The General options panel displays commonly-used options that you use, for example, to specify your home page (or pages), select your default fonts and colours, and control how Netscape Browser starts up and connects to the web.
| In this section: |
The Location(s) field specifies the page or group of pages that Netscape Browser displays when it is opened or when you click the Home button.
There are various ways that you can enter your home page on this window:
| Location(s) | This field displays the address (or addresses) for your home page. You can either enter the address directly in this field, or use the buttons that appear below the field to enter the URLs for you. (You can also update your home page directly from pages you are viewing, as described in Using the Tab Menu.) To enter a location address for your desired home page in this field, simply type it in the field. (As you type in the address, a drop-down displays which lists matching pages that you have previously visited. If you see the location that you want as your homepage, select it to update the field.) If you want to enter multiple home pages, enter them in sequence, separated by the | character. |
| Use Current Pages | Click this button to set your home pages to all the tabs currently open in your browser. |
| Use Bookmark | Click this button to select a home page from your bookmark list. (Tip: Select a bookmark folder to have Netscape Browser use all pages in that folder as your home pages.) |
| Use Blank Page | Click this button if you do not want a home page to be loaded when you start Netscape Browser. Clicking this button puts the text about:blank in the Location(s) field. |
Click the Fonts & Colours button to change the default fonts and colours used by Netscape Browser. This opens the Fonts & Colours window, which you use to specify these settings.
Note: Default font and colour settings take affect only on web pages that do not define their own fonts and colours.
This section describes the fields and controls on this window. For information on using this window, refer to Changing Fonts, Colours, and Themes.
Use this group of fields to specify font and colour defaults for different character sets. (For example, the "Western" character set refers to the fonts used to display characters in the latin alphabet used by Western European languages.)
Note: You can change settings for each character set: when you modify this field, for example, to set defaults for the Japanese character set, Netscape Browser saves the settings for the Western character set.
| Proportional | Specify whether you want proportional fonts to be serif (such as "Times New Roman") or sans serif (such as "Arial"). Use the Size (pixels) field to select the default font size, in pixels (that is, the height of the font, measured by the number of dots on your computer monitor). |
| Serif | Select the default font that you want when displaying serif fonts. |
| Sans-serif | Select the default font that you want when displaying sans serif fonts. |
| Monospace | Select the default font that you want to use when displaying monospace (or "typewriter") fonts. Use the Size (pixels) field to select the default font size, in pixels, for these fonts. |
| Display resolution | Use this field to specify your display resolution, which is normally 96 dpi (dots per inch). Select Other to display a window that you can use to calibrate your monitor by entering the measurement of a standard-sized line. |
| Minimum font size | Use this field to specify the minimum font size to use when displaying text on your screen. This is useful when viewing sites that use very small text. |
Use these fields to define default colours for text and web page backgrounds. The current setting is displayed in a coloured box to the right of each field. To change the default setting, click on this box to display a menu from which you can select from a palette of colours.
Select the Use system colours checkbox to have Netscape Browser instead use the default colours defined in the settings for your operating system (for example, in the Windows Control Panel).
| Unvisited Links | Set the colour for hypertext links to pages that you have not visited before (that is, pages that are not included in your browser history cache). |
| Visited Links | Set the colour for hypertext links to pages that you have visited before (that is, pages that are included in your browser history cache). |
| Underline links | Select this checkbox if you want Netscape Browser to display hypertext links using an underline. |
By default, Netscape Browser displays web pages using the fonts and colours defined for the page. Select these checkboxes to have Netscape Browser override these settings and instead use your own defaults (that is, the ones defined on this window).
Click the Languages button to change the default language and character coding used by Netscape Browser. This opens the Languages and Character Encoding window, which you use to specify these settings:
| Languages in order of preference | The languages you select are listed in the order that you add them. You can re-arrange this order to suit your own preferences - the language at the top of the list is your preferred language. If a site is available in more than one language, Netscape Browser will use your list of preferred languages when determining which version of the site to display. For example, If your first preference is French, Netscape Browser will display the French version of a web site, if it is available. |
| Select a language to add | Use the dropdown list to select your language options. The default
is English/United States [en-us], but you can change this option or add
to it, by clicking |
| Move Up | Click this button to move the highlight language up one in the list. |
| Move Down | Click this button to move the highlight language down one in the list. |
| Remove | Click this button to remove the highlight language from the list. |
| Add | Click this button to add a selected language from the Select a language to add list. |
| Default Character Encoding | Displays your default character encoding. Click 
to display the dropdown list of options. Highlight an option in the list
to select it. |
Select this checkbox to have Netscape Browser always check to ensure that it is the default browser upon opening. If not, Netscape Browser will display a message asking you whether you want to set it as your default browser.
Click the Check Now button to have Netscape Browser check your settings to see whether it is your default browser. If not, it displays a message asking you whether you want to set it as the default.
This section describes how to use the Proxies preferences panel. Refer to Setting Proxies for more information.
Before you start: Ask your network administrator if you have a proxy configuration file or for the names and port numbers of the proxy.
If you do not want to use a proxy, select the Direct connection to the Internet radio button.
Choose this radio button if you don't have a proxy location (URL) and you want to manually set your proxy information.
| HTTP Proxy SSL Proxy, FTP Proxy Gopher Proxy |
Use these fields to set proxies for each internet protocol. To set the proxy, type the name or numeric IP address of the proxy server. Type the port in the Ports field. |
| SOCKS Host | Use this field to enter the name or numeric IP address of the proxy server for a SOCKS host. Type the port in the Ports field. |
| SOCKS v4 SOCKS v5 |
When entering a SOCK Host, select "SOCKS v4" or "SOCKS v5," depending on what version of SOCKS is used for the proxy. |
| No Proxy for | Use this field to enter the domains for which you do not want to use a proxy. Separate each domain with a comma. (Example: .yourcompany.com, .yourcompany.co.nz) |
Select this radio button if you have a proxy configuration file or URL. To configure the proxy, type the configuration URL in the field.
Domain names are the part of a URL that contains the name of an organization, business, or school—such as netscape.ca or tucows.net. If you use local host names without the domain name, list them the same way. Use commas to separate multiple host names. The wildcard character [*] cannot be used.
June, 2005
Copyright 1994-2005 Netscape Communications Corporation.