Internet Explorer is the Web browser that comes with Windows 2000. Despite all the hoopla, headlines, and lawsuits that surrounded it for several years, it's an excellent program. You can launch it in a number of ways:
Double-click its desktop icon.
Click its icon on the Quick Launch toolbar.
Choose a Web site's name from your Start→Favorites menu.
Type a Web address—its URL (Uniform Resource Locator)—into the Address bar of a window. A Web-page URL usually begins with the prefix http://, but you can leave that part off.
No matter which technique you use, the program now opens, your PC dials the Internet if necessary, and the Internet Explorer window fills with the starting page, called the home page. When you click a button or an underlined phrase, called a link or hyperlink, you're transported from one "page" (screen) to another. Several billion Web pages await you. (See Figure 11-4.)
Figure 11-4. The main toolbar in Internet Explorer holds most of the basic navigational tools including buttons to move you forward and back, refresh the page, and go to your Home page. If the mouse pointer turns into a hand, you're pointing to a hyperlink. Click to follow where it leads.
Tip
You can choose any Web page you like as your home page. To do so, navigate to the page you want to make your home page, choose Tools→Internet Options, and then click the Use Current button at the top of the General tab (or enter a different Web address in the Address box).
Or, if you prefer an empty "home page," choose Tools→Internet Options and click Use Blank. Some people prefer this setup, which makes Internet Explorer load very quickly when you first launch it, and doesn't waste any time loading some home page you've specified; instead, only an empty window appears. Once this window opens, then you can tell the browser where you want to go today.
The toolbar (Figure 11-4) offers navigational icons that help you on your way. The Back button, of course, takes you to the last page you viewed; to go to the page you were viewing before clicking Back, click Forward. Click the small triangle next to the Back or Forward button to display a list of pages you've viewed. To jump to one of them, click its name, or press the down arrow to highlight one and then press Enter.
Tip
You can press the Backspace key to go to the previous Web page. You can also press Alt+left arrow (for Back) or Alt+Right arrow (for Forward).
The fastest way to get to a Web site is often to type its address in the Address bar. To do this, click there (or press Alt+D), type the address (URL) of the page you want to visit, then click the Go button next to the Address box (or press Enter). After a moment, the Web page you requested appears on the screen.
You can use a few tips to make entering addresses easier and faster:
Clicking in the Address box or pressing Alt+D automatically highlights the address of the current Web page. You can then simply start typing a new address without having to first delete the previous address.
You don't need to enter the http:// portion of a Web address—Internet Explorer adds that for you.
The standard corporate Web address is simply the company's name preceded by www and followed by .com (for example, http://www.cnn.com or http://www.sony.com ). A quick way of entering this kind of address is to enter only the company name and then press Ctrl+Enter; doing so automatically fills in the http://www and .com for you.
Tip
Although most addresses end with .com, other extensions are common. Non-profit organizations' addresses often end with .org, government agencies with .gov, military sites with .mil, ISPs and other Internet organizations with .net, and schools with .edu. You may encounter two-letter country suffixes, too, including .uk (for Web sites based in the United Kingdom), .za (South Africa), and so on. (The country codes are usually derived from country's name in its own language. That's why the code for Germany is de—for Deutschland—instead of, say, ge.)
You can press the F4 key (or use the drop-down menu at the right end of the Address bar) to view a list of URLs you've visited during this browsing session. You can press the up or down arrow keys to highlight them, and the Enter key to select one.
When you begin to type into the Address bar, the AutoComplete feature compares what you're typing against the list of Web sites you've recently visited. Internet Explorer displays a pop-up list of Web addresses that seem to match what you're typing. So that you're spared the tedium of typing out the whole thing, you can click the correct complete address with your mouse (or use the down arrow key to highlight the one you want). The complete address you selected pops into the Address bar.
Tip
Internet Explorer can also remember user names, passwords, and other information you type into text boxes (forms) you encounter on Web pages. You can turn on this feature by choosing Tools→Internet Options, clicking the Content tab, clicking AutoComplete and turning on the appropriate checkboxes. Having your browser remember the names and passwords for your various Web sites is a great time and memory saver, even though it doesn't work on all Web sites. But consider turning this feature off if other people share your computer and you use the Internet to perform confidential transactions, such as online banking.
The Favorites menu described on Section 11.5 is one way to maintain a list of Web sites you visit frequently. However, opening a Web page listed in the Favorites menu requires a minimum of two mouse clicks—an exorbitant expenditure of energy. The Links toolbar offers enough room for a few Web-page icons. They let you summon a few, very favorite Web pages with only one click.
Figure 11-5 shows how you add buttons to this toolbar. (To remove a button, right-click it and choose Delete from the shortcut menu.) It's also worth noting that you can rearrange these buttons simply by dragging them horizontally.
Figure 11-5. Add a Web page to the Links bar by dragging its tiny page icon, as shown here. (You can also drag any link, such as a blue underlined phrase, from a Web page onto the toolbar.)
Tip
As shown in Figure 11-5, you can drag a link from a Web page onto your Links toolbar. But you can also drag it directly to the desktop, where it turns into a special Internet shortcut icon. You can double-click this icon whenever you like to launch your browser and visit the associated Web page. Better yet, stash a few of these icons in your Start menu or Quick Launch toolbar for even easier access. (If you open your My Computer→C: drive→WINNT→Documents and Settings→[Your Name]→Favorites folder, moreover, you'll see these shortcut icons for all your Favorites. You can drag them to the desktop, Quick Launch toolbar, Links toolbar, or wherever you like.)
The Status bar at the bottom of the window tells you what Internet Explorer is doing (such as "Opening page…" or "Done"); when you point to a link without clicking, the Status bar also tells you what URL will open if you click.
If you consult this information only rarely, you may prefer to hide this bar, thus increasing the amount of space actually devoted to showing Web pages. To do so, choose View→Status Bar.
When you click the Search toolbar button or use the View→Explorer Bar menu, the Explorer bar appears at the left side of your browser window. Helpful lists appear in this special pane when you choose commands from the View→Explorer Bar menu:
Search. Offers a compact search feature, like the one described in the next section.
Favorites. A duplicate of the pages listed in the Favorites menu.
History. A list of Web sites you've visited recently, arranged chronologically.
Folders. Shows you the contents of your hard drive.
Tip of the Day. This command takes away a second chunk of screen space from your Web-browsing activities, the better to display a hint or tip about Internet Explorer.