Internet Explorer: Time Saving Tips and Tricks

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Just to show that I don’t totally dislike Internet Explorer, I wanted to put together a list of tips and tricks to help you use it faster and more efficiently. This list is similar to the list of time saving tips and tricks list for Firefox that I put together yesterday.

If you want to upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer, you can do so here.

Keyboard Shortcuts

It might take you a little while to learn these shortcuts, but once you do, your browsing will be that much quicker. Here are some of the more common shortcuts:

• Alt+Home (Go to your preset home page)
• Alt+Right Arrow (Go to the next page)
• Alt+Left Arrow or Backspace (Go to the previous page)
• Home (move to the top of a page)
• End (move to the bottom of a page)
• F5 (reload the current page)
• Ctrl+D (bookmark the current page)
• Ctrl+F (find)
• Ctrl+O (open a new website or page)
• Ctrl+N (open a new window)
• Ctrl+T (open a new tab)
• Ctrl+W (close the current window)
• Alt+D (select the text in the Address bar)

Tab Navigation

(Note: these shortcuts apply to IE 7.0 only; version 6.0 does not feature tabbed browsing.)

If you’re like me, sometimes you have a lot of tabs open at the same time. Instead of using the mouse to select between the different tabs that you have open, use the following keyboard shortcuts:

• Ctrk+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
• Ctrl+Shift+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
• Ctrl+W (close the current tab)
• Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)
• Ctrl+Alt+F4 (close other tabs)

Mouse Shortcuts

If you’re already using your mouse and it would be easier for you to use a mouse shortcut instead of switching to the keyboard, here are some quick shortcuts. Note that these shortcuts depend on whether your mouse has a scroll wheel built into it or not.

• Shift+scroll up (go to the next page in that tab)
• Shift+scroll down (go to the previous page in that tab)
• Ctrl+scroll up (increase text size)
• Ctrl+scroll down (decrease text size)

Auto Complete

While not as well known as the shortcuts above, this can be very useful.

Go to the address bar (Ctrl+L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there – like magic!

Thoughts?

I’m curious to hear whether you find these tricks useful or not. Or, maybe you have some of your own that you’d like to share. Either way, good luck as you use Internet Explorer more efficiently!

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