Let's dissect Microsoft Internet Explorer

This is Microsoft Internet Explorer

Now let's see the most important features:

• New Window (Ctrl+N) - When you click here, you open a new Internet Explorer's window (so you can download more than one web page).
• Open (Ctrl+O) - Click here to specify a new URL (however you can also specify an URL typing it into the 'address' field under the standard toolbar).
• Save as - When you click here you can save a web page on your hard disk.
• Create Shortcut - When you click here you can create a 'link' on your desktop. Later you will be able to see that page again, simply by clicking on the desktop's icon.

• Cut (Ctrl+X), Copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+V) - You can cut, copy and paste a piece of the downloaded web page.
• Find (Ctrl+F) - To find a text string inside of the downloaded web page.

• Toolbar and Status Bar - You can hide or show the toolbar and the Status Bar.
• Stop and Refresh - To stop the page's downloading and restart again downloading.
• Source - To show the page's HTML code.

Now, by clicking on the Options item, a pop-up menu will be shown:

Here you can change the window's layout, but I think you should not do it. These are the most helpful features:

• Show pictures, Play sounds and Play videos - You can enable/disable all of them. Sometimes disabling pictures is worth, because so you can download pages more quickly.
• Address bar and Links - you can enable/disable them to enlarge the window.

Here you have to specify your connection. To know its name just open the 'Remote Access' folder. In the above example the connection's name is MClink. In addition you can specify a proxy server (ask to your ISP for the proxy's parameters). A proxy server is just a huge 'hard disk' where more frequently visited pages are stored. So, when you go to an already visited page, you will download it from your ISP's proxy (insted of the remote host where that page is located). So downloading will be faster.

Here you can specify the start page (the first page shown by Explorer). If you don't want a start page (for example your page inside of your hard disk containing some links to your favorites search engines) you can specify a blank page. Besides you can specify the number of days to keep pages into the history folder. You can see the history folder's content by clicking on the 'View history' button. Finally you can delete all files contained inside of the history folder by clicking on the 'Clear History' button.

Here you can specify which programs to use for e-mail and news while you are surfing on the web. The 'Viewers' frame is helpful to specify which programs to use to open files contained into the downloaded web pages (just click on the 'File Types' button). Finally, you can specify whether you want Internet Explorer to remain your default browser even you install another web browser.

Here you can handle certificates to identify sites and yourself. Certificates are documents given by trusted parties (Certification Authorities) to people who ask them. Certificates assure you that site is what it say to be. Finally, by means of the 'Active content' frame you can:

• Specify whether Internet Explorer should automatically download any active content to your computer (e.g. animations or multimedia files).
• Specify whether Internet Explorer should automatically use items that show active content (for example an animation).
• Specify whether Internet Explorer automatically runs ActiveX.
• Specify whether Internet Explorer automatically runs Java programs.

Here you can:

• Specify whether you want to be warned before sending data to an Internet site that is not secure.
• Specify whether Internet Explorer should warn you if you are receiving a "cookie" from an Internet site.
• Display (by means of the 'View Files' button) your Temporary Internet Files folder, which holds the disk cache. The disk cache is the space on your hard disk that stores pages as you view them.
• Define (by means of the 'Settings' button) the amount of disk space you want to make available for your temporary Internet files, move the location of the files, and empty the folder containing the files. Besides you can specify when Internet Explorer has to check for newer versions of stored pages. For example, if you specify 'never', you will always see stored pages.
• Enable Style Sheets and Java.

Click here to go!

Here you can handle your bookmarks.

This is the Microsoft Internet Explorer help.

Finally I'm going to show you how to use this browser only by means of the keyboard, because sometimes it's faster pressing one or two keys than taking the mouse, moving it, choosing an item inside a popup menu and clicking...

Just another thing: press the right key of your mouse and a pop-up menu will help you.