You don’t have to scroll through menus to perform most BlackBerry browser functions. When you want to stop the browser from loading the current Web page, press the ESC key. You can also hide or minimize the browser to access your BlackBerry’s other utilities or functions by pressing the D key. When you’re done surfing, press and hold the ESC key to quickly close the browser. To display the Go To menu, press the G key. From here you can type the Web address or select from a few of your most recently visited Web sites.

Within the browser, you can access a history of the Web pages you recently visited by pressing the I key. Highlight the link you want to visit and press the trackball to navigate there. To quickly jump back to your home page, press the H key. To refresh the current Web page (the BlackBerry equivalent of F5), simply press the R key.

On your desktop PC, hovering the mouse over a hyperlink displays its URL in the browser’s status bar, but just because your BlackBerry doesn’t have a mouse doesn’t mean you have to surf blindly. To display the URL for links on your BlackBerry, simply highlight a link and press the L key. From this menu, you can also copy the address to the clipboard or send it in an email, MMS, or SMS message by selecting the appropriate buttons. To view the current Web site’s address, press the P key.

To launch a hyperlink, you can select it and either press down on the trackball or just press ENTER to launch it. To maximize your browser real estate, press the U key to hide the banner at the top of the browser. To bring the banner back, just press the U key again.

To quickly scroll through long Web pages without madly thumbing the trackball, use thumbnail view. Simply press X to display a zoomed-out version of the current Web page in the right side of the BlackBerry display. You can now scroll through page-sized chunks of the Web site with a simple flick of the trackball. You can also zoom in and out of the thumbnail by pressing Menu and selecting Zoom In or Zoom Out. Press any key to exit thumbnail view.

You can also quickly navigate long Web pages using the BlackBerry-equivalent of Page Down and Page Up keys; press the SPACE key to jump down a screen or press the right or left SHIFT key and the SPACE key to jump up a screen. To get back to the top of a Web page, press the T key, and to get to the bottom of the page, press the B key.

To dig into the Browser Configuration, General Properties, and Cache options for your BlackBerry, press the O key.

Your BlackBerry also has shortcuts that make launching and adding bookmarks easy. With the Web browser open on your BlackBerry, press the K key to access the Benchmarks folder. Scroll to and select any link to quickly launch the site you’re looking for. You can also quickly add a site to your Bookmarks folder by navigating to the site you want to add, pressing the A key, and selecting Add to save it.

For even faster access to a favorite or important site, add Web pages to your Message list by pressing the S key. Then just select the Messages icon from your Home screen to find it sorted by the date and time it was added.

If you do any text input while Web browsing, there are a handful of shortcuts you’ll want to memorize to get around more quickly. To capitalize a letter, simply press and hold the desired letter key until it appears capitalized. To display special characters, such as accented letters, press the letter key and scroll to the left or right with the trackball until you see the character you want, and then release the letter key. To type a symbol, press the SYM key to bring up the symbols menu and then either scroll to and select the desired symbol or press the letter key that corresponds to the symbol you want to type.

If you’re typing a lot of numbers in a given text field, the number lock feature may come in handy. To turn on number lock, press the ALT key and the left SHIFT key. To turn on CAPS lock, press the ALT key and the right SHIFT key. To turn off NUM or CAPS lock, press either SHIFT key.

To copy a large block of text from a Web field, press and hold a SHIFT key and then roll the trackball up or down, depending on the position of the cursor. To select text one character at a time, roll the trackball left or right, depending on the position of your cursor.

Master The BlackBerry Browser

Once you get into the habit of using shortcuts, you’ll wonder how you ever browsed the Web without them. Who knows, you might come to prefer browsing the Web with your BlackBerry over your desktop PC.

by Andrew Leibman