Chapter 3. ONLINE TOOLS AND GADGETS: BROWSERS & MORE

If you've bought this book you know that the tool used to explore the World Wide Web is called a browser. (If you didn't know that, please take this book back and buy something a lot more basic. Thanks.)

Many people on the Internet use Windows, and many people who use Windows use Internet Explorer (because it's the browser that comes with Windows). But you don't need to use Internet Explorer; there are many other choices out there. (I use Opera, which I'll discuss in this chapter.) Even if you use Explorer and you're content with it, you can tweak it a little for security and a little for speed.

Once you've tweaked it, you can add to it. Search toolbars can be integrated into browsers and allow you to do precise search engine searching without having to visit the page. Bookmarklets—special bookmarks that contain JavaScript—allow you to do even more specific searching tasks. And there are plenty of Web-based tools and client-side tools (client-side means you install them on your computer) to help your searching. Preparing your browser and picking out a few useful programs will save you a lot of searching time down the road.

Let's start with browsers, since you use them most often.