHIFT-TAB counterclockwise.
• CTRL-a moves the cursor to the beginning of the line, and CTRL-e to its end.
• Two clicks on the 'Location' field let you overwrite the currently displayed address.

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Command Line Options

These options are especially useful in combination with the Communicator suite. They allow you to start parts of the suite without having to go via the browser:

• Start Netscape Mail with inbox:

  netscape -mail

• Start Netscape Messenger and open default news server:

  netscape -news

• Start Composer (with optional file):

  netscape -edit {URL}

• Show command line options:

  netscape -help

Remote Control, Bookmarking Pages Without Titles

You can control much of Netscape's functions from the command line. This feature is called Remote Control.

For instance,

netscape -remote 'openURL(http://home.netscape.com)'

will open 'home.netscape.com' in the active Netscape window (for Remote Control to work, there has to be a Netscape process already running). To open the URL in a new window, type

netscape -remote 'openURL(http://home.netscape.com, new-window)'

Another possible use of this feature is bookmarking pages which do not have

netscape -remote 'addBookmark(http://home.netscape.com, Netscape Home)'

would add the URL 'http://home.netscape.com' with the title 'Netscape Home' to the Bookmarks list.

Alternatively, one could write a primitive shell script like this:

~#1.1 /bin/sh ~#nbsm - adds bookmarks echo -n "Enter complete URL to bookmark: " read a echo -n "Enter name for bookmark: " read b netscape -remote "addBookmark($a,$b)" echo "Added"

To make entering the URL less painful, click at the URL in the location bar, hit ALT-a. Now you only have to press SHIFT-INS at the first script prompt and supply the name for the bookmark at the second.

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Ad-Free, Privacy-Enhanced Browsing

The Junkbuster gives you fine-grained control over what your browser tells which servers about you (browser type, referrer headers) and what content which servers are allowed to put onto your machine (cookies, ad-banners, images, URLs). It works on every major operating system and is well documented.

Note that it doesn't work out of the box for the new Mozilla browser, since this browser uses version 1.1 of the HTTProtocol. You have to configure Mozilla to use HTTP 1.0.

Also make sure you've got the latest blockfile for maximum effect.

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Getting Rid Of Blinking Text

The invention of the tag is probably one of the worst crimes Netscape ever committed. It is non-standard and obnoxious. Luckily, it is very easy to get rid of. Add the line:

Netscape*blinkingEnabled: False

to your ~/.Xdefaults file and run

xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

Restart the browser and there will be no more blinking text.

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Kill The Cache1.1

Ever wondered why your home directory keeps growing and growing? Run

du -m ––max-depth=3 | sort -n

in your home directory and you might discover that the '.netscape/cache' directory is around 100 MB (or even larger). What has happened?

The size of the disk cache is configured in 'Edit-Preferences-Advanced-Cache'. Usually it is set to five MB. The problem is that every instance of the browser opens its own cache sub-directory. So you've got a growing amount of directories in '.netscape/cache' which are just below five MB … Pressing the 'Clear Disk Cache' button only clears the currently used directory, but not the others.

To cope with this brain dead behavior, I've added this command to my '/etc/rc.d/rc.local':

rm -rf /home/tom/.netscape/cache/*

(Adjust the path to your setup.) This empties the cache directory on each reboot.

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Substituting Netscape Mail

I don't have the whole communicator suite on my disk, just the browser. I'm using mutt for my mail, Pan as my newsreader and write my HTML by hand ;-). One disadvantage was that 'mailto:' links didn't work (those links which bring up an instance of Netscape Mail with the address already entered).

No longer1.1 muttzilla allows you to use mail programs like mutt or Pine as a substitute for Netscape Mail. Compile, install, configure '/etc/muttzilla.conf' and off you go. Next time you click on a 'mailto' link, your favorite mail program will open.

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Related Resources:

The Official Communicator Product Information and Support page
Netscape Knowledge Base Search
Tips for Netscape Communicator 4.0x and 4.5 (all platforms)
Netscape Solutions (all platforms)
Netscape Browser Archive

Revision / Modified: June 21, 2001 / June 27, 2002
Author: Tom Berger

Legal: This page is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License. Standard disclaimers of warranty apply. Copyright LSTB and Mandrakesoft.