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Internet Explorer Tips & Tricks
Drag and Drop From FTP
Pages
Turning Off Autocomplete
Saving a Favorite WebSite
Transferring Favorites To or From Netscape
Remove the Go Button on the Address Bar
Searching the Internet with IE
Search
for a Word on the WebPage
Organize Your Favorites Folder
You Don't Have to Type in the WWW., or .COM,
or HTTP://
Webpage Won't Download or Seems to Take
Forever
Drag
and Drop From FTP Pages
The most often used method of transferring files to and from
the Internet is File Transfer Protocol (FTP). To put it quite
simply, it's a set of rules and standards for transferring information.
In Internet Explorer version 5.0
and up, it's really quite simple. If you want to download a
file from an FTP site on the Internet, you can simply drag and
drop it to your desktop (or any folder you might have prepared
for this purpose).
You can do the same to upload
to an FTP site. Just navigate to the page you want to the file
to go to, then drag and drop your file.
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Turning
Off Autocomplete
When you're typing an URL into the Address field on the Address
Bar, Internet Explorer will try to autocomplete what you are
typing. This means that if you type 'http://www.p', Explorer
might try to finish it off with a site you had visited previously
(such as ''). Simply press ENTER
and you're at the site.
For some, this may seem to be
quite a time saver, yet, while I do see some advantages to it,
mostly it tends to annoy me.
You can toggle this feature on
and off by clicking 'Tools' (IE5) or 'View' (IE4) on the menu
bar and choosing 'Internet Options'. Click the 'Advanced' tab
and add or remove the check-mark beside "Use AutoComplete" in
the Browsing section.
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Saving
a Favorite WebSite
If you find a website you may want to return to later, you can
put it in your Favorites folder for easy access later. While
at the website, simply click 'Favorites' on the Menu Bar (not
the Favorites Icon on the Tool Bar), and then OK. Actually,
the box that pops up will allow you to name the Favorite, and
put it in a particular folder if you want by clicking the 'Create
In' button.
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Transferring
Favorites To or From Netscape
In IE ver 5.0, you can export your Favorites folder for use
in Netscape, or for backup. Click on 'File', then 'Import and
Export'. Follow the Wizard's directions and export your favorites
to an HTML file that can be used by Netscape.
If you want to be able to view
your Netscape bookmarks, you need to know where they are stored.
Usually, they're stored in a file called BOOKMARK.HTM. A quick
search will give you the path. Once you know where they are,
you can use the 'Import and Export' Wizard to import them right
into Inernet Explorer's favorites.
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Remove
the Go Button on the Address Bar
Internet Explorer 5+ has a 'Go' button after the Address field
on the Address Bar. After you've typed in the URL, you can head
to the website by clicking on the 'Go' button. Of course, you
can also just press ENTER!
The 'Go' button is another little
option that can be toggled on and off. Just click on 'Tools',
'Internet Options', 'Advanced', then add or remove the check-mark
beside "Show Go Button In Address Bar".
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Searching
the Internet with IE
When you first search with IE, you'll see a drop down box with
MSN's Searchbox. The dropdown box will offer you the opportunity
to check out other Search Engines, and as you do, these Search
services will appear in the dropdown box. Really, an excellent
way to search.
Use Multiple Words or Phrases
When Searching the Web This isn't really just for Internet Explorer.
It's the same for any Browser. If you're planning on building
a cedar deck in your backyard, and would like some ideas or
pictures, don't do a search for 'decks'. You'll end up with
11,765,560 possible matches. Refine your search by using multiple
words or phrases. You'll get fewer and better results by typing
in 'decks cedar pictures blueprints' or 'wooden decks photos
ideas'.
Also, you may have to check a
Search Engines options page for proper syntax, but most allow
boolean searches. These are searches using relational operators
such as AND, OR, and NOT. This means you can refine your search
even more by searching for 'decks AND photos NOT levels'. This
may limit a search to sites that have photos of single-level
decks. This is just a quick example off the top of my head but
you should get the idea.
Check out the different Search
Engines. Most have a clickable link to 'options', 'syntax',
'advanced search', etc… Learn how to refine your searches, you'll
be a lot happier with the results.
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Search
for a Word on the WebPage
So, you've waded through the thousands of results you got when
you typed a word into a searchbox on AltaVista or Excite. You've
clicked on a link and arrived at a particular webpage, but now
the webpage seems to be about ten feet long. Do you have to
read the whole thing to find the information pertinent to the
word you typed in? Not necessarily, click 'Edit' on the menu
bar and choose 'Find (on this page)'. Now you can type in your
search word again and Internet Explorer will search that particular
page for any instance of your word.
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Organize
Your Favorites Folder
If you do a fair amount of surfing and save a lot of sites in
your Favorites folder for future access, your Favorites can
quickly become cluttered and disorganized. By creating and naming
new folders, and dragging and dropping your files into the related
folders, you can organize your favorites so that pages are easier
and quicker to find.
Just click on Favorites (not the
Icon on the Toolbar but the actual word 'Favorites' on the menu
bar), and choose 'Organize Favorites'. Now you can add and remove
folders and drag and drop files to your hearts content.
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You
Don't Have to Type in the WWW., or .COM, or HTTP://
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and with version
3.0 and later of Internet Explorer, you don't have to enter
the http://. IE automatically will insert it for you.
If you're running Internet Explorer
4.0 or later, you don't have to enter the 'www.' and the '.com'
for the address. If the site's address you're typing in has
these standard prefixes and suffixes, Explorer will add them
for you. That means, to get to this site, you should only have
to type 'pccomputernotes' in the Address Bar.
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Webpage
Won't Download or Seems to Take Forever
When you click on a page or link, that information is sent to
you over several different electronic pathways. There are many,
many pathways that the info could travel down and the ones it
is using may be congested. If the page just seems to hang there,
or takes a long time to load, click 'Stop' on the Tool Bar,
and then 'Refresh'. This may cause the page to be sent along
a different pathway that is not so congested, and get it to
your computer before the search times out.
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