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Description: Using Internet Explorer's most powerful
features Difficulty level: Intermediate
System version: Not applicable
We explored ways to increase the browsing
speed of Internet Explorer (IE) a few weeks ago. As IE offers
more than mere "get to the pages" browsing, we want to take
advantage of all its features. With IE 5.0, Microsoft has added
some great features.
Auction Tracking
A gem of the Internet revolution is the ability to sell your old
stuff or simply what you want to get rid of on the Net without a
garage sale. You don't even have to look at your buyer's face
anymore! It can also work the other way around. With Internet
auctions, it is easy to find stuff that doesn't sell in retail
anymore or old stuff that you want to collect.
Internet Explorer tracks auctions for you using the Auction
Tracking feature. I will walk you through by going to an auction at
eBay and
starting to track it.
Now that's a book I want to read!
Once you've found the item you want on eBay or Yahoo, you need
to tell IE to track it. This is easy to do. Head to the Tools menu
and select Track Auction. When you do this, Explorer grabs the
Internet address of the auction you wish to bid on, and it will
keep you up to date about who the high bidder is at all times. It
will tell you how much time is left and let you know if someone
outbids you.
Once you decided to track the auction from the Tools menu, the
above window will appear. You will have to enter your eBay user ID
in order to do the tracking. If you do not have an ID yet, you can
sign up on the auction site. You can also click on the Customize
button in order to decide which kind of alert you wish to get - and
when. One alert I recommend is an email. If your home or work
computer is tracking an auction, and you want to find out about it
when you are on the road or elsewhere, this is very handy. In any
case, it's yours to customize.
Once IE is tracking an auction for you, a folder named Auction
Favorites will appear in your Favorites, and you can visit the
auction's page from there any time you wish.
Download Manager
The download manager is not just some window that pops up to
give you download status. It is useful for such a function, but
there is more. Open it from the Tools menu. Then, once a download
is going on, control-click on a downloading item. You can easily
delete or stop the download or reload it. If you control-click and
choose Get Info, you will get the following window.
I downloaded Napster to discover the featured music. It
could be good!
You can decide whether you want Stuffit Expander to decompress
your file once you are finished downloading. You can click on
Reveal in Finder to see where the file has landed and change the
file's location if necessary. You get the full address and the
ability to reload the file. Go to the Download Options in the
Preferences for more customization.
AutoFill
Filling forms can be tedious and repetitive. If you know how to
use IE's features, filling forms will become easier than you've
ever experienced. Pull down the Edit menu, and select Preferences.
Click on Forms AutoComplete, and click on Enabled. Then click on
AutoFill Profile and fill in the text fields. Click OK. When you
need to fill a form, IE will handle it for you. To fill a form, you
can pull down the Tools menu, and choose AutoFill Forms. If you
have placed the AutoFill button (the big pencil) in your browser
toolbar, just click on it and it will do the job.
Toolbars
Viewing only the tools you need can save screen space and make
your life easier. Go to the View menu. The first five elements are
toolbars that you can keep or get rid of. The ones with a check
mark appear in your browser window. Select one of them to activate
it or make it disappear. Do it with all of them to decide what you
want your browsing windows to have. If you rarely use the Address
Bar, you can always get rid of it and go to File --> Open
Location when you need to type an address.
Customize the Button Bar
Your Button Bar is the one with buttons and text that allows you
to go back, forward, stop loading a page, etc. Go to the View menu
and choose Customize Toolbars. From there, you will have
instructions on how to add or remove a button. To choose whether
you want only the icon, only the text or both in your toolbar, you
have to go to the Preferences and click on Browser Display to find
the toolbar settings.
Printing
You can print a Web page from Explorer, but you can also
customize your printing settings. When you are about to print, go
to the File menu and select Print Preview. From there, your printer
drivers will offer the Page Setup options, and IE will allow you to
see a preview of the final result. Also, a bunch of small options
are available from that window, such as taking the images out,
printing the background colors, and more.
If you use an inkjet printer, I definitely recommend that you
customize some printing settings - to decide which printing quality
to use, with or without colors - to select when you print a Web
page. I will cover printing with Epson and HP printers in more
depth in a later column.
Custom Web printing settings can be useful.
Toolbar Favorites
In order to
really enjoy the use of your Favorites at all times, you need them
to be easy to use. The best way to do this is to put folders of
your favorites in your Toolbar Favorites. Since version 5, IE
allows you to do this - this is one of the reasons I dumped
Netscape!
Go to the Favorites menu and highlight Organize Favorites. You
will note that a submenu will show up. Ignore it and release the
mouse button on Organize Favorites anyway. You will get an
organizing window that allows you do drag and drop favorites if you
wish. You have to be very accurate when dragging favorites and
folders around for them to end where you want them to be. From the
same Organize Favorites element (in the Favorites menu), you can
create new favorites, folders and separators.
A portion of my favorites bar. The folders are sorted as I
wanted.
The most important folder here is the Toolbar Favorites folder.
This one contains the favorites and folders you will see in your
browser's toolbar at all times. You can easily place your favorites
in there, and group a bunch of favorites in folders. Make sure to
group them in themes and name the folders appropriately. Short
folder names allow you to place more folders in the same bar.
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In order to
really enjoy the use of your Favorites at all times, you need them
to be easy to use. The best way to do this is to put folders of
your favorites in your Toolbar Favorites. Since version 5, IE
allows you to do this - this is one of the reasons I dumped
Netscape!
