Internet Explorer
Menu Items
Below is a brief explanation of some features in the browser’s
menu. These may not be things you will initially use, but you should
know that they are available. Click on the menu options and pull down
and side menus to get familiar with what’s here. It may be useful
to you in the future.
In this section we will cover the menu sections and
the options in each section. Some of these functions do the same thing
that the icons and buttons do in the second toolbar line of the browser.
For example, the Print option in the File menu does the same thing as
the Print icon button on toolbar that we discussed in the section called Using
Internet Explorer Web Browser.
File Menu
The first item on the menu bar at the top of your browser is File.
When you click on the File Menu a pull down menu appears and it lists
several items. The first one is New. When you move your cursor
down to New, it shows several other choices to the right.
The first one is Window. This allows you to open a new window.
The Message option allows you to send a new email message. Post allows
you to post a message to your newsgroup. Contact helps you to
establish a new contact (open an address book). Internet Call will
allow you to establish an internet call using Netmeeting – an information
sharing application.
Open is the second item in the File menu. When you click on
this it opens a dialog box. You can type a website address here and it
will open a new website in your browser.
Edit with Microsoft FrontPage Editor opens a web page editing
program.
Save and Save As open the Save dialog box. It works
the same way these commands work in other programs.
Page Setup allows you to make changes in the way the page is
printed. This is a wise option to explore before printing a web page.
Don’t assume that the page will print in the same format as your
word processor; many pages need to be adjusted a bit.
Print allows you to print the webpage. (See Print section in Using
the Internet Explorer Browser section).
The Send command allows you to send a web page, or a link to
a page, by email. It also has an option to send (make) a shortcut to
the site on your desktop.
Import and Export opens the Wizard to the right.
Properties shows you the properties of the current website
page.
Work Offline allows you to disconnect from the Internet and
still view or work with a web page. You will only be able to see that
one page that is on your browser when you disconnect. If you click on
hyperlinks in the website they won’t work until you reconnect to
the Internet.
Close closes the browser. It works the same way as if you click
on the X in the upper right hand corner of the browser.
Edit Menu
The Edit menu contains many of the commands that are common to most Microsoft
programs. Its contents include: Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All and Find. The
Find command only finds items on the open website page.
View Menu
The Toolbars option allows you to choose what toolbars
are available. Toolbars contains a customize choice. This is where you
go to add and remove buttons from the main toolbar.
The Status Bar is the bar at the bottom of the web page. You
can turn it off here if you choose.
The Explorer Bar choice lets you use the Search, Favorites,
and History functions. These commands are also on the Standard Button
toolbar.
The option to view the Tip of the Day is also available here.
Go To command: The first three selections of the Go To command
work the same as the buttons on the standard buttons toolbar. This is
followed by a list of the sites that you have visited this session. There
is a check mark by the current site.
The Stop and Refresh buttons. When you click on Stop
the website that is loading into your browser will stop loading. This
can be useful when a website takes a long time to load and you don’t
want to wait for it. Refresh is a good button to hit when you are viewing
a website that changes often. (For example, www.cnn.com).
The Text Size allows you to change the size of the words and
images in the webpage as discussed in the section Using
the Internet Explorer Browser.
Source opens up a small window with programming language.
Privacy Report lets you set your privacy options.
Full Screen will make your screen slightly larger. It does
this by covering the toolbars. Click on the darkened Restore button to
return to normal view.
Favorites Menu
The Favorites pull down menu allows you to Add to Favorites
and to organize Favorites. This choice is very useful if you collect
a lot of sites in Favorites. You can organize them into folders that
make sense for you. For example, you can you can create a file called “Vacation” and
put all the websites that relate to your vacation plans in that folder.
The Organize Favorites dialog box allows you to Create, Rename,
Move, and Delete favorites.
Tools Menu
The Tools pull down menu allows access to various dialog
boxes and commands. Tools seems to be Microsoft’s version of the
miscellaneous bin.
The first item is Mail and News. This provides access to your
email program directly from the browser. It also gives you a quick, easy
way to send Links and Pages.
Windows Update provides a quick link to Microsoft’s update
web site. This site supplies you with the newest updates to Windows 98,
if you wish to have them.
Show Related Links may, or may not, give you a list of useful
related links, but it has some amusement value. What is the relationship
between the weather in Augusta and pictures of Pretoria?
Internet Options
This is the last item in the Tools menu. We will spend some
time with the Internet Options Dialog Box because it controls the decisions
that your browser makes for you.
The first section of this box is the Home Page section. Here you can
change your home page by simply typing the website address into the box.
The second section, Temporary Internet files, allows two functions.
The first is to Delete Files. This gives you an opportunity to delete
the temporary files that are saved to make the browser work faster. You
probably don’t need to do this unless your computer has a hard
drive that is almost full.
The Settings button in Temporary Internet files gives you control
over how often you update stored pages. It lets you decide how much drive
space you want to allocate to temporary file storage. Older files will
automatically be dumped if disk capacity is exceeded.
The History section allows you to clear the history, or to
set how many days you want to keep the history of sites you have visited.
The Colors button lets you change the colors that are used.
You can play with this feature to see how it applies to different web
pages.
The Fonts button allows you to choose the font that a site
will display if the site doesn’t specify what font it wants to
use. Note that a site will sometimes demand a font that your machine
doesn’t support. In that case it will choose a different font to
display.
The Accessibility button alllows you to format the way that
the type face will be displayed. This is especially useful for people
with visual impairments.
The Security tab doesn’t need to be changed in most cases.
Increasing security decreases content. Unless you are on an Intranet,
you can just leave this be.
The Content tab has three sections. The Content Advisor section
gives you some control over the language, nudity, sex, and violence content
of sites. This is not a substitute for parental oversight. You also have
to realize that restricting viewing of certain content can reduce search
results. For example, eliminating all mention of sex could mean that
an animal behavior search would come up nearly empty.
The Connections tab is where you put internet connection setup
information. You only need to use this when you first set up the program.
The Programs tab is where you place setup information about
which programs the system will automatically use for internet functions.
You might need to change this if you make a change in your email program.
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