Internet Explorer Part 1

Microsoft's own browser, Internet Explorer is currently the most popular of the Internet browsers.

In this three part series we will give a brief descriptions of the icons and options you can see in front of you as you open the browser.

Internet Explorer also has options that are "hidden" away that you don't use everyday, we will cover these options at a later date.

If you have used the Internet before there is a very good chance you have used it through Internet Explorer, most computers have it as the main browser installed.

Most browsers work the same way and the options in them are very similar, we will start with the top left of the browser.

This picture shows the top left of the browser, taken from the latest version of Internet Explorer which is version 8.

 

1. This tells you which site you are currently on, it may also contain words that relate to the site you are on to aid search engines such as Google to find the site quicker.
2. This is the "Back" button, if you have visited a site and have clicked on a link within that site you can click here to go back one page at a time.
3. This is the "Forward" button, this means that when you have gone back through the pages of a website you can easily move forward the the pages you have visited.
4. If you click this button you will see a list of page that you have visited on a particular site, if you select one of these pages you can easily jump straight to that page without having to use the forward and back buttons.
5. The Address Bar, This is where you would type the site you are looking for directly in so if you know the name of the site you are looking to visit you can type this in here for example if you where to look at the BBC website you would type in www.bbc.co.uk

 This next picture is from the top left of the browser.

 

1. If you click this downwards pointing arrow you will see a list of sites that you have already visited so that you can easily select the one you would like, this especially useful if you visit a site regularly these site will be stored here.
2. This little icon only appears when the site you visit is an old site, sometimes you may experience a web site not looking correct on the screen, it may be that the pictures and the text overlap each other or are generally messed up, if you click this little icon this will correct this problem.
3. This icon is to refresh the page, if you are visiting a page that is regularly updated such as a news website you could click this to refresh the page and update it.
4. This icon stops a page from loading, is a page was taking a long time to load you can click this to stop the page from loading, this is a little used icon and was mainly used during the days of slower internet connections.
5. This small box to the right of the browser is a search box this lets you serach the internet without leaving the page you are currently on, so for example if you are doinf some research you can stay on the page you have found whilst looking for more information.