Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7 has had a great deal of development done to it compared to the previous versions, Internet Explorer 6. There are many new advances to the interface as well as many upgrades to the overall security and compliance with the latest in browser standards. Internet Explorer 7 comes pre installed with Windows Vista as the default web browser and can also be downloaded for free from Microsoft for Windows XP with SP2 or even Windows Server 2003 with SP1.
On the visual side, you can now use tabbed browsing to open up more than one web site in the same browser application. To do this all you have to do is click on the empty space to the right of the last tab, this will then turn into an icon showing you a white square within it and you can see a tool tip saying New Tab, , for example in the picture below, you can see "Windows Live" and "Microsoft Corporation" below the address bar. These are tabs that have been opened by firstly typing in the address of the site in the address bar, then when you want to open a new tab, you click on the small empty square to the right of the "X" which is situated on the right of the tab. This will open up a new tab which you can open another site in. You can continue this process as much as you like, however the more tabs you open up, the more RAM will get used which therefore slows the computer down, so if you are no longer in need of a particular site to be opened, you can close the site by clicking on the "X" on the tab where the site is open.
As you can see below, there are many other useful features that have been added on to Internet Explorer 7. These include the phishing protection that will warn you when you open up a site that may be attempting to take your personal login details without your knowledge by pretending to be a legitimate site. There is also a magnifying glass utility that allows you to zoom in or out of a web page. The RSS reader is a new feature that allows you to subscribe to news feeds from any number of sites that have that compatibility. There are also the preview thumbnails that allow you to see all open tabs as a thumbnail preview. Plus many more.
To view the thumbnail previews, you can do so easily when you have two or more open tabs. Click on the button to the left of the tabs which has four gray squares inside. This will show you all open tabs in real time, so if they are loading up, you will be able to see them load up. You can then select the tab you wish to open up or even close a particular tab by clicking on the "X".
Another great feature is the magnifying glass tool that is located at the bottom right of every open browser window. This shows you what percentage the zoom is currently in as well as having a small arrow pointing downwards that lets you select through the various sizes. If you wish to zoom in to a page click on this arrow and you will see a pop up menu with sizes ranging from 50% to 400% the higher numb ers represent a zooming in factor where the lower numbers represent zooming out. You can select between the different sizes or even use a custom size. At the top of the list you will notice it says "Zoom In Ctrl +" and "Zoom Out Ctrl -". These are the shortcuts to zoom in or out of a page quickly without having to click on the arrow on the bottom right hand corner of the window. This can be done at any time whilst viewing a web page.
Another option you will notice at the top of Internet Explorer 7 is the home page button that allows you to go to a pre set home page or add extra home pages, so you have more than one home page that can open up. The way multiple home pages work is by going to a specific site that you wish to have as a home page and clicking on the arrow next to the home page icon and choosing the Add or Change Home Page option. this will enable you to either replace the home page with the new page that you are currently browsing or to add that particular page as another home page. If you have more than one home page set up, when you click on the home page button, Internet Explorer will open up the home pages in more than one tab, (say you have 2 home pages, there will be 2 open tabs, each one containing one of the home pages, etc).
You can also remove particular home pages by clicking on the Remove link and selecting the link that you wish to remove. You even have the option to remove all of these home pages if you wish, for example if you have a large list which would otherwise take a while to remove each one individually.
The Next feature is RSS which has been around for a while although to read RSS feeds would have required a separate RSS reader in the past when using Internet Explorer 6, now it has been seamlessly integrated into the browser. RSS allows web sites to publish their news items or new articles into a text or text/picture list that can be read by the RSS reader. This list or News feed can be subscribed to by the users of the site which would allow any update to this feed to be automatically picked up by any subscribers and viewed through the web browser. The icon for RSS is placed directly next to the home page icon and if the page you are on does not have RSS set up you will see a grayed out icon. If the site has RSS enabled you will see this icon turn orange and you will be able to click on it as well as on the arrow to the right of it to access extra options. If you see this icon turn orange, you can click on it and view the RSS feed, at the top of the page you will see a link allowing you to subscribe to the feed. A window will pop up asking you what to name the feed as well as which folder to save the feed into. The feed will usually have a name describing what it is so you would usually not need to rename it however you have that option. you can also choose which folder to save this feed into. There already is a folder specifically for RSS feeds however you can also create a new folder if you which to categorize the feeds from around the web.
Once you have subscribed to a feed, you can view it by clicking on the star icon at the left of the menu bar. kist below the back button. This will open up a side panel where you can access you favorites and history as well as the RSS feeds. When you are viewing the feeds section you will be able to see all the feeds you are subscribed to and whether there are any new items to view by moving your mouse over each item. If there are any new items, you will see the title of the feed in bold. As the mouse pointer is positioned over each individual feed, you can also see there is a refresh button to the right of the feed's title. Clicking on this refresh button (represented and two blue arrows; one facing upwards and one downwards) will recheck the feed to see if there are any available updates. You can then view the feeds by clicking on them which will open tem up in a tab. To close this side panel, just click on the star button again.
To view the favorites this is done also by clicking on the star button. The favorites are layed out the same way RSS feeds are, with folders and links. When you right click on an individual link or favorite, you can see some options available such as opening the link in a new tab - this is useful as you do not need to open a new browser window and can keep al your existing web pages open. You can also create a new folder within the favorites section as well as move the favorite from one folder to another. This can be done easily by dragging and dropping the link or by choosing the cut command and then paste it where you want it to appear, Other options include deleting a favorite or renaming one. you can also choose to sort the favorites by name.
Viewing history can be done easily by clicking on the history tab from the same sidebar that favorites and RSS is located in. The history shows you all the previously viewed web pages that the user logged in to the computer has browsed to. You can choose how many days or weeks the history will stay for by going through the properties menu, however the History section mainly allows you to view the history by Date, Site, Most Viewed and by Order visited today. This can be very useful for finding a site that you have visited by you may have not added it to your favorites or made a note of what the site was called. Also if you have found a particular page on a site, it is sometime hard to find that page, so the history keeps a record of all the pages you visit.
If you click on properties from the menu shown above, you can view the actual site address as well as a rating of the link, a description and notes as well as many other options from the other tabs.
You can select the rating yourself as well as add the description and notes. If you wish to remove all these details that you added yourself, this can be done by clicking on the Remove Properties and Personal Information link. You can select other options from the other tabs such as previous versions and security. Below you can see how easily it is to change details for each of the favorites links.
In Internet Explorer 7, you can choose between various search providers on the internet to quickly search the web. There is a search bar at the top right of the browser which can be used to quickly search through a particular search engine without having to go onto to the search engines web site. This is usually set up for Live search which is Microsoft's search provider but you can also select from the list of other search providers as well as add your own search providers or search particular web sites. To change the settings, click on the arrow next to the search bar and you will see a drop down menu with the search providers currently listed as well as the option to find particular text on the current page or to find more providers.
Selecting find More providers will load a page in Internet Explorer from Microsoft that provides a list of alternative search providers, these include amazon, ebay and wikipedia that allow specific searching into products or articles. you can select as many or as little amount of providers from the page as you like, and you can even create your own provider from the Create Your Own box. To select an existing provider from the page, just click on the providers name and a new window will pop up.
Clicking on Wikipedia for example will bring up a pop up notification that has the option to add this as a provider, cancel or you can even make it your default provider by checking the Make this my default provider check box.
The last section is on Security in Internet Explorer. Some important new security features include a built in pop up blocker as well as a built in phishing protection system. To access the phishing filter or pop up blocker, this can be done by clicking on the Tools menu located at the top menu bar. There you can configure settings for these security measures as well as switch them off completely. It is recommended to use these to protect you from spyware/adware and viruses that could try to enter your system from a site designed to force the user into accepting particular malicious programs by using exploits or cross site scripting or by tricking the user into accepting something that should not be trusted.
In order to change more security settings you can either go through the Tools menu again and select Internet Options, or you can double click at the bottom of the browser where you should see a globe icon and some text displaying "Internet | Protected Mode: On". This will bring up Internet security protection settings where you can select the overall level of security for Internet Explorer to use or you can customize a particular level of security for your own needs. The particular window shown below has 3 settings for the Internet zone, this is the default zone that you can configure through the window below. To configure other zones, just click on their icons from the Select a zone to view or change security settings option. The 3 settings for the Internet zone are: Medium, Medium-High and High. The Medium-High option is selected by default and provides protection for most sites, it prompts you before downloading potentially unsafe content as well as blocks any unsigned ActiveX controls.
The local Intranet has 5 settings; Low, Medium-Low, Medium, Medium-High and High. The Medium-Low protection is used as default and provides adequate protection for sites on an Intranet, however you can choose to use Higher protection modes if you do not trust content on the local network.
The Trusted sites section also has 5 settings labeled the same as the local intranet settings. This section is for sites you trust not to damage your files or computer. It is set to medium b default and you can edit the list of trusted sites by clicking on the Sites button,
When you click on custom level in the internet zone, you will see the following window which has many options as well as the ability to reset the type of setting to its original content. You can even set the pop up locker and phishing filter through these options
Administrators: You may wish to note that all these settings are available to set for network wide configurations through GPOs. you can set the GPOs for individual machines or individual users/groups.
Other settings can be edited by going through the Tools menu and selecting Internet Options. Once you have opened internet options, you will see a window with various tabs at the top. The Content tab has a section to change the parental controls for web browsing as well as being able to Enable the content advisor. This advisor allows you to have ratings for particular types of sites as well as block sites that you may not wish to ever go to or to always allow a particular site. To ensure that sites are what they say they are, certificates can be retrieved from them to authenticate whether you can trust the particular site.
Another tab is the privacy tab, this has some similar features to the security tab except it allows you to determine what to do with cookies. These cookies are a small file stores on your pc with some information about the user session such as on some sites you may wish to have the layout set up in a certain way every time you visits the site and the cookie is what determines that the same settings are used every time. Cookies are generally safe to leave enabled.
Another useful feature is the add on manager which can be located through the tools menu through its own link under Manage add-ons. Through the add-ons manager, you can see which add ons are currently loaded into internet explorer as well as which ones do not require permission to run and also which ones have been used before. From these lists you can select which ones you wish to disable or to enable.
