Using iRider

Using iRider:
Overview of major features

The Page List
iRider's Page List shows you the web pages you've opened and the organization of web sites you're visiting. The Page List is your "desk." Both the pages you use all the time and any pages you've opened for a particular task are instantly accessible in a consistent and simple way. Access to any open page is instantaneous. You can navigate the Page List using the familiar Back and Forward commands, or just click on a page to go to it directly. You can even drag through the Page List to riffle through pages, just like thumbing through a book. If you click on a link to a page that's already open, you're taken to it instantly. The Page List is especially handy, for example, when comparing different products on a shopping site, or multiple shopping sites. You can bounce around among pages of interest effortlessly — far better than navigating back to them in the usual way or opening multiple windows. Open as many pages as you like — you won't overtax your computer's memory, because iRider transparently manages the memory used by open pages. Available memory is utilized to maximize performance, but if memory is being used by other applications, iRider automatically limits its usage while speeding access to pages based on your usage patterns. To close a page, click on its close button or use the Pages/Close command (F12 key). You can quickly close a set of consecutive pages by dragging the mouse across their close buttons. To close all pages in a site, use the Pages/Close Site command (Ctrl+F12 key). To close all pages, use Pages/Close All (Ctrl+Alt+F12). Pinned pages can't be closed until you unpin them (see discussion of Pinning below).
Page thumbnail images help you quickly recognize a desired page. You can change their size by clicking on the thumbnail sizing buttons, or by using the View/Page Thumbnails menu commands. Larger thumbnails can be useful when browsing photos, monitoring a set of webcams, etc. Smaller thumbnails allow more pages to be visible at once in the Page List.
Let pages download while you do other things
While a page is downloading, you can interact with other pages in the Page List and click other links to start downloading other pages simultaneously. Each page's progress bar shows how much of the page has downloaded. When a page is complete, its progress bar lights up. After you've visited a page, its progress bar changes color. To quickly go to the next downloaded page, use the Go/Next Page command (F4 key, or * on the numeric keypad).
Eliminate the wait with Surf-Ahead
Click links with the right mouse button to use Surf-Ahead — the new pages will download in order while you continue to work with the current page. By the time you're done with the current page, your first link will usually be ready — click Next Page (F4 key) to jump to it instantly. When you're done with the first link, the second one will be ready, and so on. (On a mouse configured for left-handed use, use the left button to Surf Ahead.) Surf-Ahead is especially useful on a page with many links you're interested in, such as search engine results or a magazine's table of contents. In addition to saving time, Surf-Ahead lets you stay focused by reading web pages completely from top to bottom before reading linked pages. You can use Surf-Ahead when opening sites you've saved in your Favorites (bookmarks): just use the right mouse button to click on pages in Favorites folders. Surf-Ahead is also the perfect solution to those annoying pop-up ads: pop-ups open under your current page and download later, instead of getting in your face. Find out more about how to use Surf-Ahead
To access context menus (normally opened by right-clicking), press and hold the right button for a moment, or hold down the Menu key ( ) while right-clicking. The mouse buttons can be customized using the Tools/iRider Options command.
Open selected links
Select text or images containing multiple links and use the Open Selected Links command — or just click on one of the links — to open all of them at once. Much faster than clicking them one-by-one! Find out more about selecting links on a web page You can even select multiple items in a Favorites (bookmarks) folder and click one to open them all. Open Selected Links lets you make especially cool use of a fast Internet connection: you can just open pages en masse and zip through them with the Next Page command (F4 key), turning a website into a magazine or catalog that you can leaf through effortlessly.
Search multiple search engines
iRider Search lets you search several search engines at once, chosen from dozens of search engines in several categories, including images, video, audio, news and shopping. Click the checkbox for individual search engines or even entire categories, then enter your search key once and it's sent to each search engine. Click Next Page (or the F4 key) to fly through search results pages as they download at top speed. In record time, you'll have exhaustively researched your subject of interest. Let's say you're researching your favorite afro-cuban techno-ambient-grunge band. Check several search categories and quickly find fan sites, candid photos, videos, music clips, news about their latest brushes with the law, discussion postings, and shop for their albums, all from a single search form. Search terms are automatically added to the Edit/Find dialog, letting you easily find particular occurrences of the search term within a page. The Edit/Find and Edit/Find Again commands can search for any one of the terms you entered, or for an exact phrase.
Pinning pages
Pages that you'll be revisiting often or that you'd like to mark for later reference can be "pinned." To pin or unpin a page, click on the page's pin in the Page List or use the Pages/Pin command (F6 key or "/" on the numeric keypad). Pinning a page prevents it from being closed until you unpin it. When you exit iRider, the pages you've pinned are remembered and re-opened when you launch iRider again. Pinning can be very useful for retaining desired pages and quickly closing unwanted ones. For example, if you're repeatedly doing searches using a search engine, you can pin the search engine home page and any useful pages that you find. Then you can use the Pages/Close Site or Pages/Close All commands to close all the unwanted pages, leaving only the ones you're interested in. It's also useful to keep your most-frequently visited sites pinned so they're always there for immediate access: for example, your news page, your weather page, search page, your Favorites, your stock quotes, etc. To quickly pin or unpin consecutive pages in the Page List, you can drag the mouse across each page's pin — no need to click on each one.
Add multiple pages to Favorites
You can add one page or several pages at once to your Favorites (bookmarks) using the Favorites/Add Pages command (Ctrl+F8 key). You can select multiple pages in the Page List by Shift-clicking and Ctrl-clicking and add them all at once. You can also add: all pages in the current site, all pages in the current window, or just the pinned pages in the current site or window. Favorites/Add Pages is especially useful for creating and adding to Favorites Books, described below.
Favorites Books
Folders containing Favorites can be designated as Books by appending ".book" to their name. All the Favorites inside a book can be opened at once just by clicking on the book's icon — no need to open it first. Clicking on a book's name in a Favorites folder opens it normally as a Favorites folder. (When you move the mouse over a book icon, the cursor changes to indicate that the pages in the book will be opened.) Favorites books are useful for sets of pages that you frequently need to open as a group. For example, all the news sites you read daily could be added to a "Daily.book" folder — then each morning, just click on the Daily.book icon and start reading. If you're working on a project that requires you to refer often to several documentation pages, place them all in a "Project X.book" folder for quick, one-click access. Favorites Books are standard folders containing standard Internet Explorer bookmarks, so you can access them in all other programs, unlike proprietary page sets created by other browsers. You can put Favorites Books on your Links Bar by moving them into the Links folder immediately under your root Favorites.
Exchange sets of pages with others
iRider lets you easily send or receive entire sets of pages via email, instant messaging or a document, using standard URLs. Select several pages by Shift- or Ctrl-clicking in the Page List and use the Copy Pages as URLs command (Ctrl+Shift+C key). Then Paste them into a message.
Select and Copy text containing several URLs and Paste them into iRider using the Paste URLs as Pages command (Ctrl+Shift+V key). All the pages open at once. Any non-URL text is ignored, so you can Copy any mixture of URLs and text.
Pop-ups tamed
Many websites present ads in windows that pop-up in front of your current browser window, contributing to a growing phenomenon known as Pop-up Rage. iRider opens such ads innocuously using Surf-Ahead — a page is queued for download under your current page, without interrupting you. As you use the Next Page command, you can either read the ad or skip it instantly. You don't wait for it to download and it doesn't get in your face when you're reading or working with another page. Pop-up ads become just as innocuous as ads in a magazine. It's a perfect compromise between letting ads annoy you, or using a pop-up blocker that denies websites the ad-views they need and may block pages that you actually need to open.