When you navigate to an Internet page, by default Microsoft Internet Explorer checks to see if that page is in your cache. How your installation deals with the cache is up to you. To set up your cache parameters, choose View|Options and click on the Advanced tab. Now click on Settings. Now you can select the appropriate radio button to tell Explorer to check for newer versions every time you visit a page, to check every time you start Explorer, or to never check. Never is the fastest option, but your cached pages won't get updated. However, you can click on Refresh to update pages that contain variable information (weather reports, for example). The slowest option is Every Visit To The Page because the pages always get updated. The default of Every Time You Start Explorer is a good compromise. Make your choice and click on OK. Then click on OK again.
Now and then you'll run across a URL you want to try. If you find a URL in a text file, select the URL and press Ctrl-C (in most Windows programs) to copy it. Open Internet Explorer and click in the Address box. Press Ctrl-V to paste in the copied address; then press Enter to navigate to the new address.
Many Web page designers use style sheets to specify fonts, font sizes, and margins in their pages. To view one of these pages as the designer intended, you need to tell Microsoft Internet Explorer to use style sheets. To get Explorer to use style sheets, choose View|Options and click on the Advanced tab. Select the Use Style Sheets check box and click on OK.
We've mentioned in the past that you can use Microsoft Internet Explorer to view a file that resides on your hard disk. For example, to look at the root folder of your hard disk, you can type 'c:\' into the Address box and then press Enter. When you reach the folder, take another look at the Address box and you'll see 'file://c:' because Explorer adds the proper protocol for you. If you'd like to read a text file directly in Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can type in the path and name of the file. For example, typing 'c:\My Documents\MyFile.txt' into the Address box and pressing Enter will open the file for viewing. And of course you can also double-click on the folders and files to open them, which means you can drill down to the file you want to view even if you don't know its exact path name.
If you're at a Web page and you want to go to a link on the page, you don't have to wait for the whole page to load before you click on the new link. You don't have to click on Stop or press any key. All you have to do is click on the link.
You can choose File|Open to open a file in Microsoft Internet Explorer, but what kind of file can you open? Explorer will open text files (TXT), graphics files (JPEG, GIF), sound files (WAV, AU, AIFF), and movie files (AVI, MPEG, and MOV). So when you need to look at one of the file types listed here, you don't have to minimize Explorer and look for the correct program. All you have to do is choose File|Open and then click on Browse to locate and open the file. You can also open a file by pressing Ctrl-O.
If you're like most of us, you've probably printed the wrong frame in a multiframe site. In the old days (a few months ago), you could just click on Print and get a printout of the entire Web page. In a multiframe site, you have to first click on the frame you want to print and then click on Print.