Displaying Web Sites in Internet Explorer 7

Whether or not Internet Explorer 7 is your default browser, you can start it from the Windows Vista Start menu and use it to explore the Web. With all browsers, you navigate to a specific Web site by typing its address, or Uniform Resource Locator (URL), in an address box and then clicking hyperlinks to move to specific Web pages.

In the past, you needed to open your Web browser multiple times if you wanted to view multiple Web pages at the same time. Although you can still do that with Internet Explorer 7, you can also display multiple Web sites on separate tabs within one Internet Explorer program window. Tabbed browsing is convenient because it takes far less time to open a new tab than it does to start a new instance of Internet Explorer, and it's much easier to move between open sites by selecting from the tabs at the top of one window than by selecting from taskbar buttons that don't display as much information. When you have several pages open, you can display thumbnails or a list of all the open pages and then click the page you want to view. When the open tabs exceed the available space, navigation buttons appear to the right or left of the tabs.

For the duration of the session (until you close the tab), Internet Explorer keeps track of the pages you visit within each tab. You can move backward and forward between those pages.

While you are working in Internet Explorer, you might want or need to interact with other programsfor example, to edit an HTML file you are working with, or to send a Web page or link by e-mail. You can tell Internet Explorer which program to open for a specific task on the Programs tab of the Internet Options dialog box. Select an HTML editor from the list of those installed on your computer, and then if you want Internet Explorer to use different default programs for other tasks than those set in Windows, click Set Programs to open the Windows default program settings and make your changes.

In this exercise, you will start Internet Explorer and use various methods to open new, bookmarked, and linked Web sites and pages. You will open pages in the same window, on a new tab in the same window, and in a new window. You will navigate between sites and pages, close some sites, and then close them all. There are no practice files for this exercise.

1.	In the upper-left corner of the Start menu, click Internet. Start Troubleshooting The name of your default Internet browser appears below the word Internet. If Internet Explorer is not your default browser, point to All Programs on the Start menu, and then click Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer starts, displaying your current home page. [View full size image] See Also For information about changing the site that opens when you start Internet Explorer, see "Changing Your Home Page" later in this chapter.
2.	Click once in the Address box to select the URL of the currently displayed page. Type http://www.microsoft.com, and then click the Go button or press . The Microsoft Web site replaces your home page. Go
3.	In the Address box, replace microsoft with msn. Then press . Tip You don't have to type a full Web site URL to move to a different site or a different page within the same site. You can change as much or as little of the URL as necessary. The MSN site opens on a new tab.
4.	Click the Start button (or press the key). When the Start menu opens, the insertion point is already in the Start Search box in the lower-left corner of the menu.
5.	In the Start Search box, type http://. Windows filters all the indexed information on your computer and displays a list of items containing the characters you've typed; in this case, items from your Favorites and History lists, as well as the entry you're currently typing. You can click any Web site or page in the list to open it in Internet Explorer. Tip Internet Explorer records the Web sites you visit in your History list, so you can easily locate a site you have previously been to. Favorites are sites or locations that you save so you can return to them later.
6.	In the Start Search box, complete the URL by typing money.msn.com. Then press . As you type, Windows continues to filter the item list shown on the Start menu. When you press Enter, the home page of the MSN Money site opens in a new tab, in the existing Internet Explorer window.
7.	On the page, below the MSN Money title, click one of the links to other pages of the MSN Money site. The selected page replaces the home page you were viewing.
8.	Right-click another of the page links to display a menu of options for working with that page. [View full size image]
9.	On the context menu, click Open in New Tab. The selected page opens in a background tab, so that the tab displaying the page you linked from is still on top of the others. Tip Clicking Open In New Window starts an entirely new instance of Internet Explorer.
10.	In the tab area, click the new tab to bring it to the front. (If you followed the instructions exactly so far, it is the fourth of four tabs.)
11.	Click the original MSN Money tab (the third tab), and then to the left of the Address box, click the Back button. Back You return to the MSN Money home page. Because you have visited only two pages on this tab, either the Back button or the Forward button is active at any one time.
12.	To the right of the Back and Forward buttons, click the Recent Pages button. Recent Pages A list of the pages visited on this tab appears, with a check mark indicating the current page.
13.	In the list, click the page that doesn't have a check mark next to it, to return to that page.
14.	On the Command bar, click Tools. Then on the Tools menu, click Internet Options. The Internet Options dialog box opens, displaying the General tab.
15.	In the Tabs area, click Settings. The Tabbed Browsing Settings dialog box opens.
16.	Review the types of changes you can make, and change any settings that you want. Then click OK in the Tabbed Browsing Settings dialog box and again in the Internet Options dialog box.
17.	In the browser window, click any one of the middle tabs, and then click the Close Tab button that appears. Close Tab The tab closes, and the tabs to its right slide over to take its place.
18.	On the Internet Explorer window title bar, click the Close button. Close Because more than one tab is open, Internet Explorer prompts you to confirm that you want to close them all. (This is one of the settings you can change in the Tabbed Browsing Settings dialog box.)
19.	In the message box, click Show Options. You can have Internet Explorer reopen the current set of tabs the next time you start it (for example, if you have to shut down your computer but have a number of sites open that you want to return to) or you can disable the warning. This warning actually does come in handy sometimes while making the transition to tabbed browsingit can be easy to forget that closing the window affects more than one site.
20.	In the message box, click Close tabs to close all the tabs and quit Internet Explorer.

Protecting Personal Information Microsoft and MSN are licensees of the TRUSTe Privacy Program, which means that every Microsoft or MSN Web site contains a link to a privacy statement that must inform you of the following: The types of personal, identifying information that are collected from you through the Web site The name of the organization that is collecting the information How the information is used With whom the information might be shared Your choices regarding collection, use, and distribution of the information The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of your information How you can correct inaccuracies in the information For more information about TRUSTe, you can visit www.truste.org. If you have concerns about the protection of your personal information while using MSN Explorer, you can send an e-mail message to MSNPrivacy@msn.com.