Search engines—a look ahead

There are two very general ways to navigate through the Web. You can start by entering the address of a specific site such as www.refdesk.com, then once you arrive at the site, you can go leisurely from link to link. Browsing in this manner is interesting and enjoyable, but it is not always efficient. Hence, when searching for specific information, you often need a special tool called a search engine, with which you conduct a keyword search of the Web, much as you search a card catalog or online database in the library. Search engines are discussed in Chapter 2.

Internet Explorer is easy to use because it shares the common user interface and consistent command structure present in every Windows application. Look, for example, at any of the screens in Figure 1 and you will see several familiar elements. These include the title bar, minimize, maximize (or restore), and close buttons. Commands are executed from pull-down menus or from command but­tons that appear on a toolbar under the menu bar. A vertical and/or horizontal scroll bar appears if the entire document is not visible at one time. The title bar displays the name of the document you are currently viewing.