Very Very Basic Basics

• The logo in the top left corner of the page will usually be a link back to the home page



• The home button on the menu bar up the top does not take you to the home page of the site you are visiting. It takes you to the page that always opens up when you first start your internet explorer.



• The stop button on the top menu bar will stop whatever you asked the page to do. If you click on a link and then decide you don't want to go there after all, the stop button will stop the process.



• The refresh button on the menu bar will get you a fresh copy of the page you are visiting. If something happens to freeze the page or it gets corrupted in any way this is the button to use. If you hold the control key down at the same time as you click on the refresh button you will tell the browser to go right back to the web site for that fresh page. (Sometimes the browser only goes back to your own computer's memory and it might get the same corrupted version of the page)



• The little arrow beside the back button in the menu bar up top will give you a list of the pages you have just been to. You can click on any one of them to go back to a previous page without having to go back one page at a time using the back button. The arrow beside the forward button works the same way.



• If you are on a page and you are curious about where a link goes, you can right click on the link to open it in a new window. That way you don't lose the page you haven't finished with yet. You will have two browser windows open. You can just click the X in the top right corner to close either one when you are ready.



• Sometimes when you click on a web page link, the new page will automatically open in a new browser window because that is the way it has been coded by the developer. If you suddenly find that your back button is greyed out and doesn't work, this is most likely what has happened. If you look down to the bottom of the monitor screen you will see icons on the task bar at the bottom. These icons represent the programs that you currently have open and running on your computer. One of the internet explorer icons will be the page you just left and the selected one will be the new page that you are on. You can click on the icon down there to change back to the page you were viewing before, or you can just close the new page by the X in the top right hand corner and the previous page will still be there on the screen.



• If you are filling in a form on the screen, you don't have to use the mouse to click in one box after another before you can type your details. The tab key will move you from box to box.



• If you find a drop down list on the web page, you can use the arrow keys to go up or down the list and then enter to select your choice.



• When you see a little padlock down at the foot of the browser window. That means that you are visiting a secure site. This is what banks and secure online ordering pages should always have.



• Some web sites have privacy and security policies. Privacy policies tell you what they intend to do with the information that they collect from you. Security policies tell you how safe your credit card details are. Some people get confused about what these terms mean.