Making Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Your Own: The Basics
Published: June 29, 2006
By Mark H. Walker
Internet Explorer 7 has many useful features such as intuitive toolbars, a pop-up blocker, and a phishing filter. In fact, users have only to click Tools and select Internet Options to open a window that has no less than seven tabs of detailed choices and adjustments.
You can set your home page in the Internet Options box.
But many of us don't need to delve into the details of Internet Explorer 7. Instead, we need to master the basics, such as setting a home page, accumulating favorites, and subscribing to RSS feeds. These are the things we do everyday, and it's these same tasks that Internet Explorer does well.
Coming home
"Jessica Johns" is a busy woman. She wants her news, she wants her cricket scores, and she wants them now. She doesn't want to boot her browser, wait for a non-descript home page to fill her screen, and then navigate to her favorite information portal (as the "techies" call them).
But Jessica isn't a problem for Internet Explorer 7. Instead of opening an unwanted default home page and then cruising to another, Jessica can simply set her favorite destination as her home.
To set your favorite destination as your home page
1. | Click Tools and then select Internet Options from the drop down menu  Zip over to the Internet Options box by clicking Tools > Internet Options. |
2. | Click the General tab (usually the default display). |
3. | Type in the page you wish to make your home. If the webpage that you are currently viewing will be your new home page, click on Use Current. |
Tip: By selecting Use Blanks, whenever the browser is opened, a clean, white blank page appears. What's the advantage of using a blank page? You will save time during the boot process. What's the disadvantage? Your home page won't have much information.
You're my favorite friend
Setting your home page to a frequently visited website can no doubt reduce wasted time and increase your efficiency, but no one page has all the information that we need. Even focused individuals like Jessica Johns cannot live on news and cricket scores alone. She needs to know where to eat on Friday, what's on at the movies on Saturday, and where to research her latest business proposal on Sunday.
Finding this information with the new Internet Explorer drop-down Search menu is easy. Just click the menu and select a search category. Type your search query in the provided text box, and you're on your journey to discovery.
Find what you need with the drop down search menu.
But why journey if you can teleport straight to your destination? After you have found the best website for local restaurants, theater listings, or market research, make it a favorite. Certainly, there is nothing new about book marking favorites. What is new is the streamlined convenience Internet Explorer 7 offers in marking and organizing your favorites.
To add a webpage to your list of favorites
1. | Click the large plus sign on the left side of the screen, as shown below.  Add your favorite sites by clicking Add to Favorites. |
2. | Click Add to Favorites again, and a final window will appear asking you to state your preferences. Click Add, and then you're done. |
This procedure is less painful than a poke in the eye, and much more productive.
Even setting the preferences for Favorites is intuitive in Internet Explorer 7. In the Favorites Center Preference Box (shown below), you may type in a name for your favorite and choose where the favorites center will store the favorite.
You can chose to make your favorites available offline in the Favorite Center dialogue box.
To view your favorite websites offline
| • | Select the Make available offline check box |
There is, unfortunately, a catch. In order to make a website available offline Internet Explorer must download it. This process is not a big deal if you only need one page, but if you want to peruse the links on the page, or worse still the links of the links, you are talking about quite a bit of downloading. You can set how many layers Internet Explorer downloads and how often it downloads them by clicking offline settings.
Tip: For those folks who aren't interested in offline settings (that is, most folks with broadband connections), click the small Less options button to truncate the favorites center box and hide the offline options.
Organize your favorites
Truth be known, after a few months of browsing, most people's book marked favorites look like my week's grocery list (minus the tomatoes and pickles, of course). Favorites should provide quick access to frequently visited sites. After you accumulate too many favorites, however, your list becomes just one more menu to scroll through. Or at least that's the way it used to be. Although Internet Explorer has offered users the tools to organize their favorites for several years, organizing your favorites has never been easier than it is now.
To organize your favorites
1. | Click on the Favorites Center star. The Favorites Center will open, displaying three tabs at the top of the Favorites Center: Favorites, RSS, and History.  Click the Favorites Star to display the Favorites Center. |
2. | Click Favorites to display your list of favorites.  Organize your favorites in the Favorites Center. |
3. | Do any of the following: | • | You can manipulate your favorites by dragging the icon to a folder. | | • | Right-click anywhere in the Favorites Center and click Create New Folder if you need to create one. | | • | Select a favorite and open it, select to view it offline (as described above), rename it, copy it, view it in a separate tab, and much more. |
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These procedures are simple, user friendly, and fast.
Tip: The Favorites Center is so useful that you may want to leave it up on your screen all of the time.
To pin the panel to the edge of your viewing screen
| • | Click the pin button in the top right of the Favorites Center. If you change your mind later, click the close button (a red "X") to close the Favorites Center |
But here's what's really neat...
Everything that I've covered so far is exciting and streamlined, and though similar features exist in previous versions of Internet Explorer, these features are better. What's really neat about the new Internet Explorer 7 interface is the improvement to Favorites and the Links toolbar. To display the Links toolbar, right-click the Internet Explorer 7 toolbar and select Links. Now you only need to drag the URL icon (the small site icon to the left of a site's URL) onto the Links toolbar to make an Internet site easily accessible. Once on the toolbar, the icon displays the site's name. Click the site name and it will open in Internet Explorer. You are not bound to the name the publisher gave to a site. To edit the name that appears on the Links toolbar, right-click the link and select Rename. Type a name in the provided pop-up window and click OK.
Tip: Renaming is useful when your favorite site is named something vague or long like, "Sally's Awfully Awesome Ant Anthem." Such verbose names take up the space on your Links toolbar. Just rename it "Ant."
Quickly access favorites with the Links toolbar.
Really simple stuff
Depending on whom you ask, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. No matter what the acronym stands for, RSS is a new and unobtrusive way to get the latest information from your favorite Internet sites. Plainly stated, RSS feeds a headline summary of the site’s latest updates to subscribers. The subscribers can then read the news and click embedded links when they desire additional information.
When Internet Explorer 7 detects a RSS feed on a website, the RSS icon illuminates, as seen below. Click the arrow to the right of the RSS icon, and select the RSS feed to which you want to subscribe. That’s all there is to it.
The RSS Feed icon (circled) will light when the currently viewed page offers a RSS feed.
The Favorites Center keeps track of, and updates, your RSS feeds.
To view the RSS feeds
To see the latest information from a feed
Click on an RSS feed link and you are taken that page.
You can also arrange the feeds as you did your favorites. Create folders to organize them, rename them, or delete them. Internet Explorer 7 provides intuitive, efficient methods to do them all.
In fact, intuitive and efficient well describes the way Internet Explorer handles all your favorites and feeds, no matter how complex or basic.
