Using a Browser
More About the Navigation Bar
BACK HISTORY
As stated on the previous page, the Back button reverses to pages that you have viewed during the current session. and Forward takes you to pages that you previously viewed and went backwards from.
Now what do you do if you have been going through many pages, and you want to go back to a site you visited 10 or so pages ago? Well, you could click Back many times until the page shows up, or you can do a nifty little shortcut.
You may notice that there might be a little arrow next to the Back and Forward buttons. If you click this arrow, you will get a list of the pages you recently viewed, back to around 15 pages. You just find the page you want to go back to in that list, and click it.
If you've really been doing a lot of surfing, you may need to go to the bottom page on the list, then try it again, since a page may be more than 15 pages ago.
Note that if, while you've been browsing, links have opened in new windows, like what happens a lot on this site, the "Back History" only applies to that open instance of the browser window.
An alternative to using the little arrow is to right-click the Back or Forward button. You will get the same list of previous sites.
The IE History works similarly. The arrows to the left of each previous item show the direction of that page.
SETTING YOUR HOME PAGE
Home is the web page that you have chosen as the page that will open every time you start your browser. You can have ANY page that you want as your Home page. You DO NOT have to use the home page that your Internet provider set up for you. If you find that you visit the same site first thing every time you start your browser, make that site your home page. If you always go to Google first, make it your homepage. If you go to CNN, make that your homepage.
Here's how to set your browser for your chosen homepage:
1. Navigate to the page you want to use. For example, if it's Google, go to www.google.com.
2. Go to Tools>Options. (In IE it'll be Tools>Internet Options)
3. Right there on the main page, under General, you will see an item for Home Page. All you have to do is click Use Current Page. Make sure the address of the site you want to view shows up in the box.
Then click OK.
You can test this by just clicking the Home icon on the Navigation Bar. If your chosen page comes up, you're in business.
You just told your Internet provider that you can think for yourself.
Opening multiple homepages in tabs (IE)
Do you visit the same sites whenever you get online? Do you go to CNN, then Google, then...well...wherever? You can set up Internet Explorer to open all those sites in tabs all at once. You can then save the time of finding all those sites every time you get online. Here's how...
Internet Explorer defaults to MSN.com. You can keep this, or you can change the homepage to any site you want.
1. If you don't want MSN at all, navigate to a site that you visit often. Find the Home icon to the right of the tabs, and click the down-arrow. Click Add or Change Home Page...
2. Select the checkbox Add this webpage to your home page tabs, then click OK.
3. Navigate to the next site you visit often and you want to save.
4. Repeat step 2 above for this site and however many other sites you want to save.
5. When you are finished, click the Home Page icon to try it out. All the sites you saved should open in tabs. You can then select each tab to visit your pages.
When you start IE, these sites will automatically open in the tabs.
If you want to delete a site from this set of tabs, click the down-arrow by the Home Page icon, select Remove, and click on the site you want to remove. That site will no longer show up in your tabs.
