How to make the internet not suck

July 5, 2010

Since there's a lot of people out there who don't know much about the internets, I'm going to take it upon myself to inform them on how to survive.


The very first thing we're going to do is jump into the gritty area that'll cover the majority of your internet problems. This will be considered a mild version of "hacking" your computer, so consider yourself warned of any screw-ups that may cause your computer to self implode.

In order to make the internet safe to visit, we're going to be editing the host file that tells your browser what's acceptable and what should be redirected to a safe place. I was over at Do Know Evil and stumbled upon this link: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/.


Now that you have the hosts file open, you should see something along the following: 

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

127.0.0.1       localhost


We're going to add quite a bit to the bottom of this file. Copy and paste all of the following below "127.0.0.1 localhost":


There's about 7200 entries, so I've made the text in the box select itself when you click in it, then press "Ctrl+C" to copy it all to the clipboard. Now, go to the hosts file and click at the end of "127.0.0.1 localhost" and press "Enter" to make a new line. Next, press "Ctrl+V" to paste the copied text. "Ctrl+S" will save the file (do not File->Save As, and do NOT add a file extension like .txt or the file will stop working as the hosts file).

Now that we've got that out of the way, we need to fix our web-browser. I'm seriously hoping everyone reading this is using Firefox. If you're using Internet Explorer (any version of it) make the switch now.

Spread Firefox Affiliate Button

All you have to do is click the big green button and install. Don't worry, it'll bring all your bookmarks and web history over from IE when you install it. Why is Internet Explorer so risky to use? Here, straight from Microsoft itself:
"Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution"
What this means is there are security issues in IE that could let a malicious website execute a program without your knowledge that may be harmful to your computer and make it explode (but not that extreme).

Since we're all now using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, it's time to customize it to work the way we want it to: better. Go to each of these add-ons and click the green "Add to Firefox" button.

Adblock Plus is hands-down the best add-on that you can get for Ad Removal.
WOT - Safe Web Browsing is also a very useful add-on as it tells you when a site has a poor safety rating and could be dangerous.
NoScript is a very handy add-on that essentially eliminates any script being run in the background when you're on a page, unless you allow them.
FlashGot allows you to download all the links, videos, music and images from a page just by right-clicking.
FastestFox will dramatically speed up load times by pre-loading the next pages. It may be a bit of a drain on the bandwidth, though.

Feel free to look through the plethora of other Add-ons, personas, appearance changes, etc that Mozilla offers. I use Tiny Menu, Personas Plus, StumbleUpon and Greasemonkey as well.

Next up, we'll be changing the way Firefox operates at the core. Type "about:config" (without the surrounding "" marks) in the URL bar at the top and press the "Enter" key.


It should bring you to a page that says "This might void your warranty!" Just click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button and continue.

At the top, there'll be a "Filter:" entry area with a bunch of entries below it. Type "openintab" in the Filter and it should dynamically filter out the unwanted results, leaving you with only one entry. By default, this entry should have a Value set to "false." If you double click it, this should turn "True."


What we just did was tell Firefox to open a new tab and display the results in it when we use the Search bar in the top right. We do this so that we don't accidentally navigate away from a page we were on when we want to search for something. Once you get used to this, it's impossible to go back to how it worked before.

Following the same idea as the previous "openintab" function, we're going to Filter search for "defaultengine" and it should only bring up one entry again. If the Value is not set to "Google" then double clicking on the entry will bring up a dialogue box where you can type in "Google" to set it.


Now everytime you want to use the Search bar in the top right, it should default to using Google as the search engine.

There's another feature that Firefox has which I believe is a lifesaver: remembering your tabs when you close the application.
On default, it's disabled. However, if you have more than 2 tabs open and you try to close Firefox, it should prompt you if you want to remember the tabs for the next session. We're going to skip that and go about it via about:config.
In the "Filter:" bar, search for "warnOnQuit" which should bring up one entry again. If the value is not set to "true" then you can double click it to change it.


Now you can safely close Firefox with a ton of tabs open and it'll remember them all when you open Firefox again.
**Note that this does not work if you have multiple instances of Firefox running**

You'll also notice that when you try closing Firefox with a bunch of tabs open, it'll ask you if you are sure you want to continue. If you like this prompt for some reason, then you can skip this step.
In about:config there is a function called "warnOnClose" that will get rid of this prompt. Set the value to true, and you will be able to close Firefox with a ton of tabs open and have them all appear again when you start Firefox up again.


**Note that if you have a lot of tabs being loaded when Firefox launches, it might become overwhelmed and crash. Also, any Youtube videos being loaded on launch will begin playing without permission.**

We're not out of the woods yet, so keep about:config open just a while longer. We're now going to Filter search for the "startup.page" function. Again, only one result should show up, and this time the value is an Integer. It can be set to anything from 0-3:
0 will cause Firefox to open a blank page when it launches.
1 will make Firefox launch with the web page(s) defined as Home Page(s) -- Default setting.
2 will load the last visited page when Firefox launches.
3 will resume the previous session (all tabs that were open when you quit Firefox last time).


I prefer using the "3" value, as I usually have about 10 different tabs open at any given time. This drastically cuts down on time spent navigating to commonly visited websites, as they can all be loaded when the application is launched.

Now that we've configured Firefox to work great, it's time to rethink the email client we use. Many people are still clinging to Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail, SquirrelMail, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, etc. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, as Windows Live Hotmail has revamped their entire platform. But with Mega-Giant Google in the picture, it's hard to keep up.


I've been using Gmail for a little over 4 years now, and I can't stand going back to Hotmail. As of July 7, 2009, Gmail was upgraded from Beta status to a complete package. Lifehacker did an article detailing the pros and cons of Gmail vs Hotmail but I believe they failed to mention the part where Georges Harik (Product Management Director for Gmail) said they will "keep giving people more space forever." As of right now, the ticker on Gmail's homepage says "Over 7473.015xxx megabytes (and counting) of free storage." Per account. Let's see Microsoft try to match that.

Since we're on the topic of switching clients, we may as well get rid of Windows Live Messenger (also known as MSN Messenger). Not only is it a resource hog, but it's also one of the most easily compromisable Instant Messaging client out there. Digsby is easily a better solution. Digsby has many different IM clients built in (MSN, AIM, Yahoo!, ICQ, Facebook Chat, MySpace IM, Gtalk) and even gets newsfeeds from MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The next thing we're going to want to do is get PeerBlock. It functions essentially the same way as what we just did with the hosts file, but it'll let you know who's looking in on your computer if you visit a website. There may be a bit of an issue if you use Steam, but you can allow/block any incoming IPs you want.

Some other useful tools would be AVG Free, SUPERAntiSpyware,, Spyware Doctor, and CCleaner. Each of them should be run at least once a week, but a better idea would be to run them every day.

-tk

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