In this section:
Internet Explorer is Microsoft’s web browser. You use a browser to navigate around the Internet, the worldwide network of computers that contains the content that makes up the World Wide Web. In addition to helping you move among websites and display web content, a browser helps you to stay organized by displaying several open websites on tabs and helping you to find specific content on pages.
Windows 8 includes a tile on the Start screen for Internet Explorer 10. IE 10, as it’s often called, is optimized for the Windows 8 interface, including the ability to use it with a touchscreen computing device. The main paradigm for Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10 is to show as much content as possible on the screen at any time, rather than cluttering up the screen with toolbars and menus. The browser is easy to navigate and simple to use, after you get the hang of it.
In this section, you discover the various features of Internet Explorer 10 and get an overview of the Internet Explorer 10 browser that appears if you open it from the Windows 8 desktop.
In Internet Explorer 10, one big difference from previous versions of Internet Explorer is that there are no tools on the screen until you display them. For example, you have to display the address bar to use it. The address bar is a stalwart of browsers. You use this field to enter a website address, such as www.microsoft.com, to go to that page. However, starting with Internet Explorer 9, that field has a dual purpose. You can still enter a URL, but you can also use the field to search the web for content and sites.
Press the Windows logo key on your keyboard.
Click the Internet Explorer tile.
With Internet Explorer 10 open, on the Start screen, right-click the screen.
Click the address bar, and begin to type a URL, such as www.bing.com or http://www.amazon.com.
Press Enter to go to the address.
Tip
Although there are still some exceptions, accessing most websites by using your browser no longer requires that you type the http:// or www before their names, so in the examples here, you can simply type bing.com or amazon.com in the address bar.
When you are browsing the Internet, you will want to move from one website or webpage to another. You can do this in several ways: you can enter a URL in the address bar as covered in the previous task; move backward or forward to a previously visited site; or click a hyperlink (text or an image that is programmed to send you to another location on the Internet when you click it).
With a webpage displayed (use http://windows.microsoft.com, for example), click a graphic or text link to follow a link.
Click a link on the subsequent page to follow it.
To return to the page from which you followed the link, move your mouse cursor to the left side of the screen.
Click the Back button.
Individual webpages on a website can be quite long. You can use scroll bars in your browser to move down a page, or you can search to find specific contents on a page. In Internet Explorer 10, you can use a Find On Page feature to search for and scroll through all highlighted instances of a search term on the currently active page.
Tip
When you enter a search term, such as “win,” your results will include all words that contain those letters, such as Windows and winner. To narrow your search to only the word “win” in this example, simply enclose the term with quotation marks.
Tip
Use the Get App For This Site selection from the Page Tools button menu to download any associated app for sites such as Zune.com or Amazon.com.
There’s a lot of content on the Internet, and using your browser to find what you need is an important skill that you should master. If you want to search the entire web for a site, page, or document, you can do so in Internet Explorer 10 by typing a search term in the address bar or by using a search engine such as Bing or Google. You can go to a particular search engine by entering its URL, such as www.bing.com, in the address bar and pressing Enter. Bing is the default search engine if you use the address bar to search.
With Internet Explorer 10 open, right-click the screen.
Enter a search term, such as pollution, in the address bar.
Press Enter.
To narrow your search further, enter a search term such as water pollution.
Click Search.
Click a category such as Images or News to narrow your search.
Click any result to go to that site.
Tabbed browsing is a feature of some browsers that allows you to have several sites open at once so that you can move back and forth among them with a click. In Internet Explorer 10, the tab feature has been reinvented. Tabs aren’t displayed onscreen taking up screen real estate; instead, you can display tabs by right-clicking the screen and then click a tab to go to a site, or add and close tabs.
You can pin a site to your Start screen so that you can get to it quickly. For example, if you use a search engine regularly or if you use a cloud player to play your music selections, you might want to be able to access that site on your Start screen. After it’s pinned, you can click the tile for that site and go to it instantly by using Internet Explorer 10.
Go to the site you want to pin to the Start screen.
Right-click.
Click the Page Tools button.
Click View On The Desktop.
When you display Internet Explorer 10 from the desktop, you see a more traditional browser window with an address bar, tabs, and the ability to display additional toolbars. To display additional toolbars, right-click the top of the screen and click to display the Favorites, Menu, and Command bars to see the tools shown here. If you’ve used recent versions of Internet Explorer, many of these features might be familiar to you.
