Menus and Controls

Browsers have menus and control buttons that can be accessed using mouse buttons. The following image shows a typical menu and set of control buttons (and the present URL address that the browser is accessing):

These menus are called "pull-down menus", because when you hold the mouse button down on an item in the main menu a sub-menu is "pulled down" that has a variety of choices.

Pulldown Menus for Browser Functions

For example, the adjacent image from Explorer 5.0 for Windows shows the pulldown submenu associated with the "Edit" menu item. One selects a choice from the submenu by holding the mouse key down and moving the pointer to the desired item, and then releasing the mouse key.

Actions on the submenu that are possible at a given time are in dark print; actions that cannot be performed at that time are shown in lighter or "grayed out" print. In the adjacent example, "Copy", "Select All", and "Find" are available actions, while "Cut" and "Paste" are not possible at present for the document being displayed.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Notice that browser functions may also have a keyboard shortcut defined. It is useful to memorize some of these keyboard shortcuts, since they can usually be implemented faster than using the mouse to select from the menu. However, the exact keyboard shortcut for a command is often browser and platform specific.

For example, in the adjacent image for the Explorer 5.0 Windows browser, the keyboard shortcut for the "Refresh" command is "F5", which means that pressing the F5 key will have the same effect as selecting "Refresh" from the menu with the mouse. Check the menus for your browser to see what the keyboard shortcuts are, and memorize the more useful ones if you want to make your browsing more efficient.