The Ultimate List Of Internet Explorer Tips and Tricks

• Tweet
• Share
• 
• Email

• Tweet
• Share
• 
• Email

This is the first in a series of posts of Tips and Tricks for Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Firefox

Now I know not many people like IE8, but we have to give credit where it’s due, Microsoft did make it much easier to access all its features without having to dig too deep into its menus, especially compared to Firefox and Chrome. Even so I’ve put together a list of Tips and Tricks for using Internet Explorer 8.

1. Give yourself more screen space

Users familiar with the older versions of IE will know it well, (File,Edit,Tools etc….) However this isn’t really needed anymore in IE 8 but Microsoft have kept it for those of you who want it. If you have it enabled go to view->toolbars and disable it for a bit more room. You can bring it back at any time by pressing alt

2. Go Full Screen

Even better than the above tip, how about full screen! A lot of the time people discover this feature by accident, and then get stuck in it. To go into full screen mode simply hit F11. then hit it again to exit full screen mode

3. Easily Select Text

It used to be a fairly tricky art trying to select text in previous versions of IE. But in IE 8 there’s a new feature called caret browsing. Simply press F7 to turn on Caret Browsing and a movable cursor will appear on the page which you can move with your keyboard and mouse to select the text you want.

4. Browse In Private

Sometimes you may be on someone else’s computer and you just want to log onto your bank account or emails, but you don’t want your passwords being stored on their machine. If you just go to the “Safety” button and select Inprivate Browsing, it will open up a new window where you can browse in piece and know that your browsing history, cookies and any other saved form info are not being stored.

5.Open Multiple Websites At Start Up

This is a handy little tip, most of us have a couple of different websites that we want to visit each time we hit the web. So what if you could have a couple of those websites automatically open up when you launch IE? Go to Tools > Internet Options, then type as many addresses as you want (on individual lines) in the “Home page” field.

6. Quickly Change The Text Size

If you hold down the ctrl key and then roll your mouse wheel it changes the size of the font. Rolling up makes it smaller, and rolling down makes it bigger.

7. Disable Plug In’s To Speed Up IE

The biggest problem with IE is the plugins developed for it, they’re not very friendly or well optimized and as a result can dramatically increase your load time as well as making IE fairly unstable. Click Tools > Manage Add-ons > Enable or Disable Add-ons to see what add ons are enabled and disable what ever ones you don’t want.

8. Increase Your Download Limit

By default, Internet Explorer will only let you download two items at once to make sure you still have a decent browsing experience. However super fast broadband connections are common now and you may regularly find yourself wanting to download more than 2 items. If you follow this solution provided by Microsoft it will allow you to download up to 10 items http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=282402#fixit4me

9. Try out new Keyboard Shortcuts

I’m sure you know lots of the basic shortcuts, but there’s a lot more than you think, so check out this link for a whole load more

And there you have it, a great list of Tips and Tricks for using Internet Explorer, I know many of you will add the 10th one for me “Use Firefox/Chrome/Opera/Safari!” But be nice guys, I’ll have tips for Chrome and Firefox on the way later this week!

If you’ve any more tips for using IE to add, let me know in the comments below

Related posts:

1. The Ultimate List Of Firefox Tips and Tricks
2. The Ultimate List Of Google Chrome Tips and Tricks
3. 8 Cool Gmail Tips and Tricks
4. Call Of Duty 6: Tips And Tricks – Part 2
5. Call Of Duty 6: Tips And Tricks – Part 1