In this section:

Whether you call it the Internet, the Net, or the Web, and whether you use it for business, homework, research, communicating, or shopping, the Web is probably already your window on the world. With that insight in mind, one of the goals of Windows Vista’s designers was to enable you to move between the Web and your own computer in an almost effortless fashion. Internet Explorer is designed specifically for this world, and it provides powerful features to make your explorations easy and safe.

When you start Internet Explorer, it takes you to your home page (or home pages)—usually a page or a group of pages that displays information you want to see every day. However, if you want to change your home page or pages to another page or group of pages, you can do so with a couple of mouse-clicks. You can keep several Web pages open, each on its own tab, and you can switch back and forth among them. If there’s a page or group of pages you want to revisit, you can add it to your Favorites list, and Internet Explorer will create a shortcut to it for you. You can save a Web page and then send it to others, or copy part of the page and use it in a document. You can also subscribe to online feeds to automatically see new content on a site—updated news, schedules, or blog entries, for example.

What’s Where in Internet Explorer?

Although you can use the Web browser of your choice in Windows, you might want to try the new and improved version of Internet Explorer that comes with Windows Vista—it’s powerful, useful, and friendly. If you don’t care for its new streamlined look, you can display the classic menus of previous versions by clicking the Tools button or pressing the Alt key.