Speed through your next surf session with 8 IE keyboard shortcuts

You can immediately take advantage of these shortcuts to boost your online productivity. All you need is a little patience to learn them, and some dexterity to put them to good use.

1. Press [Ctrl]D to quickly save a web page to your Favorites list. If you add a lot of pages to your Favorites list while surfing, you know it can be frustrating and annoying to have to have to stop your surfing to choose Favorites | Add to Favorites, and then in the Add Favorites dialog box, click OK. The [Ctrl]D shortcut reduces this task to a quick keyboard stroke.
2. Press [Backspace] to return to the previously viewed web page. While performing research on the web, you often need to quickly return to websites you previously visited in that session to compare facts. Repeatedly pressing the [Backspace] key cycles back through your visited websites, and pressing [Shift][Backspace] moves you forward through previously viewed sites.
3. Press [Alt]D to move your insertion point to the Address Bar. If you tend to visit multiple websites while performing your research, you probably type new URLs into the Address bar constantly. Use this keyboard combination to move your insertion point to the Address bar where the URL is automatically selected so you can immediately type the new address.
4. Press [Ctrl][Enter] to shorten your typing time. This IE shortcut prevents you from having to add www. before, and com after, the sites you type in the Address bar. For example, if you want to visit http://www.newhorizons.com, simply type elementkjournals and press [Ctrl][Enter]. Internet Explorer automatically adds the www. prefix and the .com suffix and immediately takes you to the website.
5. Press [Ctrl]F to perform a quick search. If you frequently search text-heavy websites for specific keywords, you likely choose Edit | Find (On This Page) to display the Find dialog box shown in Figure A. Instead, use the [Ctrl]F keyboard shortcut to bypass Internet Explorer's menu bar altogether.
6. Press [Alt][Home] to quickly return to your home page. If you've been searching online for an extended period of time and need to quickly return to your home page, press the [Alt][Home] keyboard combination to have IE load the page immediately.
7. Press [Tab] to move to the next line on a web page. If you often search websites that are packed with links you want to explore, press the [Tab] key to navigate through them. When you do, a border surrounds each link, as shown in Figure B. Simply press the [Enter] key when a link is active and you'll see the page that corresponds to the link.
8. Press [F4] to view a list of websites you've visited. To retrace your web surfing steps, you can press the [Backspace] key to cycle through previously viewed websites. However, to view a list of just the websites whose URLs you've typed in the Address bar, press [F4]. The Address bar displays those sites, and you can use the [Down Arrow] and [Up Arrow] keys to cycle through them and locate the one you want.