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Intermediate Web Lessons

Lesson 1: Organizing Favorites/History

Course Sessions

This section will help you understand common terms and tools of the internet: Managing Favorites, Customizing History, Setting History.

Managing Favorites

As you surf the Internet, you are sure to find many Web sites you like. Saving each of these in your Favorites list will make it easy to access these Web sites. No doubt, you will visit some of these sites more often than others. So why not reposition your most used Favorites to the top of the list?

screen shot of add favorites with create in and new folder button call outs

Add Favorites with Create In and New Folder Button

When you add a Favorite, you have the option of saving the Favorite in an existing folder or creating a new folder where you can store the Favorite.

screen shot of add favorites URL -- highlighted name

Add Favorites URL -- Highlighted Name

Remember when you click on Add Favorite, the default name of that Web page appears. This may not be the name that you wish to call this page. So when you add a new Favorite, look at the name in the Name Box.

As you use the Internet more frequently, it is no surprise that you accumulate more and more Favorites. And why not? The Internet has resources for all of your current, past, and future pursuits. You will find that if you simply add more and more Favorites, your Favorites list can quickly become difficult to manage. The solution is to save your Favorites in folders that will contain like items. For instance, you may want to save all the Web sites that give you good computer-related information in a folder named "Computer Information." Likewise, all the information that you collect regarding cameras can be saved in a folder named "Photography.

Position the cursor at the end of the name and drag your mouse across the name to highlight it if you would like to change the name. Once the name is highlighted, you can simply type in the name of your choice.Even if you are careful to create your Favorites in the correct folder with a meaningful name, there will come a time when you need to sort through and organize your Favorites. This is quite an easy task.

Customizing History

When you know that you will want to revisit a Web site, it is a good idea to add that site to your list of Favorites. However, no matter how good you are at saving sites as Favorites, you cannot put them all in this folder. Consequently, there will be Web sites not in your Favorites folder that you enjoyed yesterday or last week and would like to revisit. This is the perfect scenario for using your History list.

Internet Explorer automatically keeps track of the Web sites that you visit. You can use the History list to find Web sites and pages that you've viewed in the last few days, hours, or minutes. The length of time that a computer tracks your surfing is user definable in the History list. You may wantto keep track of the Web sites that you visit for several months, or, for privacy purposes, you may not want to keep such a list at all. The more days you specify, the more disk space used on your computer to save that information. When you install Internet Explorer 5, the default number of days is set to twenty, but you can easily change that.

Next Lesson: Capturing Information >

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