Chapter 24: Browsing the World Wide Web with Internet Explorer

Managing Internet Explorer's Behavior

Internet Explorer is intended to be simple enough for novice users. For this reason, most of what it does is invisible. Some choices that IE makes for you, however, have implications for your system's use of disk space or its security--implications that more advanced users may want to consider. Internet Explorer allows you some limited opportunities to "get under the hood" and make choices for yourself about your start page, blocking offensive content, caching Web pages, and the default mail and news applications. You can even decide that Internet Explorer should not be the default Web browser.

Choosing and Customizing Your Start Page

Your browser's home page (also called a start page) is the Web page that the browser loads when you open the browser without requesting a specific page. You can also see the browser's home page by clicking the Home button on its toolbar. (Don't confuse this use of "home page" with the home page of a Web site.)

Microsoft promotes its MSN Web site by making it the default home page of Internet Explorer. In general, this not a bad home page, and many people never change it. However, you can select any Web page or file that you want to be your browser's home page.

You aren't stuck with the MSN start page that Microsoft has chosen for you--or any other start page. To change Internet Explorer's start page, choose Tools | Internet Options to display the Internet Options dialog box with the General tab on top (as you saw in Figure 24-3). You can type the URL of the new home page into the Home Page box on this tab, or you can click one of the following buttons:

• Use Current The page currently displayed by Internet Explorer becomes the home page. (If Internet Explorer is not open, this button is grayed out.) This can be any page on the Web, or even an HTML document on your hard drive.
• Use Default You get a personalizable MSN homepage at http://www.msn.com.
• Use Blank The home page is blank. This is handy if you want Internet Explorer to start up as quickly as possible and don't necessarily want to invoke your Internet connection.

Lots of Web sites would like to be your home page, because they can sell advertising based on the number of viewers they get. Many (including the default MSN page) allow you to customize the page to get local weather, headlines in your areas of interest, scores for your favorite teams, quotes for the stocks you own, and so on. None of them charge a fee for this service, though they do display advertising. The industry leader is Yahoo! (http://my.yahoo.com).

Setting your start page to be an HTML document on your hard drive makes Internet Explorer start up more quickly than if it has to download a start page from the Internet.

Blocking Offensive Web Content

Internet Explorer includes Content Advisor, which can block access to Web sites based on their level of potentially offensive content. Unfortunately, this system does not work very well, and we cannot recommend it.

Content Advisor is based on a voluntary rating system devised by the Recreational Software Advisory Council for the Internet at http://www.rsac.org. It works like this: Web site managers fill out a questionnaire about their sites, and these sites then get a numerical rating for each language, nudity, sex, and violence. These ratings are attached to the Web sites with codes that browsers can read, but usually do not display. When you set up Content Advisor, you specify the numerical ratings you will accept, and Web sites that with ratings beyond your specifications are blocked.

The RSACi rating system has been in place for several years now, and it has become clear that the vast majority of Web sites (whether they contain potentially objectionable content or not) will never be rated. This leaves you with the following choice: You can block all unrated sites, which makes the Web almost useless to you, or you can allow access to unrated sites, many of which contain the kind of content you had hoped to block.

Managing Caches of Web Pages

Internet Explorer stores some of the pages that you view so that they can be redisplayed quickly if you return to them. In general, this speeds up the browsing experience, but if you are running short of disk space, you may decide to limit or eliminate these caches. They are stored in a folder named Temporary Internet Files, which is inside the hidden folder C:\Documents And Settings\username\Local Settings.

You control Internet Explorer's cache of Web pages from the General tab of the Internet Options dialog box. Delete all these Web pages by clicking the Delete Files button. To set limits on the amount of disk space that can be devoted to temporary Internet files, click the Settings button to open the Settings dialog box. Move the slider to raise or lower the percentage of your hard drive that the Temporary Internet Files folder is allowed to use. Click OK to apply your changes.

Changing the Default Browser

When you install Windows XP, Internet Explorer is set as the default browser. After you install another browser, however, you can decide to make that browser the default. Possibly the browser's installation Wizard will ask whether it should be the default browser, or the browser itself will ask whenever you run it. If not, follow the more detailed instructions shown here.

To make Netscape 6.1 the default browser, select Edit | Preferences from Netscape's menu bar, expand the Advanced menu of the Preferences dialog box and select System. On the System tab of the Preference dialog box, click the check boxes of the protocols and file types you want Navigator to be the default program for. (The http protocol is the most important one to check.)

To make Opera the default browser, choose File | Preferences from the Opera menu bar. When the Preferences dialog box appears, select Default Browser in the left column. Check the file types and protocols you want Opera to be the default for or else just check the Check If Opera Is Default Browser On Startup check box, close Opera and restart it.

If Internet Explorer is no longer your default browser, you can easily restore it to this role. In most cases, all you have to do is open IE, and it asks whether you want it to be the default browser. If it doesn't ask, do the following: Choose View | Internet Options from the Internet Explorer menu bar. When the Internet Options dialog box appears, click the Programs tab. Click the check box labeled Internet Explorer Should Check To See Whether It Is The Default Browser. The next time you open IE it asks whether you want it to be the default browser.

You can open any browser by choosing Start | All Programs or by opening its icon on the desktop, whether it is the default or not. Once a browser is running, you can use it to open any Web page. An exception to this rule is the Microsoft Web site, which displays properly only with IE.

Setting Your Mail and Newsreading Programs

You can tell Windows which mail and newsreading programs to run with Internet Explorer; these are the programs that Internet Explorer runs when you click a mail or news link. Choose Tools | Internet Options to open the Internet Options dialog box. On the Programs tab the Mail and News boxes show the default programs that Internet Explorer runs; both are set to Outlook Express when you install Windows. See Chapter 23 for how to use Outlook Express.