Have you ever watched someone perform a magic trick really well? If you have, you probably recognize the "How'd he do that?" feeling, that sense that what was just accomplished was impossible. But what happens when you are then told how the
trick was performed? People usually respond to such a revelation with, "Oh, that wasn't really so hard." See, once you know how something is done, it becomes easy.
You've probably also seen people who can browse the Web at the speed of light; searching, moving from here to there, saving this, mailing that, cutting and pasting from the browser to one application or another. Watching one of these people can be a
daunting experience. But, like magic, it's intimidating only until you know how it's done. This chapter shows you some of the "tricks of the trade" for using Internet Explorer faster and more efficiently. By the end of the chapter, you, too,
will
be saying, "Oh, that wasn't really so hard."
Of course you can save the text (and even graphics) on your screen onto your hard drive at any time by selecting File | Save As File in Explorer. You can also save text and even images to your hard drive by using some shortcuts you'll learn about later
in this chapter. But if you save everything you encounter on the Internet, your computer will fill up fast! Even if you could store every interesting document in the world, you would have only a snapshot of the constantly changing Web sites you've
visited. It's much more useful and efficient to simply save the titles and addresses of the sites so you can return to them easily whenever you wish. That's what Favorites is for.
When you see a page that you want to check out again at another time, select Favorites | Add to Favorites to add it to your personal bookmark list (see Figure 7.1).
After telling Explorer to add the Favorite, you are asked to confirm your choice. This is to give you an opportunity to change the name or location of the favorite. You will generally just click Add. You might want to change the name to help you
remember it better. Also, if you want to put the favorite into an already existing subfolder under Favorites (as pictured in Figure 7.2), now is the time to do so. After you complete these steps, it will appear right on the Favorites menu (see Figure
7.3).
Figure 7.2. Explorer gives you an opportunity to choose the name and location of all your favorites.
Figure 7.3. Your new favorite appears where you saved it.
A handy pull-down menu of bookmarks is great if you visit only a dozen sites on the Web. But even the most nerdy of netizens can find a couple hundred intriguing sites that they imagine they'll have time to visit again someday. When your Favorites menu
gets too long to display, it's time to use the Open Favorites Folder command under the Favorites menu.
Internet Explorer displays your favorites as just another Web page that's incredibly easy to edit. Most of your advanced capabilities are available through a Shortcut menu discussed in the next section. For now, however, you should at least know how to
begin grouping your favorites into subfolders for greater ease of access.
After you choose Favorites | Open Favorites Folder, you will go to a new Web page that contains all of your favorites and appears similar to Figure 7.4. These are favorites for a few Web sites I have designed, and they should all be put in one
folder because they all belong together. By now, you should have a few favorites of your own that you might want to group together.
Figure 7.4. All of these individual favorites should be grouped in their own folder.
First, you need to create a new folder, so choose File | New | Folder to create a new folder. Next, name it anything you wish as you would name any file or folder in Windows 95. After you have created it, you can begin moving favorites into it
using the simple click-and-drag method. Of course, you can also select multiple favorites and move them all at once. After you have moved the bookmarks into their new folder, you might be left with a page similar to Figure 7.5.
Figure 7.5. After you move the favorites, they are all in their new folder.
TIP
If you were to double-click on the new Favorites folder you just created, you would notice a standard folder window appears, with each favorite represented as a Windows 95 shortcut. That's because that is exactly what favorites are. By opening Favorites folders, you can drag and copy their icons to your desktop (or anywhere else). Once they are there, double-clicking on them will automatically open Internet Explorer to that page.
This is probably the most common use for editing bookmarks. There are, of course, more advanced ways of manipulating favorites by way of the shortcut menu, which is discussed in the next section.
Many people use Internet Explorer for a long time without realizing that they can click with the right mouse button on a page, link, image, or favorite to bring up a menu of extremely useful commands. Some of these commands are shortcuts to commonly
used menu choices, but some can't be accessed any other way. Even savvy users who employ the right-mouse-click menu often don't know some of the powerful timesaving tricks available to them.
Even those who regularly use shortcut menus sometimes don't realize that you don't have to right-click on something to bring up a shortcut menu. This is the case with Web pages. Clicking anywhere on a Web page's text or empty space brings up a
shortcut menu like the one shown in Figure 7.6.
Figure 7.6. The Web page shortcut menu gives you many options to help you better use the Web.
The following are the options on this shortcut menu:
Figure 7.7. Find out specific information about a Web page using the Properties shortcut.
Although "click-and-go" links might seem pretty foolproof, you actually need your wits about you to recognize and deal with the varied options you have for dealing with a link. You might want to just follow it, but sometimes you might prefer
to simply store its address or the contents of the file to which it points without actually displaying the page. There are also a few other options you might not even know are available.
When you point to an underlined link and click the right mouse button, the resulting pop-up menu gives you several choices for handling the page pointed to by that link (see Figure 7.8). The following lists these choices:
Figure 7.8. Clicking on a link with the right mouse button brings up a link shortcuts menu.
When I first started surfing the Web years ago, I was always frustrated when a really cool image would show up on a page, but there was no easy way to save that image on my hard drive for later viewing. When you save a document in most browsers
(including Explorer), you get only the text with no pictures. Even today, many Explorer users don't know how easy it is to save any image they see.
By clicking with the right mouse button on an image, you can pull up a shortcut menu (see Figure 7.9) with the following choices enabled:
If you right-click on an image that is also a link (or an image map), the pop-up menu will have many of the additional shortcut menu items covered in the previous section.
As mentioned earlier, your Favorites folder is displayed just like any other Web page when you open it for editing. You already know one way to create folders to help you organize your favorites. There are a host of other options available, however.
As with other shortcuts menus, you will get a different list of choices depending upon whether you right-click on the page itself or on one of the favorites. Right-clicking on the page brings up a menu that enables you to perform basic manipulations of
the Favorites page, while right-clicking on the favorite links brings up a menu similar to, but not exactly like, the link shortcut menu. These two menus, however, will enable you to perform just about any Favorites editing you would like to do. Assume
that you have a Favorites page similar to the one pictured in Figure 7.10 to work with.
You are now ready to learn how to right-click on the page to customize your favorites a little more. The right-click menu should look like the one pictured in Figure 7.11.
Figure 7.12. The View menu enables you to display your favorites any way you want to.
The options on the View menu are as follows:
You might have noticed that one of the options has been left out of the preceding list. Well, it has, but only because it warrants a little special attention. The New right-click menu option is perhaps one of the most powerful tools you can
have.
With it, you can create any one of a number of documents for inclusion in your Favorites page. Would you like to instantly open that PowerPoint presentation you're working on right from Explorer? Create it as a favorite, and you can. In addition to new
folders and shortcuts, Figure 7.13 gives you a list of the different favorites you can create right in Explorer.
TIP
You might discover it on your own, but I'll go ahead and tell you. If you are running the 32-bit versions of Microsoft Office programs for Windows 95, you will be able to open the actual application documents right in the Explorer window.
The shortcut menu for right-clicking on favorites links (see Figure 7.14) is very similar to the links shortcut menu. However, there are a few differences.
Figure 7.14. The favorite links right-click menu is familiar but different.
The right-mouse-click shortcut menu can do much more than just save your mouse a trip to the toolbar. It can save you time online (which for most people means money) and can make the information you get from the Internet more complete and easy to
digest.
There are a few more ways that Web browsing can be made easier, more efficient, or less costly. Some of these "value added" hints might help you as you go further into the Web.
Many people find themselves accessing their favorites dozens of times every time they go on the Web. In fact, people rarely visit the same sites in the same order every time. Many times, in the back of their minds, they might think that it would be
neat
to have all of their favorite sites at their fingertips every time they use Explorer. Well, there's no time like the present.
Setting your Favorites page as your home page is almost too easy. Simply choose View | Options | Navigation and make sure that the Page option is set for you to define the Start Page. In the Address field, simply type in c:\windows\favorites, click
Apply and then OK and you're finished. The next time you open Internet Explorer, your Favorites will come up first.
Downloading Web pages to your hard drive instead of reading them online can put dollars in your pocket if you pay per-hour connect charges to your provider or long distance company for Internet access. However, there are some drawbacks. Most Web page
links use relative addressing, which means that they specify only where one page is located in relation to another. If you download a page to your hard drive, the links on it won't work unless you also download the files to which they link.
For example, if you save a typical page on your hard drive, you'll be able to peruse it without connecting to the Internet by selecting File | Open. However, you won't be able to click on the links to download particular files from the various
links on the page, even after you are back online. You'll still have to load the original page while online and then use the links from there to get to the appropriate links.
TIP
Some Web pages do use the complete Internet address for links; therefore, you can go straight from a copy of the page on your hard drive to the online files to which the links refer.
You can tell whether the address in a link is complete by holding the mouse pointer over the link without clicking. The address appears in the message box at the bottom of the Explorer window. If that address begins with http:, then it will take you to the Internet. However, if it begins with file:, then it will only try (probably unsuccessfully) to find the link location on your hard drive.
Another disadvantage to downloading Web pages to your hard drive instead of always viewing them online is that the images and backgrounds won't come along with the Web page without a little extra work. For example, Figures 7.15 and 7.16 show what the
Christian Music Online page looks like when viewed from the Web and your hard drive, respectively.
Figure 7.15. The Christian Music Online page as viewed from the Web.
Figure 7.16. Viewed from the hard drive, the Christian Music Online page looks decidedly different.
Quite a difference. Pragmatic sorts might be happy with only the text of a Web page; however, if you plan to view a page often enough to download it, you might also want the graphics. Fortunately, you can download those quite easily, too. Just go to
the
original page online, right-click on the image, select Save Picture As, and accept the default filename offered in the Save As dialog box.
In most cases, if you are careful to put the images in the same directory as the page they go with, the images will display properly when you use File | Open to display the page from your hard drive. (Occasionally, however, page authors do put
the images in separate subdirectories. In those instances, you have to duplicate the same subdirectory names shown on your hard drive.)
Remember, you can even save the background image using Explorer. Just make sure that you click on the background and not another image on the page.
After you've saved the background image and each of the other images on the page, the page should display from your hard drive exactly as it does online (see Figure 7.17). This method isn't fail-safe; there are a number of strange things that Web page
authors can do on purpose or by accident to make pages display improperly from your hard drive, even when all the images are downloaded. But for the vast majority of pages, you can successfully reproduce the online look on your own hard drive.
This chapter has shown you how to navigate the Web most efficiently with Internet Explorer. Chapter 8, "Searching the Internet," shows you how to search the Internet to find the stuff you really want.
