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Detailed Overview |
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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. You can even drag through the Page List to riffle through pages, just like thumbing through a book (well, actually a lot faster than thumbing through a book). The Page List liberates you from the limitations of the Back/Forward buttons and a site's navigational links. Just click on any open page to go to it instantly. You can also navigate the Page List the usual way, by clicking links and using the familiar Back and Forward buttons. Back and Forward also work instantly, and if you click 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. The Page List supplements the navigation features that websites themselves provide, which can often be inconsistent, confusing or incomplete. You can operate on single pages or entire groups of pages — for example, add an entire site's pages to your Favorites (bookmarks), or refresh (reload) all pages. You can click and drag across several pages' close buttons to close them all at once, instead of closing them one-by-one.
Open as many pages as you like — you won't overtax your computer's memory, because iRider automatically 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. |
Each page's progress bar shows how much of the page has downloaded. When a page is complete, its progress bar lights up.
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Using Surf-Ahead and Next Page, you can zip through pages with little or no waiting, even on a slow connection. Say goodbye to click-and-wait! Surf-Ahead is so effective, you may decide you don't need a broadband Internet connection. 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. You can even use Surf-Ahead when opening pages you've saved in your Favorites (bookmarks). In addition to saving time, Surf-Ahead lets you stay focused by reading web pages completely from top to bottom before reading linked pages. No more click/back-button/find-your-place-again. Surf-Ahead even works with forms, such as a websites's search form, letting you do multiple concurrent searches and easily compare the results. This can be especially useful while shopping: for example, comparing airfares on a travel site. 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. (See below.)
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You can even select multiple items in a Favorites (bookmarks) folder and click one to open them all. This is an especially cool way to take advantage of a fast Internet connection: just open pages en masse and zip through them, like a magazine or catalog that you can riffle through effortlessly. |
Fly through search results pages as they download at top speed. In record time, you'll have exhaustively researched your subject of interest, something that would take a huge amount of time and effort with an ordinary browser. Your search key is automatically sent to the Find and Find Again commands, letting you easily find your search key within a page. The Find commands can search for any one of the terms you entered, or for an exact phrase, unlike most browsers which can only search for an exact phrase, and are thus much more cumbersome to use. |
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Pinning is very useful for retaining useful pages and adding them to your Favorites (bookmarks). For example, if you're repeatedly doing searches using a search engine, you can pin the search engine home page and any good pages that you find as you search. Then you can close all the unwanted pages with a single click, leaving only the ones you're interested in, which you can add to your Favorites with a single command. It's also useful to keep your most-frequently visited pages 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. You can even click and drag across several pages' pins to pin or unpin all of them at once. When you exit iRider, the pages you've pinned are remembered and re-opened when you launch iRider again. |
Adding multiple Favorites is especially useful for creating Favorites Books, described below. |
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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 need to often refer back to several documentation pages, place them all in a "Project X.book" folder for quick, one-click access. You can create Books inside a Favorites folder or on the Links Bar. Favorites Books are standard folders containing standard bookmarks, so you can access them in all other programs, unlike proprietary page sets created by other browsers. It's easy to create books with lots of pages by adding multiple pages to your favorites at once. |
Select several pages by Shift- or Ctrl-clicking in the Page List and use the Copy Pages as URLs command. 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. All the pages open at once. Any non-URL text is ignored, so you can Copy any mixture of URLs and text. |
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It's a perfect compromise between letting ads annoy you, or using a pop-up blocker that blocks pages that you actually need to open, needs to be configured, and denies websites the ad-views they need.
Pop-up blockers also just encourage advertisers to use even more
obnoxious type of ads, such as layer ads that appear within a page and obscure content. |
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The Page List
iRider's Page List shows you the web pages and sites you're
currently working with.
Page thumbnail images help you quickly recognize a desired page,
and you can adjust their size per your preference. 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.
Use the Next Page command (or keyboard equivalent) to quickly go to the next
downloaded page, wherever it is in the Page List.
Eliminate the wait with Surf-Ahead
Click links with the right mouse button to use Surf-Ahead —
the new pages 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
The mouse button(s) assigned to Surf-Ahead can be user-defined
— if right-click is assigned to Surf-Ahead, you can access context menus by holding
down the right button for 1/2 second.
Open multiple links at once
Select multiple links and click one to open all of them at once.
Much faster than clicking them one-by-one!
Search several search engines at once
iRider Search lets you query several search engines at
once, chosen from dozens of search engines in several categories, including images, video,
audio, news and shopping.
Pages that you'll be revisiting often or that
you'd like to mark for later reference can be "pinned." Pinning a page prevents
it from being closed until you unpin it.
You can add one page or several pages at once to your Favorites
(bookmarks) with a single command. You can select multiple pages in the Page List and add
them, or all pages in the current site, all pages in the current window, or just the
pinned pages in the current site or window.
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.
iRider lets you easily send or receive entire
sets of pages via email, instant messaging or a document, using standard URLs.
Lots of websites present ads in windows that pop-up in front of your current
browser window and cause 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 go through pages, 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 working with another page.
Pop-up ads become just as innocuous as ads in a magazine.