Windows XP [Electronic resources] : Visual Quickstart Guide, Second Edition نسخه متنی

Getting Started with Internet Explorer

Figure 13.1 shows Internet Explorer's main controls. You can point (without clicking) to any control for a pop-up tip. The important part of IE is not the program itself but the web pages and resources that it gives you access to. You'll spend most of your browsing time working within the web itselfreading, searching, scrolling, clicking links, filling out forms, downloading filesrather than using IE's controls and menus.

To start Internet Explorer:

Choose Start > Internet Explorer (or Start > All Programs > Internet Explorer).

or

Click the Internet Explorer icon () on the Quick Launch toolbar on the taskbar.

or

Double-click an internet shortcut.

or

Choose Start > Run; type iexplore and then press Enter.

Mozilla Firefox

IE is popular because it's included with Windows, but Mozilla Firefox (free; www.mozilla.org/products/firefox) is a far better browser. It features built-in pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing, which lets you flip quickly among pages all within one window. (IE makes you Alt+Tab among a clutter of browser windows.) Firefox is smaller, faster, simpler, more secure, and updated more frequently. You can customize it with easily installed extensions (free add-ins) that include a Google toolbar; Flash-animation suppressor; banner-ad killer; weather-forecast display; and hundreds more for blogging, creating bookmarks, downloading, navigation, searching, tabbing, privacy, security, and miscellany. Firefox can import and export IE settings and bookmarks. And it has an extension that opens a web page in IE in case it doesn't display properly in Firefox (which happens occasionally).

Opera (free; www.opera.com) is another strong IE alternative.

IE vs. Windows Explorer

Web pages ar227 ( or l) files that sit on a dedicated computer called a

web server. Requesting a page makes the server upload it to IE for display. So why use IE to access files on a web server's hard drive and Windows Explorer (Chapter 5) to access files on a local drive or network drive? Microsoft knows that it's silly to treat files differently depending on where they're located, so it blurred the distinction between local and remote files by making IE and Windows Explorer two faces of the same program. You can access

any file from either program. Choosing a web site in Windows Explorer's Favorites menu, for example, makes Windows Explorer transform into IE and display the site. Similarly, using IE's Search or Favorites bar to locate or manage files on your PC's hard drive makes IE morph into Windows Explorer.