CHOOSE THIS, AND THIS, AND . . .
If you choose View, Internet Options and then click the Advanced tab when the Internet Options dialog box opens, you’ll find an entire list of options. Which should you choose? What you choose is ultimately up to you, but we can tell you how to interpret a few of the available options that might be of wide general interest:
AutoComplete will take over and supply the rest:
Use it unless you have a problem with limited memory.
There’s also a list of options under Multimedia. Select the ones you want. Under Cookies, you’ll find three choices:
This one is a problem. If you select Disable All Cookie Use, some sites won’t display properly (this includes many Microsoft sites). If you select Prompt Before Accepting Cookies, you’ll be driven nuts by the constant dialog boxes telling you that a cookie is being sent. And, if you select Always Accept Cookies, well, you’ll always be accepting cookies. There isn’t really a good choice here.
For now, we recommend that you leave the other options at their default settings.
MINIMIZING MADE EASY
Here’s a new feature added to Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 that many users haven’t heard about:
You can minimize a window from the Taskbar. Try this: Open a program. You’ll see its icon in the Taskbar as usual. Now, click the Taskbar icon, and the window will minimize.
You no longer have to click the Minimize button in the program’s window—just click that Taskbar icon.
ENTER A NEW ADDRESS
If you need to go to another location on a Web site, it’s often easier to simply edit the URL in the Address Bar. For example (a very short example), let’s say you’re currently at
and you want to go to
http://home.microsoft.com/reading/
All you need to do is click in the Address Bar to select the existing URL, then press the right arrow key to move the cursor to the end of the URL.
Next, add
/reading/
to the end of the URL. Press Enter to navigate to the new destination.
PRESS THE KEYS AND NAVIGATE
Do you have a few URLs that you visit very often? Perhaps you visit certain Web sites every day, or even several times a day. If so, why not assign them some keyboard shortcuts?
For example, let’s say you check the weather report every day. So let’s assign Ctrl-Alt-W to the Weather Channel’s URL. The Weather Channel is in our Favorites folder in a folder named Weather. Let’s assume, for the purpose of explanation, that your Weather Channel URL is in the same place.
Click Start, Favorites, Weather. Now right-click The Weather Channel and choose Properties. When the dialog box opens, click the Internet Shortcut tab. Click in the Shortcut Key entry box and type W (either uppercase or lowercase). This assigns Ctrl-Alt-W to The Weather Channel.
If you want the weather report now, just press Ctrl-Alt-W, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 will open, dial the Internet, and navigate to The Weather Channel.
I NEED A COPY OF THAT
When you read a message in the Internet Mail preview pane, you might like to copy the sender’s address so you can paste it into another document. The problem is that the address isn’t ordinarily visible.
Usually, however, if you click Reply to Author, the sender’s address will appear in the To entry box. Right-click the address and choose Copy. After you make the copy, you can choose File, Close to close the Reply to Author window.