Using the Internet Explorer Browsing Software

The Internet Explorer browsing software is powerful and easy to use. The following section highlights some important features and describes how you can customize and personalize Internet Explorer.

Making Browsing Easy and Personalized

Internet Explorer includes improvements in browsing and personalization capabilities.

Explorer Bars

Explorer bars are ways to browse through a list of links, such as your History or Favorites, while displaying the pages those links open in the right side of the window. For example, if you click Search on the toolbar, the Explorer bar opens and you can use it to search for the Web site you want. You can use several different Explorer bars:

• The Search bar displays a list of services that offer different kinds of searching capabilities. You can use the IEAK Profile Manager to specify a custom Search bar that points to the URL of your workgroup’s favorite search engine.
• The Favorites bar displays the list of Favorite Web site URLs, files, folders, and applications added using Add to Favorites.
• The History bar displays a list of folders containing links for URLs visited in previous days and weeks.
• The Channels bar displays a list of subscribed Active Channels.

Explorer Bars slightly reduce the available content area and remain visible until you again click the button that opened the particular Explorer bar.

AutoComplete

AutoComplete makes it easy to type in an Internet address and reduces the risk of typographical errors. The Address bar automatically completes addresses for you based on sites you have already visited, adds prefixes and suffixes to Internet addresses, and corrects syntax errors. You can easily override the suggestions by typing over them. AutoComplete is similar to the AutoFill feature in Microsoft Excel.

AutoComplete includes the following features and shortcuts:

• You can skip to break and separation characters in URLs (that is, // / . , ? +) by pressing and holding CTRL and then pressing the right or left arrow key.
• You can search your History file by typing the beginning of an Internet address and then pressing the up or down arrow key to find the desired URL.
• By pressing CTRL and ENTER, you can browse directly to "http://www.<what you typed>.com." You can customize this shortcut through a registry key, as described in Chapter 31, "Windows 98 Registry."

Improved Favorites

The Favorites function has been improved in the following ways:

Drag and drop ordering.

This feature allows you to drag and drop your favorite sites and links to the Favorites menu and arrange them in any way you choose.

Thumbnail view.

This option allows you to preview multiple Web sites simultaneously without visiting the sites.

To enable Thumbnail view

1. On the Favorites menu, click Organize Favorites.
2. Right-click the window background, and then click Properties.
3. Click the Enable thumbnail view check box.
4. Right-click the window background, and then click Refresh
5. Right-click the window background, point to View, and then click Thumbnails.

Browse in a New Process

This optional feature enables you to open multiple browsing windows simultaneously. For example, if you have an Internet Explorer browsing window open, and you open an HTML document in My Computer, another browsing window opens for the HTML document. If you click a link on a Web site that calls for a new Internet Explorer window, a new window opens for that link. This feature helps minimize disruption to other programs on your computer if the content or programs you are running in a browsing window are unstable.

Note

Enabling this option can degrade system performance due to the additional system resources required by each Internet Explorer browsing window. If your computer is low on resources or only meets the base system requirements for Windows 98, you may want to consider not enabling browsing in a new process.

To enable browsing in a new process

1. On the View menu, click Internet Options.
2. On the Advanced tab, select Browse in a new process.

RealPlayer 4.0

With the inclusion of RealPlayer version 4.0 in Windows 98, you can easily access RealAudio and RealVideo content from the Web. The RealPlayer 4.0 is automatically launched from the Internet Explorer browsing software when you choose to play RealAudio and RealVideo clips. You can continue to use your browsing window while RealPlayer is playing the clip, and you can minimize the RealPlayer 4.0 window while you use other applications. The RealPlayer 4.0 continues playing the selected clip until it is finished, or until you stop or pause it.

For information about how to use the RealPlayer, refer to online Help in RealPlayer 4.0. To obtain technical support from RealNetworks, go to their Web site at http://service.real.com/.

On a corporate intranet, the RealPlayer may need to be configured to work with your company’s firewall. For information about using RealPlayer 4.0 with a firewall refer to the information at http://www.real.com/firewall/.

Creating Web Page Subscriptions

You can choose to subscribe to a Web page as you add it to your Favorites. Web pages that you subscribe to are automatically checked for updates since the last time you accessed them, and, if there have been any updates, the new content can be downloaded automatically or you can choose to be notified of changes by e-mail.

To create a Web page subscription

1. Open a Web page you wish to subscribe to.
2. On the Favorites menu, click Add to Favorites.
3. Click Yes, but only tell me when this page is updated.
4. Click the Customize button, and select Yes, send an e-mail message to the following address to configure Internet Explorer to send you an e-mail message when the Web page is updated.

Configuring Web Page Subscriptions for Offline Reading

Using a large network, such as a corporate intranet or the Internet, has traditionally required having a direct connection from your computer to the network. This prevents access to network content for computers without a network connection, such as portable computers. Furthermore, even for a computer with a network connection, browsing can be slow, because the browser must traverse the network from the local machine to the Web server and back to the local machine again to download and refresh the content on the screen.

The offline capabilities of the Internet Explorer browsing software allow you to access subscription Web pages without being connected to the Internet. Internet Explorer downloads the pages in the background based on a schedule you set up, automatically disconnects from the Internet, and then notifies you of changes to these pages. You can also download the pages manually, if desired.

To configure new Web page subscriptions for offline reading

1. Open a Web page you wish to subscribe to.
2. On the Favorites menu, click Add to Favorites.
3. Click Yes, notify me of updates and download the page for offline viewing.
4. Click Customize to start the Subscription Wizard.
5. Select the desired download option for this subscription, and then click Next.
6. Select the desired e-mail option for this subscription, and then click Next.
7. Select the desired scheduling option for this subscription, and then click Next.
8. Specify any password data if applicable, and then click Finish.

Note

If you do not designate a schedule for downloading updates to Web pages, Internet Explorer defaults to a daily update between 12:00 A.M. and 12:30 A.M.

You can also modify download and scheduling options for existing subscriptions.

To modify an existing subscription

1. On the Favorites menu, click Manage Subscriptions.
2. Select the desired subscription.
3. On the File menu, click Properties.

   – Or –

   Right-click the subscription, and then click Properties.

4. Click the Receiving tab and select the desired subscription and notification options.
5. If you select Notify me when updates occur, and download for offline viewing, you can click Advanced to configure options for specific content and items to be downloaded, and for the maximum number of bytes to be downloaded at one time. You can also configure the subscription to follow links outside of the subscribed Web site.
6. Click the Schedule tab to designate whether downloading of content should occur automatically or manually, and when to perform manual downloading.

To update subscriptions manually

• On the Favorites menu, click Update All Subscriptions.

Controlling Subscriptions with the IEAK Profile Manager

Administrators can use the IEAK Profile Manager to control whether and how their users subscribe to Web sites. The time of day that downloads can occur, as well as the maximum size of the content downloaded, can be specified as well. These and other options are accessible in Channels & Subscriptions under System Policies & Restrictions.

For more information about configuring subscriptions, see Chapter 6, "Configuring the Active Desktop and Active Channels."

Customizing Your Start Page with the Personal Home Page Wizard

Whenever you start the Internet Explorer browsing software, the first page you see is the Internet Start page. This page always includes articles and features to help you benefit more from the Internet. You can customize this page through the Internet Start Personalization feature so that it keeps you up to date with information about topics of interest to you.

You can also add headlines from news providers, including Wired, MSNBC, and Forbes. In addition, you can search the Web from your Internet Start page.

Through its Exploring section, Internet Start also includes regularly updated links to the latest sites from around the world that qualify as the Best of the Web in such categories as sports, travel and entertainment, and computers and technology.

To use the Personal Home Page Wizard

1. Start Internet Explorer. By default, your start page is set to Internet Start: http://home.microsoft.com/.
2. Click Personalizing on the toolbar at the top of the Internet Start page.
3. Follow the instructions on the screen to select the type of content you want to see each time you start Internet Explorer.

Changing Your Default Home Page

You can also change your default home page to another Web site or to a blank page. Administrators can do this globally through a setting in the IEAK Profile Manager and can disable users from changing the setting.

To change your default home page

1. On the View menu, click Internet Options.
2. Click the General tab.
3. Type the URL of the page you want to designate as your home page.

   – Or –

   Click Use Current to make the current page your default home page.

   – Or –

   Click Use Blank to have Internet Explorer start with a blank page.

Using Internet Explorer with Netscape Browsers

The Internet Explorer browsing software may coexist with any Netscape browser. Keep in mind that the Netscape user settings are imported by Internet Explorer only at the time you upgrade your system to Windows 98. After that, separate user settings may be applied to each of the browsers.

Migration of Existing Netscape Configurations

Windows 98 Setup imports proxy settings, bookmarks, and cookies from Netscape Navigator or Communicator to the Internet Explorer browsing software.

The following Netscape Navigator settings are always imported:

• The Proxy settings.
• Netscape bookmarks adopted as Internet Explorer Favorites. With Navigator, only custom bookmarks are adopted. With Communicator, all default bookmarks are adopted.

The following Navigator settings are adopted only if they are not default settings:

• Security settings: personal certificate list and site certificate list.
• Option to match up the Toolbar view in Internet Explorer to that in Netscape Navigator.

The following Navigator settings are imported by Outlook Express:

• SMTP server information.
• POP3 server settings (POP3 server name and POP3 user name).
• Identity information (name, e-mail address, reply address, organization, and signature information). This information is stored in a different tab from View/Options/Server.
• Personal address book.
• Internet telephone application Web-based telephone book.
• Send and post settings (8-bit characters in headers, and MIME compliance) if different from the Navigator Default.
• Settings for checking new messages every x minutes if different from the Navigator Default.

The following Navigator settings are imported by the Web Publishing Wizard:

• Author’s name
• Document template location
• Publisher user name
• Publisher password