Monday, January 08, 2007

Internet Explorer 7 Tips

By now you have probably installed Internet Explorer 7 and experienced the Microsoft version of Tabbed Browsing. To be honest, I was not unhappy with IE6. It did what I needed and I frequently used Ctrl+N to open a new instance of the current window so I would not loose my place when browsing. The taskbar would fill up pretty quickly, but I was used to it. (This still works with IE7)

 

Enter IE7 with tabs--very nice. The taskbar is now clean with only one IE task open. Quick tabs (Ctrl+Q) lets me see miniature windows of the contents of each tab. And there is plenty of help on the Microsoft site. Of course most of us will just figure out how to use it on our own—perhaps this is a geek thing.

 

I have done some exploring and here are some shortcuts I have found useful to me:

 

Ctrl+Click will open a favorite item or an item on your link bar in a new tab and gives it focus.

 

When clicking a link on an open Web page, there are three options:

  • Click opens the link on top of the existing page (unless the link is set by the Webmaster to open on a new page)
  • Shift+Click opens the link in a new instance of the browser
  • Ctrl+Click opens the link in a new tab but the current window keeps focus
  • Shift+Ctrl+Click opens the link in a new tab and gives it focus

 

When typing an address into the address bar, there are some additional options:

  • Type and hit Enter, the new site opens in the tab currently having focus
  • Type and then Alt+Enter, the new sites opens in a new tab with focus
  • Type the domain name without the .com, then Ctrl+Alt+Enter and IE7 adds the http://www to the left and .com to the right, then opens the site in a new tab with focus
  • Ctrl+Enter adds the rest of the .com, but opens in the tab currently having focus (just like it did in IE6)

 

To close a tab:

  • Click the X on the tab (visible if the tab has focus)
  • Right-click the tab and select Close
  • Middle_click the tab (the middle button is the scroll wheel)

 

For a lot more information on tabbed browsing, see the FAQ page at Microsoft at http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/b37c030b-bdc5-488e-aeca-3e64b739736e1033.mspx