I've never been particularly put out by needing to click the "Next" button on a blog. Sure, there are always exceptions, like when I find sites that archive oddly or only have a few posts per page. And don't get me started on the "Next" buttons and surprise ads (do I want two free iPod Nanos? Only if I can beat the advertiser about the head and neck with them).

LifeHacker introduced me to the AutoPager add-on for Firefox. The idea behind AutoPager is a good one. It takes a web page with continuous content (such as a blog) and allows you to scroll through it all as if it were one page . So that you're not waiting for years for your page to appear, AutoPager allows you to choose the number of pages displayed at a time. It also has a few pre-configured web pages in its clutches, like Digg and Twitter.

The good news is that AutoPager can be set to scroll through just about any site with a next button. The bad news is, it's not really apparent how to do this. I was pointed to the Site Wizard, which worked just as well as many wizards I've encountered -- not at all. I couldn't select the "Next" link, and it kept aborting (and it's too early in the morning where I am to be doing that).

I know little about XPath (the underlying AutoPager mechanism) or how it works, but I did still get AutoPager to give me several pages of Download Squad at once. Truth be told, I'm still not sure what it was I did. I clicked the AutoPager icon on my toolbar, and got a sidebar that popped up in the browser and seemed to autodetect both the "Next" link and the content I wanted to see. I clicked the green checkmark on the sidebar (did I need to? no clue), and we were finally in business.

AutoPager is great for getting your eyes on a lot of information quickly. Once it's configured to the sites you want to see in this manner, it's really handy. But for the first few sites you configure, make sure to take frequent breaks for deep, cleansing breaths.

A few years ago trying to browse the web on a PDA or mobile phone was an exercise in futility. Not only was rendering web pages too much work for slow mobile processors, but many mobile devices had anemic screen resolutions of 160 x 160 pixels.

These days a mobile phone has far more processing power than my first computer, and many devices have QVGA or even VGA screens. But mobile browsing is still a very different experience from sitting at your computer and entering URLs with a keyboard and mouse. That's why mobile start pages can be so important.

Sure, you could enter URLs one character at a time, or bookmark every web site you might ever want to visit again. But you can also set as your homepage one site that has links to thousands of pages that are designed specifically for the small screen. This method also has the advantage of letting you access the same content no matter what device or web browser you're using. Here are a few of our favorite mobile start pages.