20th March 2001
Pop up windows are a pain. Er, pane? I don't mind them when I expect them, but when they throw themselves onto my screen just to show me another silly ad banner, well... I get downright peeved. I'm a program minimalist, believe it or not. If I can do it without using a third-party application, believe me -- I will. There's a keyboard shortcut to kill those annoying browser intrusions in Internet Explorer. CTRL+W is what you'll want to use instead of the normal ALT+F4. Why? Well, imagine if your screen is flooded with too many browser instances. You run the risk of getting trigger happy with a shortcut that will kill everything in sight. Er, site? CTRL+W seems to work with IE... making it safe to tap repeatedly without inadvertently shutting down another program. For those who browse full screen, understand that sometimes your Back button won't retain its history if a completely new instance of IE is laid atop your "original" session. If you suddenly notice that your Back button has lost its memory, perhaps there's another IE window open. Check your taskbar before getting too upset.