Digital Streets

Internet Explorer 8 is Microsoft’s best web browser so far, with new features like Web Slices and Accelerators. Here’s a dozen tips for customizing it to fit your needs.

• Hide the Favorites Bar - f you’re like me, you do not rely on the Favorites Bar in Internet Explorer for navigating to your bookmarked pages. If it is left enabled, you end up dedicating an entire row of your toolbar for the Favorites and Add to Favorites buttons. Follow these steps to hide the Favorites Bar and return the Favorites and Add to Favorites to their IE7 positions.
• How to Add Feeds and WebSlices to the Favorites Bar - Internet Explorer 8’s Favorites Bar allows you to add RSS feeds and WebSlices which makes it easy to monitor your favorite sites for new content. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are web feeds that are used to publish frequently updated content. WebSlices are a completely new feature for IE that allow users to subscribe to certain content contained within a web page. The WebSlice behaves in a similar manner as the RSS feeds, allowing the user to subscribe to the content for updates.
• Disable Sounds in Web Pages - If you are tired of having your browsing experience suddenly interrupted by embedded sounds in the web page you are viewing, you can easily disable this feature. This can be an important step to take if you find yourself doing a lot of surfing at work.
• How to Disable the WebSlices Notification Icon - WebSlices allow users to subscribe to content directly from within a webpage. If WebSlices are available on the page, a notification icon will appear when you mouseover the content. If you don’t utilize WebSlices, this notification can be a distraction.
• Reopen Closed Tabs - You finally get to the webpage that you have been surfing for and now you have accidentally closed the tab. This can be a very frustrating situation. Luckily, Internet Explorer 8 is quite forgiving and allows you to easily reopen the closed tab, even if you have closed other tabs after it.
• Create a Shortcut for Opening in InPrivate Mode - By adding a simple command line switch to a shortcut, you can easily open Internet Explorer in the protective InPrivate mode without having to launch it from a non-private window.
• How to Disable Automatic Image Resizing - When you view large images, Internet Explorer’s default settings make the browser resize the image to fit within the browser window. If you would like to see the image in its original size instead, you can disable this functionality.
• Display the Stop and Refresh Buttons Before the Address Bar - By default, Internet Explorer 8 places the Stop and Refresh buttons after the Address Bar. If you want all of the browser controls to be grouped together, you can move your Stop and Refresh buttons to the left of the Address Bar.
• Reset to Default Settings - If your browser is misbehaving, resetting it to the default settings might be just the fix you are looking for. By resetting Internet Explorer, you remove all previous settings but does not affect your Favorites, RSS Feeds or WebSlices.
• Increase the Maximum Connections Limit to Download More Than Six Files at One Time - By default Internet Explorer 8 limits the number of files that can be downloaded at one time to six. While this is higher than previous versions of IE, you can still get it to do better.
• Make the Favorites Bar Display as Icons Only - By reducing your Favorites Bar to show only the icons, you can access more of them from Internet Explorer’s Favorites Bar. This works great for sites with recognizable favicons like Gmail, Google Calendar, etc.
• Place the Menu Bar Above the Address Bar - If you use Firefox, then you are used to the menu bar being placed above the address bar, however Internet Explorer 8 places it below the Address Bar. You can move it by using a simple registry hack.