Clear Your Web Browser Cache »

This is a very basic tip about clearing your browser cache and so most readers already know how to do this. But, there are still some that do not know how to manually clear out the web browser cache so, here is a little how-to.

First, your web browser cache stores information about all of the websites that you have visited, how long you stayed on each site, what pages of that web site that you visited, etc. Some people do not want to have that information stored on their computer. Now, there are literally dozens of programs out there that will clear out your browser cache at specific intervals for you automatically, but there are times when you may want to clear your cache immediately. For example, right after you have visited your online banking web site. If that is the case, here is what you can do:

Internet Explorer 6

1. Select Tools
2. Select Internet Options
3. Your Internet Options box should open to the General tab
4. In the Temporary Internet Files section, click the Delete Files button
5. Click OK and then click OK again
6. Now, all of the files stored in your browser cache are deleted .

From Microsoft’s Web Site

Firefox Web Browser

1. Select Tools
2. Select Options
3. Select Privacy tab
4. In the Private Data section, select Clear Now…
5. In the Clear Private Data box, make sure that Cache is selected
6. Click the Clear Private Data Now button
7. Click OK
8. Your cache is cleared now

I was going to post a screenshot showing these steps, but since the look of theFirefox web browser can be customized from person to person, I wanted to avoid any confusion that might arise when one sees that their boxes and buttons appear differently from mine. I hope the written steps provide enough information.

You should try to remember to manually clear your browser cache if you have visited a secure site like an online banking site or an e-commerce site. That is a good way to keep you private data private .

Microsoft Updates IE7 Anti-Phishing Filter »

Back in December, Microsoft issued a fix for the IE7 anti-phishing filter but it did not totally fix the problem.

There have been several complaints that this filter really slows down the IE7 browser, so much so that users have been disabling anti-phishing. This, of course, defeats the purpose of having it available in the first place.

So, Microsoft has issued another upgrade for the Anti-Phishing filter on IE7 (they actually did this a few weeks ago – I am just slow ).

So, if you are one of the users that have been less-than satisfied with the IE7 anti-phishing filter performance, hop over to Microsoft’s web site and you can download the latest update. Hopefully, this one will do the trick.

An anti-phishing filter is really a good idea but I am still going to stick with Firefox .

Weekly Rehash »

Here are a few of our more popular posts for this past week:

• Technorati Love
• Speed Up Firefox and Internet Explorer
• Undesirable “feature” in Microsoft Vista
• Use Skype and get paid
• Microsoft Vista vulnerability
• Mozilla patches Firefox

Wow, what a week. I hope you saw something in there that helped you or gave you something to think about. If so, please consider subscribing to our RSS feed (the big orange button in the right hand column). It’s free for you and will help us out too

Speed Up Firefox and IE »

As if Firefox wasn’t fast enough , Serge at webspeaker found a cool video that shows how to speed it up even more. If you use Firefox and want even faster browsing then this is for you. The video will walk you through the process step-by-step and to its credit, yes, it does work.

Even if you (cough) use IE, you can speed up too. After walking you through the Firefox part, the video shows a step-by-step for doing the same thing in IE. Warning – to change IE you will have to go into the registry of your computer. Do not do that if you are not comfortable lurking around in there. One can really cause some damage if not careful .

After you are through, you will blazing new trail all over the Internet. Nice find Serge! (and the crowd goes wild)

Microsoft Speeds Up IE7 Phishing Filter »

We are Firefox people here and plan on staying that way, especially since Firefox is currently under the radar of those wacky hackers . However, we also design websites and so have to view our work across several different browsers.

That means we have to use Microsoft IE. Naturally, we now have IE7 and were pleased to see that Microsoft incorporated many Firefox features into its newest browser.

Microsoft also implemented a phishing filter and touted it as a new security feature. When you visit a site, IE will examine it to make sure it is a legitimate site and not one setup by a phisher (there are Firefox plugins that do the same thing). Great idea! Anything the helps protect our sensitive data is awesome!

But, holy moly it takes a long time to view a page in IE! So long, in some cases, that we hit the “stop” button so we can go visit a different site (maybe that is part of the anti-phishing abilities of IE – if you don’t actually load the entire site, no one can phish your data, hmmmm).

Anyway, I guess we were not the only ones bothered by the increase in time spent surfing the ‘net with IE. Microsoft has taken some steps to fix this issue and has issued a patch which will prevent the phishing filter slowdown.

However, the patch was not part of the automatic updates for everyone. In essence, if you use IE 7, you should visit Microsoft’s site and download it manually.