Learning to handle Internet Explorer well gives you a smoother ride and better on-line economy. So start exploring!

1. Make yourself comfortable
   Rearrange your toolbars: Drag the handles at the left-hand ends of the Menu bar, Standard Buttons, Address bar and Links bar to shuffle them into a convenient order. You can even put them side by side.

2. Clear the screen: Right-click any toolbar to produce a pop-up menu, then deselect the bars you don't use. You can also clear away almost everything by selecting View and Full Screen. Add the Menu or Address bars to full-screen mode by right-clicking the top strip.

3. Change your home page: Do you start each day with a particular search engine or news site? Make Internet Explorer go there automatically by browsing to the site and selecting View (Tools in IE5), Internet Options and General. Find the Home Page section and click Use Current.

4. Customise the Links bar: To remove a button from the Links bar, right-click on it and select Delete. To add a button, create a new favourite in the Links subsection of the favourites menu (see tip 9).

5. Browse efficiently
   Do less typing: If you're visiting a site with a typical http:///www.somename.com/ address, just type 'somename' into the Address bar and press [Ctrl] + [Enter]. For example, typing Microsoft takes you to http://www.microsoft.com/.

6. But don't abandon the keyboard: Useful shortcuts include [Alt] + [LeftArrow] to go back a page and [Alt] + [RightArrow] to go forward. [Alt] + [D] takes you to the Address bar so you can type an address.

7. Use the Back lists: Instead of inching back page by page, click the arrow next to the Back button and traverse several pages at once.

8. Open multiple windows: To follow a link without losing sight of the current page, right-click it and select Open in New Window. When you've finished, close the extra window to return to the original page.

9. Fun with Favourites
   Organise the menu: Use Favourites and Organise Favourites to sort your sites into folders, which then become cascading subsections of the menu. To save a new favourite straight into the correct folder, select Favourites and Add to Favourites, the click Create in >>. Select the folder and click OK.

10. Stay up to date: If a website has moved, find the corresponding entry in your Favourites menu, then right-click on it. Select Properties and enter the new address.

11. Drag and drop: Wan to make a temporary note of a site's address? Drag the page icon that appears at the left-hand end of the Address bar on to your desktop. You can also drag this icon on to the Links bar.

12. Favourites from Links: When you see a link to a site you'd like to visit later on, right-click on the underlined text and select Add to Favourites, or drag the link on to your desktop. Either action creates a shortcut to the page at the end of the link.

13. Use the Start menu: If you've installed IE4's Windows Desktop Update or upgraded to Windows 98, you'll have a Favourites section on your Start menu. Selecting a favourite from here runs Internet Explorer, connects you to the Net and downloads the associated page - not a bad return for a single click.

14. Reduce your phone bill
    Disconnect automatically: Internet Explorer will close your connection if you aren't doing anything, but it normally waits 20 minutes before doing so. To hurry it up, got to View (Tools in favourite , Internet Options and Connection and Click Settings (plus Advanced, in IE5). Reduce the 'Disconnect if idle' setting to say, five minutes.

15. Use the History bar: Forgot to make a favourite for that great site you stumbled across? Rather than trawling round the Net on a possibly fruitless search, simply disconnect and click the History button. You can then hunt through a list of all the places you've been recently. In IE5, click the View button to sort the list in several ways.

16. Sort out the cache: Improve Internet Explorer 4's management of the Temporary Internet Files folder by installing cache Sentry (from http://www.mindspring.com/~dpoch/enigmatic/).

17. Work off-line: You can often return to pages you've visited recently without logging on. Select File and Work Offline, then open the History bar and point to the page you want to see again. In IE4, the mouse pointer turns into a hand if you can reload the page from the Temporary Internet Files folder, or a hand with a forbidden sign if you have to reconnect. In IE5, the page name is displayed in black rather than grey.

18. Extra for experts
    Search quickly: You can conduct a quick search from the Address bar. Type go or ? followed by a word or phrase and press [Enter].

19. Check for updates: Make sure you have all the latest security patches and add-ons by selecting Help and Product Updates (Tools and Windows Update in IE5) every few weeks. You'll be taken to Microsoft's website and offered all sorts of freebie extras.

20. Install the IE4 PowerToys or IE5 Web Accessories: These 'at your own risk' freebies aren't supported by Microsoft, but they're well worth having. Find the PowerToys at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/powertoys/ and the Web Accessories at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie5/ie5tools.asp.

How to manage your History files

1. Click the History button for a list of the sites you've visited. Click on a folder to produce a list of filenames, then click a filename to reload the corresponding page (see tip 15).

2. Go to View, Internet Options and General to tell Internet Explorer how many days it should keep records for. To delete your History records and start afresh, click Clear History.

3. Select File and Work Offline to reload pages that are stored in the Temporary Internet Files folder. If you see this message, the corresponding files are no longer on your hard disk, and you'll have to reconnect (see tip 17).