8 tricks for Internet Explorer 7

Increase your productivity with Internet Explorer with these 8 simple tricks. Quick, easy and immediately effective:

1. Type and navigate to an URL without using your mouse
To type in a URL while browsing, just press ALT-D . ALT + D causes the current URL to be selected, so you can type your new URL immediately.

2. Change your Default Search Providers
By default, Live Search is your Search Provider. In my opinion, Google is a better Search Provider, so I set Google as my default Search Provider. To do this, click the down arrow labeled Search Options, which is located at the right of the search box’s magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the screen then click “Find more providers” and follow the instructions on your screen. You can choose from multiple search engines, like AOL Search, Lycos, Google or Yahoo.

3. Enable the menu bar
In Internet Explorer 7, the menu bar is hidden. Some may find it handy, others may find it annoying. If you prefer to work with a menu bar, this is how to enable the menu bar for good.
First, press ALT, this enable the menu bar temporary, now click View -> Toolbar -> Menu Bar, and we’re done, the menu bar will be there for you, forever 🙂
Of course, you can also choose to remember the ALT-key. This will show the menu bar temporarily .

4. Add multiple tabs to your favorites
Imagine that you have opened 4 tabs, all related to Dogs. Now, you can choose to save them seperately, but you can also save them all together in a group! To do this, click on the Favorites menu option and choose Add Tab Group to Favorites.

5. Open all favorites that are locatied in one folder of your Favorites
If you have a folder in your favorites and you would like to open all favorites that are located in that folder, do the following. Click the Favorites button (not the menu option at the top, but the gold star), then navigate to the folder you want to open, and click the blue arrow to the right of the folder name. All favorites will open on separate tabs! 

6. Browsing with tabs
Tabs are awesome! To open a new tab, click the empty tab or press Ctrl-T, then click one of your Favorites or type in a Web address
To switch between tabs, just click the one you want. You can also press CTRL + TAB to switch to another tab.
Click the Quick Tabs tab to see thumbnails of all your open tabs. You can even drag and drop tabs if you want to change their order. You can also press CTRL- Q to open the Quick Tabs

7. Disable use of ClearType with IE7
This funtion has been reported to slow Internet Explorer 7 performance. In addiction, I find ClearType very disturbing while reading, so I prefer to turn it off. To turn off ClearType, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced, and under settings scroll down to the Multimedia section and uncheck the Always use ClearType for HTML* option.

8. Start Internet Explorer 7 with multiple tabs openend
You can choose to open multiple tabs when you launch Internet Explorer. To set multple start pages in Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options. In the Home Page box, type all URLs you want to start, each URL on a new line.