If you haven’t visited the USC Retired Faculty Association’s Web site, here is a shortcut that will take you directly to it. Once you are there, you can bookmark the page so that the next time you visit all that is required is to click on the entry in your “Favorites” list.

The only “trick” to using this shortcut is to enter it on the addressline of your browser. The addressline (or Location Bar) is different from the textbox that is used to enter key words for Internet searching. The two figures below illustrate the difference.

The shortcut to the RFA home page is “usc.edu/rfa” (without the quotation marks). Notice four things about this shortcut: (1) there are no spaces anywhere; (2) “usc” and “edu” are joined by a period (usually spoken as “dot”); (3) “edu” and “rfa” are joined by a forward slash (”/”); and (4) there is no need to type “www” (for World Wide Web) or “http://” (for Hypertext Transfer Protocol), as these are assumed and will be provided by your browser (i.e., Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, etc.).

In Internet Explorer, type “usc.edu/rfa” in the addressline (WITHOUT the quotation marks), as in the figure below:

In Firefox 2.0, you would enter the same shortcut. Notice that in either case the shortcut is typed in the space for the addressline (or Location Bar), NOT in the space for key words for a Google or other search.

The shortcut is an abbreviation of the actual URL (Universal Resource Locator) for the actual address of the RFA Web site, [1] http://www.usc.edu/org/emeriti_center/rfa/index.php.

By the way, shortcuts also may be used to reach the Staff Retirement Association Web page (”usc.edu/sra”) and the USC Emeriti Center home page (”usc.edu/emeriticenter”).

If you need help in reaching the RFA, SRA, Emeriti Center, or Emeriti College Web sites, contact Bob at:

[2] helpsquadbob@rstallings.com.