The Metro version of Internet Explorer 10 is
designed to work beautifully on touch devices like tablets and
touchscreens, giving you a full-screen, window-free experience to help
you focus on the content of the page and not the controls you use to
navigate the web. This type of full-screen experience is known as
“modeless” browsing, because there’s no bordering window with tools that
enclose the browser window.
The desktop version of Internet Explorer 10
looks more like the traditional tabbed browsing experience included as
part of Internet Explorer 9. Whether you choose to go “modeless” or
“traditional,” you’ll find that IE10 loads pages and updates faster than
ever and provides the secure tools you need to have a safe browsing
experience online.
Starting Internet Explorer
When you launch Internet Explorer 10
from your Windows 8 Start screen, the process is as simple as tapping or
clicking the Internet Explorer tile on your Windows 8 Start screen.
If you launch Internet Explorer 10 from your
Windows 8 desktop, you’ll click or tap the IE10 logo on the left side of
the taskbar.
A Look Around the Internet Explorer Screen(s)
Every browser has its own unique personality
with its own quirks and toolsets. It’s not often, however, that you
have two personalities in the same browser. Although Internet Explorer
10 is built on the same engine—meaning it processes information the same
way and provides the same fast and efficient experience no matter which
style you are using—it offers two very different browsing experiences.
IE10: Metro Style
The Internet Explorer 10 you launch from
the Windows 8 Start screen is the Metro-styled browser, operating
without a surrounding window, making it easy for you to touch, swipe,
tap, right-click, and pinch your way across the web.
To display additional pages, to see the
address bar, or to work with your browser tools, you need to swipe up
from the bottom of the browser window or right-click the mouse. The
address bar appears at the bottom of the screen, along with navigation
tiles of recently visited pages at the top of the screen.
• Navigation tiles. These thumbnail pages show where you’ve visited recently. You can move to one of the displayed pages by tapping or clicking it.
• Back button. Click or tap Back to move to the page you viewed immediately prior to the current page.
• Address bar. Tap or click in the address bar and enter the address of the webpage you want to view.
• Refresh. Update the display of the current page by tapping or clicking Refresh.
• Pin to Start.
If you find a page you want to be able to access directly from the
Windows 8 Start screen, you can tap Pin to Start. The page is added as a
tile on the Start screen.
• Tools.
You can tap or click Tools to open the page search feature so you can
find content on the current page or to choose to view the page on the
desktop version of IE10.
• Forward.
Tap or click Forward to display the next page in a series of webpages.
This tool is available only if you have previously used the Back button.
IE10: Desktop Style
The desktop
version of Internet Explorer 10, on the other hand, looks like a more
traditional browser window, with the following elements you may
recognize:
• One Box. Now you can search for information or browse the web by tapping or clicking and typing in the same box. Formerly called the address bar, One Box enables you to surf, search, refresh the site, and display security information all in the same box.
• Page tab. Each web page is displayed in a separate tab, and the tabs are color-coded to help you navigate among them easily.
• Home. Clicking Home at any point returns you to the website you’ve set as your browser home page.
• View Favorites. Click View Favorites to access websites you’ve saved as your favorites or to add a new favorite to the list.
• Tools.
Click Tools to access the various menus in Internet Explorer 10 and to
print, check site security, go to your pinned sites, and set Internet
options.
Making the Menus Visible
In the desktop
version of IE10, you can display traditional menus at the top of the
browser window if you like. Simply tap and hold or right-click the top
of the browser window, then select Menu Bar. The menus appear just below
One Box, where you can reach them easily.
A Peek at the Menu Bar
If
your computer has a keyboard and you want the menu to appear briefly in
the desktop version of IE10 (as opposed to displaying it continually),
press Alt. When you release the key, the menu bar appears at the top of
the browser window, and after you click the option you want, the menu
disappears again.
