Why should you clear your computer and browsing history? Well, computer safety is a very good reason, wouldn’t you say? The thing about Internet browsers is that the software used in most browsers can usually keep a record of all web pages that you visit. Our old friend Devon Fraser, of the online newsletter fame, says with a straight face that cleaning your browsing history is essential if you don’t want your wife to know that you’ve been viewing porn.

This is a family site, so we’ll abandon that line of argument and go on to higher issues. The heart of the matter is that most browsing software seeks to speed up your web browsing. Therefore, these browsers download web pages and store them on your computer’s hard drive - in a ‘cache’. For those of you who haven’t noticed, there’s a Temporary Internet Files folder in your PC that is a warehouse for all the items you saw (or heard) on the Internet, including web pages and cookies.

A cookie, incidentally, is a “message given to a Web browser by a Web server. The browser stores the message in a text file. The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server”, says the Webopedia Computer Dictionary. If you cut out the tech jargon, a cookie basically identifies users who have visited a particular page and enables the page to load more quickly in case of a repeated visit.

So a cookie speeds up your browsing, but it is also a record of your Internet activity, and there may be several reasons why you don’t want people to know what you’ve been doing on the Net. Dominic Hutchins, a domestic abuse counselor in Philadelphia, says he advises most of his clients to clear their computers and browsing history because of fears that their abuser may track their Internet browsing patterns.

Even if you have no such pressing reason, we would advise you to clear your computer and browsing history because it enables your PC to run faster. However, even if you clear your Temporary Internet Files folder, there will still be other areas that you need to clear. “It is necessary to clear all search history from the search engines that you may have used,” says Devon. “Most search engines have a built-in Clear Search or similar option.”

As for clearing cookies, Temporary Internet Files and browser history, different browsers will have different options. We list the most common ones:

INTERNET EXPLORER 5.0 OR 6.0 FOR WINDOWS
-    Click the Tools menu on your browser
-    Select Internet Options
-    In the General tab, and under the Temporary Internet Files section, click Delete Temporary Internet Files
-    Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog
-    Exit Tools menu and restart your computer

NETSCAPE 4.0 AND ABOVE FOR WINDOWS, MAC AND LINUX
-    Click the Edit menu on your browser
-    Select Preferences
-    Click on the + sign next to Advanced
-    Select Cache
-    Click Clear Memory Cache
-    Click Clear Disk Cache
-    Click OK

INTERNET EXPLORER 4.5 AND 5 FOR MAC OS 8 & 9 AND MAC OS X
-    Click the Edit menu on your browser. For Mac OS X, this becomes Explorer menu
-    Select Preferences
-    Choose Advanced from the Web Browser heading on the left side
-    In the Cache section, click on Empty Now
-    Click OK

AOL 5.0 FOR WINDOWS
-    Click MY AOL, and select Preferences on the AOL menu bar
-    Click the WWW button
-    Click the General Tab
-    Click Delete Files
-    Click OK

AOL 6.0 - 8.0 FOR WINDOWS
-    Click Settings, and select Preferences on the AOL menu bar
-    Click Internet Properties (WWW)
-    Click Delete Files
-    Click OK

AOL FOR MAC
-    Click Members
-    Click Preferences
-    Select Web
-    Click Empty Cache

MOZILLA AND NETSCAPE FOR MAC AND LINUX
-    From the Menu, select Edit and choose Preferences. OS X users need to select Mozilla and then Preferences
-    In the window that opens, you will see a list of triangles and topics
-    Click the triangle next to Advanced and select Cache
-    Click the Clear Disk Cache and Clear Memory Cache buttons
-    Click OK

MOZILLA FIREFOX
-    From the Menu, select Tools and choose Options
-    Click Privacy
-    Click Clear next to Cookies
-    Click Clear next to Cache

To clear your computer’s browsing history, follow these steps:

WINDOWS 95 AND ABOVE
-    Click the tab marked History in the toolbar of Internet Explorer
-    Your web pages history will appear on the left
-    Under the Today section, highlight the names of pages you wish to remove from the history and hit the delete key on           your keyboard on each page name
-    To clear the entire history, follow steps 1 and 2 and then click on the button that says Clear History, and then     press           Yes

MOZILLA FIREFOX
-    From the Menu select Tools
-    Click Options
-    Click Privacy
-    Click Clear History. You also have the option of clearing cookies and Temporary Files here

Are you confused by too many different file extensions and their corresponding file formats? With a little know-how you can identify those file extensions in a snap. All file names have extensions that refer to the last letters preceded by the period/dot. This extension helps the operating system identify the file type, enabling it to select the right application to open the file with. Text files have the extension .txt, images have various extensions such as .jpeg and video files have extensions such as .avi, .divx etc. You can easily identify various file formats by knowing the extension of the file.

Tips On Associating File Extensions With The Correct Program

Your computer’s operating system will associate a file extension with the correct program with the aid of the Windows Registry. If the Windows Registry has information pertaining to the file extension and the operating system has the appropriate application needed to open the program, the user will have no problem in opening the files. Your operating system will then continue to open files with that particular extension with the same program in the future.

At times, you can come across a file that appears to be unknown and that is not executable. This is because the system does not recognize the extension and may not have the right application to open files with that extension. You are now faced with the task of associating the file extension with the correct program to open it with. The good news is that you don’t have to be a tech-wiz to figure this out. There are a few simple things you can do to match file extensions to the right program.

The first thing that you can do is to clean your registry (note: direct download link). I recommend this step because sometimes the operating system may fail to recognize a particular file type because the registry file information is corrupted. When you use a registry cleaner, it can detect errors, repair them and fix the registry keys to ensure that your system performs optimally and file extensions are automatically associated with the correct program.

If that step did not solve your problem, you can do a quick search on Google or Yahoo to find out which programs are associated with your unknown file extension. Some systems are programmed not to show file extensions, making it hard to figure out which program to use to execute the file. If this happens to you, you need to open Windows Explorer, Tools, Folder Options, Tab and remove the check against the “Hide extensions for known file types” box. That should show you the extension of the file that you are trying to open.

When you try to open the file, you’ll get the options to select a program from a list. If you have identified the right program to open the file with, then you can select it from the list of programs displayed. If you are uncertain, be sure to remove the check against “always use the selected program to open this kind of file” tab.

If you own Windows XP you should have an even easier time locating the right program to open your file. Windows XP offers users the option to search for information regarding the file extension and the application needed to open it. This can help you locate information online. If you are coming across such unknown files a lot, you can purchase software that lists file extensions, the types of applications that may be used to open the files, the creator of these applications. Once you have located the application needed to open the file, you may have to purchase it or perhaps download it for free. A word of caution here - I strongly recommend that you scan any file that you download with an antivirus software program first before proceeding to install it. Once you have installed the application, the operating system should continue to automatically open files with such extensions with the selected application. If not, you can select that particular program from the list and check the box “always use the selected program to open this kind of file”.

These are just a few suggestions to help you associate the right program with its corresponding file extension.

Associating file extensions with the right program allows you to access them more quickly through Windows Explorer. One of the best features of the Windows Explorer program and the Windows operating system is that it allows you to define associations for various file types. Any file type that you have on your computer can be associated with software that opens it. Here are the basics of file extension association, what is involved and what to think about so that you make the right association choices.

When a file type is not associated with any type of program it will be represented in Windows Explorer by a blank page icon. Double clicking on the file will not load any kind of program - you will instead have to use the “open with” dialog box to select a program to open the file with. This can get annoying after a little while, and if the software which opens the file is Windows compatible and you use it often you should make the association so it will open automatically when you double click on a file.

There may be cases in which you have two or more programs on your computer which are capable of opening the same file type. From time to time you may prefer using different kinds of readers to access your file; the most convenient thing for you to do in that case is to associate the file extension with the program which you will want to use most often. The answer might also depend upon your workflow. Maybe when you click on a file in Windows Explorer you only want to make quick changes, and you need one program, but normally you open it through another program. Do whatever is most convenient for the way that you use the files.

If you find that a file extension has been incorrectly associated with a program that can’t open it, then using the “open file” dialog to change the association is the way to fix things. Another time when you will use the “open file” dialog is when you install a new and better program to open a given file, but the program doesn’t automatically associate it (or you choose for some reason not to associate it immediately). Sometimes you may want to spend a little more time using the first program before you make the change, and in cases like that the ability to use “open with” whenever you want is very useful.

Once you check out the features of a new program for opening your files and decide that it is the best program for you, you can associate the files with it and make it your primary means to open a given file type. The system used by Microsoft Windows makes it easy for you to change your mind if you decide that you want to go back later. I hope that this article has given you a sense of some of the issues having to do with file association!

Unknown file types do not have to be baffling - there are plenty of ways that you can identify what an unknown file type is all about. One of the simplest ways to get info on all kinds of unknown file types is by searching on the world wide web. The first thing that you need to do in this case is find the extension of the file. Right click on the file which is of an unknown type and click on Properties. When you do this you should be able to read the full name of the file, including the file extension.

Now, search for that extension (which is generally a three or four letter code) on the internet using a search engine tool such as Google or Yahoo. You may want to add the word “file” or the word “player”, to bring up examples of programs which might be able to read the file for you. Some web sites are set up with details on lots and lots of file types - you can read about the kind of file that you have, what kind of data is stored in it, and sometimes even some history about the file format and how it has developed.

Often, if the file that you have is a media file, you can find a player for it online which is available for free download. If the file has to do with word processing or it is some kind of special proprietary format things might not be so easy. Depending on the kind of data you may have to purchase a program which has the ability to read it, but with the huge number of great freeware and shareware programs on the internet it is more likely that you will find a downloadable player in short order.

Once you find out what kind of file your unknown file type is and you discover what the right kind of player is and get it installed on your system, it is time to open the file! By right clicking on the file in Windows Explorer and choosing “open file” you can access a dialog box where you choose the program that you want to use. If you have installed a new reader to read your unknown file you will probably have to hit the “browse” button and locate the executable file for the reader program.

Make sure that the “always use” check box is checked and then press the “ok” button, that way not only will you open the file with your given reader but you will also associate the file type with that reader. From then on, you should be able to open the file with the same program simply by double clicking it. You should also see a new icon for the file, indicating that it has been associated with a known program. Good luck finding out what kind of file your unknown file type is and finding a program with which you can access it!