You’re happily using your web browser. Thinking you are done with a page, you close a tab. But you were wrong. You were not done with the page.

Option 1: Open the last-closed tab

This keyboard combination will open your last-closed tab in a new browser tab. Works in all browsers.

Windows: SHIFT + CTRL + T

Handy mnemonic: “SHIfT. Wait. I’m in CTRL. Open the T(ab) I just closed.”

Mac: SHIFT
+ COMMAND + T

Handy mnemonic: “SHIfT. Wait. I’m in COMMAND. Open the T(ab) I just closed.”

Option 2: Open browser history

This keyboard combination will open your web browser history in a new tab. Works in all browsers.

Windows: CTRL + h

Handy mnemonic: “I’m in CTRL of my browser h(istory).”

Mac: COMMAND + h

Handy mnemonic: “I’m in COMMAND of my browser h(istory).”

You’ve typed something into a box in your web browser—something very well written, perhaps the first page of what will become the Great American Novel. You close the webpage before clicking the “submit” button. When you go back to the page, everything you had typed in that browser box is gone. You gouge your eyes out.

Or perhaps you’ve spent an hour crafting the perfect Canvas announcement when your computer suddenly reboots. Your announcement is gone. Forever. You gouge out someone else’s eyes.

Been there?

In this week’s Porta Potty Picayune, we are going to make sure you never have those experiences again.

Recovering content from a Canvas page

First, let’s take a look at a new Canvas feature called “RCE Auto-Save.” RCE means Rich Content Editor. When you’re editing text on a Canvas page, announcement, etc., the toolbar just above the text entry box is called the Rich Content Editor (RCE). Canvas recently added an auto-save feature. To turn it on, in each of your courses where you’re the instructor, go to “Settings,” click the “Feature Options” tab, and click the switch next to “RCE Auto-Save” so you have the green checkmark. In some future Canvas update, this will likely be a feature that’s automatically turned on for everyone. For right now, though, if you want it, you’ll need to turn it on manually.

Now if you type something in a Canvas text box, and then close the page before saving, when you re-open the page, you’ll see this popup message:

Click the “Preview” button to see what Canvas auto-saved for you. To restore the content, click the “Yes” button.

Recovering content in non-Canvas webpages

For this kind of recovery, you will need a web browser add-on.

Chrome

Visit the Chrome web store, and add Typio Form Recovery to your Chrome web browser.

Try out Typio Form Recovery. Type content in a box on some webpage, such as this Google form. Close the page before clicking the Submit button. Revisit the page.

Click on the clock icon (you may need to click inside the box to see the icon.)

What you typed will be shown in a popup window. For some webpages, you’ll be able to just click on the text to re-enter the text. On other webpages, you’ll need to copy/paste the text. In either case, your text is there.

Firefox (and Chrome)

Visit the Firefox Add-Ons page, and add Form History Control to your Firefox web browser. This same add-on—Form History Control—is available for Chrome, but it’s not as pretty as Typio Form Recovery. If Chrome is your primary web browser, try them both and keep the one you like best. Try out Form History Control. Type content in a box on some webpage, such as this Google form. Close the page before clicking the Submit button. Revisit the page.

In the top right corner of your web browser, click on the Form History Control  icon (magnifier/pencil). Form History Control will save and make available to you the last 90-days-worth of content you’ve entered in any textbox anywhere using this browser. (I changed the default save for mine to 14 days—90 days seemed… excessive.) The most recent content will be at the top of the list. Right-click on the content you want to enter in the textbox.

From the popup menu, select “Copy clean text only” to be sure that all you are copying is text. In some text boxes, there will be html code that will also be saved—this tends to happen with Canvas pages. If want to include any saved code, choose “Copy to clipboard.”  Paste into the text box.

Privacy

For the privacy-conscious—and you should be—both Typio Form Recovery and Form History Control store your data in your browser; content these tools save does not leave your computer: Typio Form Recovery’s privacy policy and Form History Control privacy policy.

Conclusion

Stay safe out there.

What is the web cache, what are cookies, and why does clearing them solve so many browser issues?

How do web browsers work?

Websites are collections of code—that code is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The code is stored on servers (servers are just big fancy computer storage units—think of the hard drive on your computer multiplied by millions and millions). The Internet is what we call the network that links those servers together. When we enter the URL for a website in our browser’s address bar (or click on a link in a webpage), we end up connected to that webpage’s server, wherever it may be in the world. Our browser downloads the code for that page and translates that code into something pretty for us to look at.

Can we see the code?

You bet! In Firefox, pick a page, any page, say, my college’s home page. Click on the 3-dash menu icon in the top right corner of your browser, then click on Web Developer.

And then click on Page Source.

A page will open in a new tab, and you’ll see the code in all of its glorious detail. Anything in between these <brackets> is code. Anything outside of those brackets is text you can read on the webpage. (Similar tools exist for other browsers.)

What’s the cache?

When we visit a website, such as my college’s home page, our web browser downloads the code and keeps a copy of it. When it does that, our browser also notes the date the last time the page was edited. When we go back to that same page later, our browser will compare the page-edit date of our cached page with the page-edit date of the current page. If the two are the same, our browser will show us the version it has stored in its cache rather than take the time and bandwidth to download the one from the website. If it’s the same thing, why retrieve it again?

How things go wrong

Sometimes our browser will use a page it has cached rather than downloading a new one even when downloading a new one is warranted. If a webpage is acting funny (my apologies for using such high-level jargon)—particularly a webpage that requires a login—the first thing to investigate is if the cause may be the browser cache.

Ways to test for and solve cache issues

Option 1. Clear the cache for the entire browser. When we clear our browser’s cache, our browser doesn’t have any stored code it can use so it has to download the code fresh from the server. In this nuclear option, we can clear our browser’s entire cache, as in the cache for every webpage we’ve visited since the last time we cleared the cache. Here are instructions on how to do this for Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari.

Option 2. Clear the cache for just the problematic webpage. This is a more surgical approach. While we can clear a single webpage’s cache through the browser’s settings menu, the means to do it are buried pretty deep in the settings. Instead, I recommend the keyboard shortcut (yes, write this on a sticky note; I have). Windows: CTRL+F5; Mac: Command+Shift+R, unless you’re using Safari, then Opt+Command+R. Clearing the cache for a single page is my go-to solution.

What are cookies?

Yummy treats. Duh.

Oh, you mean web browser cookies. Browser cookies are (not-at-all-tasty) files created by our browser that contain, say, some types of information we’ve entered for a particular website. For instance, to stay logged into a website, our browser will create a cookie with our login information. When our browser visits that webpage again, it will send the cookie file with that login information to the webpage’s server. Here’s another example. We visit an online retailer as a guest. We put some stuff in an online shopping cart. We close the page without buying anything. The contents of the cart may be stored in our browser’s cookie file for that website. When we go back to the page, our browser sends the cookie file to the webpage’s server, and our shopping cart will be filled automatically with our potential purchases. (Side note: If we’re logged into the online retailer, our online retailer will save the contents of our shopping cart on their own servers; they don’t need our cookies. That’s why when we visit—and log into—that retailer on a different device, e.g., our phone, we can see the contents of our shopping cart.)

Ways to test for both cache and cookie issues

Option 1. Open a private browsing tab. Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari all have private/incognito browsing modes. When we launch a private/incognito browsing session (instructions here), a new tab will open and no code from any website we visit will be saved by our browser. Since our browser won’t keep a cache or a cookie file in private/incognito mode, for any page we visit, our browser will download fresh code and not upload any cookies.

Option 2. Try the page in a different browser. If you usually use, say, Chrome, open the website in, say, Firefox. The web browser we use less often is unlikely to have a cached copy of the webpage or have any cookies associated with the webpage, so the browser will retrieve a clean copy unsullied by cookies.

How to solve both cache and cookie issues

Dump everything. In web browser parlance, clear your browsing data. This will wipe clean your entire browser cache and delete all of your cookies. Here are instructions on how to do that for the most popular web browsers.

What if the webpage still isn’t working right?

The problem is almost certainly then with the webpage and not on your end. Contact whoever owns the website you’re wrestling with.

Let’s take a look at your home Internet setup. With many of us working at home and sharing our home wifi with kids, spouses, ex-spouses, extended family, and the mysterious person you suspect might be living in your basement, here are a few suggestions for evaluating and improving your speed on your home network.

Let’s get some data, first.

1. Using your wifi-connected laptop, tablet, or phone, move close to your modem/router.* On your device, go to Speedtest.net, and click the Go button. Once speedtest is done running, you’ll have two numbers. The first will be your download speed—how quickly information moves from the Internet to your device. The second will be your upload speed—how quickly information moves from your device to the Internet. Your download speed may be significantly faster than your upload speed, and that’s okay.  
2. Next, check with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to make sure that you’re getting the download/upload speed you’re paying for. If your speed is much lower, then work with your ISP to make sure you get the speed you should be getting. Sometimes the fix is easy. I once had a bad cable running from the wall to my modem that was cutting my Internet speed in half. I was paying for a download speed of 80 megabytes per second (Mbps), but getting only 40.

If your Internet speed is close to what you’re paying for, let’s check your home wifi coverage next. Once your modem brings the Internet into your home, your router spews the Internet out over wifi. The closer you are to the router, the stronger your wifi signal will be. (It’s 2020. The Internet is definitely being spewed all over my home. In other years, it has gently cascaded or quietly burbled. Not this year. It’s most assuredly spewing.)  

1. On your phone download a wifi signal strength app (e.g., Wifi Signal Strength Meter for Android, Wi-Fi SweetSpots for iPhone). Using the app, wander through your home checking your wifi signal strength. The greater the distance from your router and the more walls between you and your router, the lower the wifi strength will be. The lower the wifi strength, the slower your Internet speed will be. In other words, if you are sitting on your bed and your wifi signal strength is 50%, your Internet speed will be a lot slower than if, say, you’re sitting on your couch where your signal strength is 85%.

    

Knowing where the stronger wifi spots are in your home can help you decide where you’re going to use your laptop for your Zoom sessions. This handy-dandy image shows a modem/router in the lower right corner of the house. The further away you are, the weaker your wifi signal will be.

Important notes

• The more devices that are connected to and using your wifi at one time, the slower your Internet speed will be. That 80 Mbps that I’m paying for is the top speed possible. In practical day-to-day use, I get somewhere between 73 and 78—depending on all kinds of factors, including what is being downloaded/uploaded at any given time on my computer, my phone, my tablet, my wife’s computer, her phone, her wifi-connected printer, our Roku, and our wifi-connected security camera.

Also…

• Your router may use a 2.4 GHz radio frequency or a 5 GHz frequency. This CenturyLink page nicely describes the differences between them. (If you immediately thought the difference between 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz is 2.6 GHz, then you and I should be friends). It may make sense for you to switch from one frequency to the other. If your router is newer (last 5 years or so), you should be able to switch between 2.4 and 5. Your ISP can help you do that.

   

If you have weak wifi spots where you are doing most of your work, you may want to consider adding a mesh network. With a mesh network, you connect an additional router to your modem (sometimes called a mesh hub), and that hub connects via wifi to satellite routers you place around your home. As you move from room to room, your device connects to the satellite router that has the strongest wifi signal. The bigger your home, the more mesh satellites you may want to use.  

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*The modem is what brings the Internet into your home. The router is what creates the wifi signal that your devices use to access the Internet that the modem has brought in. It is very likely that you have one box that houses both your modem and your router. You’re looking for contraptions that look something like these.

The “Type here to search” box in the lower left corner of Windows 10 is handy for searching all kinds of things. Except the Internet. Windows forces you to use their Bing search engine inside of their Edge browser. But I’d rather use Firefox as my browser and use Shortmarks (see this blog post) as my search engine.

Thanks to the $1.99 Search Deflector available from the Microsoft Store, now I can. [Shout out to Ashwin at ghacks.net!] (There is an identical free version available via GitHub, but for such a useful tool, I’m happy to pony up a couple bucks.)

After installing and running Search Deflector, set your preferred browser. These days I’m primarily using Firefox.

Next, set your preferred search engine. It comes with several common and not-so-common ones to choose from. I use Shortmarks, so I’m going to tell Search Deflector to use a “Custom Search Engine URL”: shortmarks.com/s.php?q={{query}}

After clicking “Apply,” I’m good to go.

On my keyboard, I hit WINDOWS + S (for “search”) and my cursor goes to the “Type here to search” box. Then I type “web: {search term}”. Search Deflector launches Firefox. If Firefox is already open, Search Deflector will open a new tab. The search term is sent to my preferred search engine, Shortmarks. If my search term matches a Shortmarks shortcut, the corresponding webpage will open. If my search term does not match a corresponding Shortmarks shortcut, then Shortmarks searches the web using the default search engine I have set up with Shortmarks.

Example 1. The single letter h is the Shortmarks shortcut I have for my college’s homepage: highline.edu. WINDOWS + s directs my cursor to the “Type here to search box.” I type “web: h” and press enter. Firefox opens a new tab and loads my college’s homepage.

Example 2. I want to search for Betty White’s birthday. WINDOWS + s directs my cursor to the “Type here to search box.” I type “web: betty white’s birthday” and press enter. Firefox opens a new tab where Google, in large font, tells me that Ms. White’s birthday is January 17, 1922.

Happy searching!

This is a mishmash of stuff that I’ve been collecting. Enjoy!

Be kind to your eyes: 20-20-20. We are all spending way more time in front of our computers than we did, say, in February 2020. I’ve heard from colleagues who have been struggling with eye strain, so I know I’m not alone. Be kind to your eyes and follow the ophthalmologist-recommended 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes look at something 20+ feet away for 20+ seconds. The trick is in remembering to look away every 20 minutes. I use the “Tomato Clock” browser extension (Chrome/Firefox). Barring that, you know how to set an alarm on your phone. While you’re taking a break, might as well stretch and maybe even get in some reps with your resistance bands.

Be kind to your eyes: pointer & cursor. For those of us with aging eyes, it is sometimes hard to find the cursor or pointer on our screens. If you have to rely on movement to find your cursor/pointer, it’s time to blow them up. In Windows 10, in the bottom left search box, enter “Cursor.” In the search results, select “change cursor thickness.” Use the sliders to change the size of your pointer and your cursor. Change the pointer/cursor colors, too, if you’d like. (Instructions for Mac users.) (Shout out to my wife for this tip!)

Find your phone. For Android phones, on your Internet-connected computer, go to Google.com. In the search box, type “find my phone.” (If Google is your browser’s default search engine, just type “find my phone” in your browser’s address bar.) In the bottom right corner just below the generated map, click “Ring,” and your Android phone—even if set to silent—will ring. If your battery is dead, well, you’re out of luck. (iPhone users, check out the Find My iPhone app.)

Check wifi signal strength. Working from home and have a Zoom meeting starting soon? You may want to connect from a location in your home that has a solid wifi signal. For Android, I recommend the app WiFi Signal Strength Meter. (iPhone users, check out Wi-Fi SweetSpots.) In the interest of full disclosure, my computer is hard-wired into the router that resides in my home office, although on a sunny day like this, connecting to a meeting from our backyard is not a bad idea. I just checked, and the wifi signal strength from my hammock is 99%.

Boosting wifi signal strength. If you have wifi dead spots in your home, consider installing a mesh network—which sounds way more intimidating than it actually is. You attach one wifi point to your router, and then space as many other wifi points throughout your home as you need. Our router is at the east end of our house, so the first wifi point is there. We have a second wifi point in the center of our house. A third wifi point is at the west end. The first one sends the wifi signal to the second which then sends to the third. For our mesh network, we use Google’s Nest Wifi. I’m a fan.

You know that you can delete individual characters by hitting the backspace key on your keyboard. Did you know that Windows users can delete whole words by holding down the CTRL key while hitting Backspace and Mac users can do the same by holding down the Control key while hitting Delete?

Lastly, while I don’t do a whole lot of hardware endorsements in this blog, I’m going to recommend a monitor—especially for those of you who are trying to teach from home using one monitor. If you have the space—and I know not everyone does—consider the Dell 24 Touch Monitor (P2418HT). Not only is it a touchscreen—which makes using LMS rubrics much easier—but it drops down to a 60-degree angle (bottom of the screen will rest on your desk) making it easy to write on. While you can write on the screen with your finger, I recommend the Mixoo stylus. The stylus has fiber mesh on one end and a disc on the other; I’m a fan of the disc, but use the end you’re most comfortable with.

That’s it. You know everything I know. For now.

I taught my first online course in the late 1990s. I had done my homework, reading up on everything I could find about teaching online, attending conference sessions about teaching online. While the Internet was out of its infancy, it was still in toddlerhood, so there wasn’t a ton of information out there about teaching online. For that matter, there wasn’t a ton of information about the Internet itself. Some time in the mid-1990s, my wife, who was a reference librarian at the time, had a file folder labeled “Internet.” That pretty much sums up how little information there was.

Anyway, I learned everything I could about teaching online, and then I did it. I taught fully online. The one thing that no one warned me about was the exhaustion. I felt like I was teaching all the time. Why was that?

For a face-to-face class—and by face-to-face I mean in a physical, three dimensional classroom—we mentally gear up to go in. We review what we’re going to cover, we put on our game face, don our teaching persona, step to the front of the classroom, and go. Teaching is a performance, and just like an actor or musician, you have to enter that space ready to go. And then we’re “on” for whatever length of time our class or classes are scheduled for. Growing up working class, I defined “work” as physical labor. When I started teaching, it took me a bit to figure out that teaching was also work. While it wasn’t physically taxing, it was mentally draining. Don’t worry. I have since amended my definition of “work.”

When we teach face-to-face, we know that we’re on from, say 9am to 12pm. Shortly before class, during class, shortly after class, students are asking us questions—questions about the material, questions about assignments, questions about course policies. And when we answer those questions, other students usually hear those answers, too. It’s a pretty efficient system. One student in a class of 50 asks about a course concept, and all 50 students—or at least the ones paying attention—hear the answer.

After that, we still have plenty of work to do—email, grading, reading, writing, committee work—but it’s qualitatively different work from the teaching performance. It doesn’t require the need to be “on.”

When teaching online, the primary way students get their questions answered is through email. What would have been a quick, after-class question takes three times as long – to read the email, to respond to the email with a clarifying question, to read the clarified email, to write the email, to edit the email (don’t let your exasperation show; yes, we know it’s in the syllabus), and then to read the student’s follow-up question, and repeat. And, of course, this is all interspersed with other tasks. And it takes time and energy to switch from one task to another (see this blog post for a demo).

Tips to help you feel like you’re not working all the time

1. Create a designated workspace. If you’re lucky, you have a home office. Use that space only for work. Do not work anywhere else in your home. When I’m in my home office, I’m working. When I’m in my living room, I’m not working. And for the love of God, do not work in bed. If you’re not lucky enough to have a home office, set aside one corner of your couch or one side of your table as your designated workspace. Relaxation happens on the other side of the couch. For meals, sit on a different side of your table. Designated physical spaces can help you separate “work” from “home.”
2. Set designated work hours. I work from about 8am to 3:30pm for two reasons. One, I’m a morning person; when my circadian rhythm dips mid-afternoon, my brain turns to sludge. And two, in the summer, my home office turns into a sauna about mid-afternoon. Whatever your work hours, don’t work before your workday starts, and don’t work after your workday ends. There’s nothing in your email that can’t wait. Designated hours can help you separate “work time” from “home time.”
3. Add transition time. I didn’t realize how much I needed transition time from teaching to being home until I started teaching via Zoom. The first day I did it, I ended class and walked out of my home office. And, BAM! I was home. It’s the closest I’ll probably ever come to feeling like a time traveler. Now when class ends, I stay in my home office for 15 to 30 minutes—tending to email, making notes about changes I want to make to what I just covered in class, reading an article or two. By doing that, I give my brain time to slide out work mode and into home mode.
4. Clean up your email. What’s in your email inbox should only be what you’re dealing with today. In this blog post, I walk your through how to get your email under control and how to keep it under control. Having pages and pages of messages in your inbox can make you feel like you’ll never get caught up. And, frankly, it’s easier for important messages to get lost. If you lose that message from a student or a colleague, they will write you back, but then you’ll have read their questions twice. There’s no reason to do double the work.
5. Take your work email off your mobile devices. If you’re sitting in your living room watching Apollo 13, and you pick up your phone to find out how old Tom Hanks was when the movie was filmed, we both know that if there’s a work email notification, you’re going to click on it. And just like that, you’re working again.
6. Note common student questions and address them with the class. If a few of your students have asked the same question, it’s time for a course announcement. If it’s a question answered in your syllabus, consider adding a question to your beginning-of-term syllabus quiz. If you don’t have a beginning-of-term syllabus quiz, consider creating one. In my courses, students have to earn 100% on the quiz to open the rest of the modules in the course. Since my students can take it multiple times, I’ve discovered that some of my students—without reading the syllabus—take their best guesses at the questions. And then retake the quiz, making different guesses. Next term I’m adding a few points extra credit for getting all of the answers right on the first try.

I have been getting inquiries regarding my availability to present to faculty remotely. I am very happy to do this.

Most commonly, I have given presentations on using the tech tools and tips covered in this blog to make your life as an academic easier. For example, if you’re not using a clipboard manager (e.g., Ditto for Windows, Copy Less 2 for Mac) and a text expander (e.g., PhraseExpress for both Windows and Mac), then your assignment grading is more time-consuming than it needs to be.

I have also given presentations on interteaching. This teaching method works well for online, hybrid, virtual, and face-to-face courses. And for those of you who are going flex—where some of your students may be participating in the class synchronously and other asynchronously—interteaching would work for you, too. Interteaching is scalable—use it for one week, a few weeks, or all term. Keep your exams or ditch your exams. Use it however you feel most comfortable. Read more on how I use interteaching in my synchronous and asynchronous classes.

If either of these topics sound like they would be useful for your faculty, please contact me at sue@suefrantz.com to discuss what we can do within your budget.

Faculty who have been around learning management systems (LMSs) for any amount of time know that sometimes gunk builds up in the browser cogs resulting in some page in the LMS not working as expected. If it’s something that worked before but is suddenly not working now, the first thing tech support will tell you to do is clear your browser’s cache.

But why clear the cache for every website you’ve ever visited when it’s just this one particular LMS page that’s giving you fits?

You can clear the cache of one Chrome or Firefox webpage with a keyboard shortcut. Windows and Linux users: CTRL+F5. Mac users: CMD+SHIFT+R.

Test out your new-found powers here.

Are you teaching remotely using Zoom? And you only have one monitor? Do you miss using PowerPoint presenter view in your classroom?

PowerPoint presenter view

This is what presenter view looks like. When you have a computer screen and a projector (or a second monitor), this is the view on your computer screen, and the slide alone shows on the projector (or second monitor). In this presenter view screen, you can see your next slide on the right, and right below that are any notes you’ve entered for the slide your audience is currently viewing. Under the currently-viewing slide are a few tools: pen/pointer, see all of the slides in your presentation (handy for jumping around your slides), magnifying glass for zooming in on a part of your slide, and black out the slide you are showing. Click the 3-dot icon for a few more options.

While you have all of those nifty tools at your disposable, this is what your audience sees projected on the screen.

To get presenter view, edit your PowerPoint, click the Slide Show tab, then check the “Use Presenter View” box.

If you have one monitor, however, and run your slide show, you will just see the slide like your audience would. To get the presenter view, right-click on the slide and select presenter view.

Using single-monitor PowerPoint presenter view with Zoom

To use presenter view with Zoom, it’s easy with two monitors. All you need to do is share the screen with the slide on it.

However, if you only have one monitor, you probably don’t want to share your entire presenter view screen. Good news. You don’t have to. You can choose to share only the slide portion of your presenter view screen.

In Zoom, click on Share Screen, then select the Advanced tab.

Then click Portion of Screen, and click the Share button.

A green box will appear. Whatever is in the green box is what your Zoom audience will see. Click and drag the bar at the top of the box to move it. Click and drag the sides/bottom/corners to resize it.

Zoom will remember the box size and location from session to session.

Remember

Before closing your PowerPoint presentation, stop sharing. If you don’t, when you close your PowerPoint, whatever is inside that green box will appear to your Zoom audience. When I closed my PowerPoint just now without stopping my Zoom screen share, my email was inside the green box – viewable to everyone who was in my Zoom room. Fortunately, I was the only one in my Zoom room, so no harm done. When you are done sharing, always stop sharing before doing anything else. As an added precaution, close all programs you are not going to be using before starting your Zoom session.