To speed up the display of web pages, browsers temporarily store items that have been displayed before. The space in which items are stored is called a cache. By increasing the size of the cache, web pages will download more quickly. However, if you create a cache that is too big, it will take up space on your hard drive and slow down the speed at which web pages are displayed. For this reason, it is best to keep the cache size to around 10% of your hard drive. To increase the size of your browser's cache carry out the following steps:
- In Explorer, go to Tools on the browser toobar and select Internet Options. A box with three smaller boxes will appear. The middle box (Temporary Internet Files) is the cache. Here you can either choose to delete the cache files or alter the cache size.
- In Netscape, go to Edit on the browser toolbar, select preferences, then Advanced and then Cache.
In addition to the above, the speed with which web pages are displayed can be increased by as much as 20% by upgrading to the latest version of your browser. To determine which version of your browser you are using, carry out the following steps:
- In Explorer, go to Help and then to About Internet Explorer. A window will appear describing which version you have.
- In Netscape, go to Netscape's Automatic Software Upgrade Page (http://home.netscape.com/computing/download/index.html). Here you can find out which version of Netscape you are using. If you aren't using the most up-to-date version, you can download it from this site.
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