Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Using Internet Explorer
This topic devotes an entire chapter (
Chapter 10, “Web Basics”
) to using Internet Explorer (IE), but you will prob-
ably need to use the web before you get to that chapter to complete some of your assignments, so here is a very
quick overview.
Windows 7 has a shortcut to Internet Explorer pinned to the taskbar, so you can start IE from there if you like, or
you can click the Start button and click Internet Explorer at the top of the Start menu.
The page that appears initially depends on what page has been set as the default (referred to as the Home page). If you
are accessing IE from your school or workplace, a page may have been assigned for you specific to that organization.
To go directly to a specific address (called a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL), type it in the
address bar
. You can also
use the address bar to perform searches. Instead of entering a specific address in the address bar, type some keywords
there, or even a whole sentence. Your default search engine will return a list of pages that meet your search criteria.
Use the Back button to return to a previous page. To go back several steps at once, hold the mouse button down
on the Back button to open a menu of previously viewed pages.
To open a link in a new tab, right-click the link and choose Open in New Tab. You can then switch back and forth
freely between the open pages by clicking their tabs. You can also start a new tab without specifying a page to
show on it by clicking the New Tab button to the right of the rightmost displayed tab.
Managing Files
As you learned in
Chapter 4,
a computer's file system consists of physical
drives that contain volumes that have letters (with colons) assigned to
them, like C: and D:. Each volume can contain folders, and each folder
can contain files. Files can also exist at the top level of a volume's organi-
zation (its root directory).
address bar
The field above the menu bar in
Windows Explorer that shows the current path.
