Toolbars in IE

Title Bar

The Title Bar shows the title of the page and the browser's name at the left. At the right are the standard buttons: Minimize, Maximize, and Close.

Menu Bar

The Menu Bar contains cascading lists of commands.

Toolbar

The toolbar has buttons for the most commonly used commands. When the mouse is over a button, it will gain colors and look raised. Some buttons won't show if the window size is small.

Until you know the function of each button on the toolbar, you probably will want to display the text labels.

Address Bar

The Address bar shows the URL (Universal Resource Location), also called the address, for the web page that is showing in the browser's window. The Links bar is usually shown to the right of the Address bar.

You can type a URL in the Address bar and press the ENTER key to display the page whose location you typed.

The Go button is added to the right of the Address bar in IE5. If you like the mouse better than the keyboard, you can click the Go button instead of pressing the ENTER key to open the page at the address in the Address bar.

Actual Web Page with Links

The actual web page is shown in the bottom part of the browser window. The browser will put up scrollbars if the page is too wide or too tall to fit in the window.

A link to another web page, image, or file should look special. The default for a text link is to underline it and color the text blue. You click on a link to open its target in the browser.

Status Bar

The Status Bar talks back to you. On its left side you will see messages about what browser is doing. The most common message is "Done" , which means that the browser thinks it has finished downloading a web page.

If your mouse hovers over a link, the address of that link appears on the status bar. There are also icons to show the status of your connection. More details later in the Step-by-Step lesson.

Links Bar

The Links bar is a convenient spot for shortcuts to your most frequently accessed web pages. IE comes with some Microsoft sites already showing on the Links bar. Different versions will have somewhat different sites listed. You can delete those and add your own sites.

 You can see the links that aren't visible to the right by scrolling the bar. Click on  the arrow at its right end.

 To see links that are not visible, click on the double arrow at the right edge of the Links bar. A drop list appears.

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