Having covered the very, very basics of Microsoft Office, lets move onto Internet Explorer, the Microsoft delivered web-browser used for surfing the Internet.

We haven?t really covered what the Internet is, and, I will be looking closer at this later. For now, lets picture it as a mass of computers that are all linked together by network cables. They all hold some information for our use, and all know about each other.

HTML (Hyper-Text Mark-up Language), is the language of the Internet: The web-pages you read are all written in HTML, and the ?mark-ups? are translated by your web-browser as format effectors, and then these pages are rendered in your web-browser as a sophisticated web-page. HTML as a language, looks quite complex, but actually isn?t. If you want to see what a web-page looks like as ?raw? HTML, do this: From your Internet Explorer, select ?View? ?Source? from your Menu-bar. The web-page you have open in your browser is now displayed in a separate window in its raw HTML format.

Your ?homepage? is the page that is opened as soon as you click on Internet Explorer. For many, it?s set already when the buy a new computer (often to the vendor?s website, or Microsoft?s website). For many, they want to set it to something of more relevance to them personally, and that?s very easy to do, and here?s how: Navigate to the website you wish to use as your homepage (do this by clicking in the Address-field of your browser, clearing the contents and typing the website address (for example type www.google.com, you do not need the ?http? bit as Internet Explorer will put that in for you), and pressing return. The browser will navigate to the website and load it onto your screen. Once loaded, to set it as your homepage: Select ?Tools? ?Internet Options?, from your menu-bar. You will see the option under the ?General? tab to set your homepage to whatever you like. One of the buttons available below your homepage setting is ?Use Current? ? click it, and your homepage will be set to the one your web-browser is currently open.

IMPORTANT: Select ?Apply? rather than just ?Close?, in order to ensure your homepage is set correctly.

Whilst we?re here lets take a look at a couple of other things. There?s an entry right here, on the same General Tab, that says ?Delete Cookies? ? Cookies are one of the most controversial elements of current internet technology usage.

Let me try and explain what they are: When you visit a website, often, in order to personalise your experience with them, they will ask you to register or login. For example, Amazon,com: If you have ever ordered a book Amazon, you will know that you have to login. If you set your browser to ?remember you on this website?, the next time you visit the site it will say something like ?Welcome back, Bob Mellor?, as if it magically knows who you are.

I have some news: It?s clever but not magic. As soon as you login and register yourself, the website places a tiny file on your PC, called a cookie, which holds the details of who you are, and certain other pertinent information about you, so that the next time you visit that site, it can detect who you are and do all kinds of things to personalise your visit.

The issue that makes this controversial is the fact that it is doing this without asking your permission first, and whilst the overriding reason for most sites obtaining this information is to customise your visit so it is more personal to you, I can see the point raised by civil liberties groups and the like.

The good news is that you can delete them from your system right here, with this button: ?Delete Cookies? will do just that, and evacuate all the stored cookies from your Temporary area.

The final thing I want to cover is your temporary internet files. Whenever you visit a website, your PC will make a copy of images and objects on that website and store them locally on your PC.

There are good reasons for this as it will make accessing them quicker for you should you wish to look at that site again. However, the drawback is that once you get many temporary internet files loaded onto your computer, the inspection of these files to attempt to load a page quicker takes so long that its actually slower than retrieving the files fresh from the website in question.

Thus it?s a prudent measure to clear these out periodically as well. You do this from here to: The ?Delete Files? button does just that.

Remember for all these to click ?Apply? to ensure they get done?