Non-File Menus of the Browser
Internet Literacy - Part 7
Forward: In this part of the series, I will talk about the other menus of the browser.
By: Chrysanthus Date Published: 31 Aug 2012
Introduction
The Menu Bar
The menu bar of the Mozilla Firefox browser has the following items in the order given:
File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools, Help
Other browsers have similar menu items. A browser may have the same menu item but with a different name. When you click any of these items you see its drop down menu. In the previous part of the series, I explained the important sub menu items of the File drop down menu. In this part of the series, I explain the important items in the other drop down menus. The sub menu items in the drop down menus differ between browsers.
The Edit Menu
The more important items of the Edit (drop down) menu are:
Undo
Redo
Cut
Copy
Paste
Delete
Select All
Find
All these items are found in the Edit Menu of a text Editor or Word Processor. Apart from the last item, Find, the rest of the items have the same functions as they have in a Text Editor or Word Processor.
Outside the address bar, the only place where these items can be used again is in a web page form. A web page form can have text input control (field) and a message field. You, as the Internet user is allowed to type a text like, first name in a text input field. You are also allowed to type a message or comment in a message (Text Area) field. In these two places, if you make a mistake, you should be able to correct the mistake. So, the Edit Menu items are used or applicable in these two places. Remember, you can have more than one input text field in a form. For example, you can have one for first name, another for second name, another for email address, etc.
So, there are major places on a web page where, apart from the Find item, the rest of the more important Edit menu items are used. The places are: address bar, text input fields and Text Area (message or comment field). Text Input Field and/or Text Area belong to a web form.
If there are more than one occurrence on the web page, clicking the Next Button of the Find Dialog Box or Bar, will highlight the next occurrence.
The View Menu
The more important items of the View drop down menu are:
Toolbars >
Zoom >
Full Screen (F11)
When you click any menu item of the menu bar, you see a drop down menu. When you click the View menu item in the menu bar you see the above sub menu items and other items in the drop down menu. The Toolbars menu item and the Zoom menu item each has an arrow head to its right. When you move the mouse pointer over an item that has an arrowhead, another short vertical menu appears at its side.
The original meaning of toolbar for any application is, that a toolbar is a bar of buttons, where each button is a short cut to a sequence of menu commands. Well, since then (early 90s), time has passed and today, browsers are coming up with their own meanings. Whatever is the case, if you move the mouse pointer over the Toolbars item of the View menu, in the vertical menu that appears, you will see names of toolbars. If a toolbar is displayed in the browser window, you see a tick in front of its name, otherwise you do not see the tick. Clicking the name of a toolbar here will either include the tick or remove it, showing or removing the corresponding toolbar on the browser window.
When you move the mouse pointer over Zoom item of the View menu. A short vertical menu also appears on the side of the View menu. In this vertical menu, you will see the items, “Zoom In” or “Zoom Out” or some things similar. “Zoom In” means enlarge the web page and “Zoom Out” means the opposite. If you continue to click “Zoom In” the page will be enlarging. If you continue to click “Zoom Out” the page will be reducing. However, each time you click “Zoom In” or “Zoom Out” the two vertical menus disappear. To click either item again, you have to bring the vertical menus back.
The second vertical menu from the Zoom item also has a Reset item or has an item with a name similar. Clicking that brings the enlargement (or reduction) of the web page, to the default size (size decided upon by the website designer).
One of the items of the View Menu is the Full Screen (F11) item. When you click it you do not see any component of the browser window again. The web page moves up to occupy the whole screen. You see neither the browser header block (having the menu bar and address bar, etc) nor the status bar at the button of the browser window. Another way to have full screen is to press the key, F11 at the top of your computer keyboard. To go out of the full screen, you press F11 on the keyboard again.
Each web page has a URL. As you use your browser to look at different web pages, a record of the different URLs is kept by the browser. This record of URLs is called the History. The History Menu indicates the record with the most recent URLs listed (re-accessible) first. The items or instructions of the History menu are simple to follow, so I will not go into the details.
The Bookmarks Menu
Consider an artist who is learning how to sing a song or how to play it on the piano. Assume that he is learning it from a CD. As he is learning there are points in the song that he would like to mark. Such makings are not heard. The intention is that as he replays the song from the beginning, when the song reaches a mark, the song should stop, so that he analyses (reflects on) the song at that point. Such marks are called bookmarks. After a bookmark, he can press the play button of the CD player for the song to continue.
When you use your browser to display one web page after another from the same site and from different sites, you are said to be browsing. (or surfing). Bookmarking in browsing is similar to that of a song but not quite. As you are browsing, you can cause the browser to record the URLs of web pages that interest you, and that you would like to revisit in some later date. The recording of the URLs is bookmarking in browsing. The items and instructions in the Bookmarks menu of a browser are easy to follow. So I will not go into the details in this article.
With the Mozilla Firefox browser, two important items in the Tools menu are:
Downloads
Add-ons
Clicking the Downloads item opens a new window. This new window called the download window is not a dialog box. It is separated from the browser window but it is not independent of it. This window shows a list of the most recent downloads made by the Mozilla Firefox browser, showing the most recent first.
With Mozilla Firefox you do not know from the start the directory (folder) into which the downloaded file is saved in your local client computer. However, with the download window, if you right-click a list item, a pop up (short cut) menu will appear. In the pop up menu, one of the items is “Open Containing Folder”. When you click this menu item, the directory in which the downloaded file was saved is opened. You can then move the file from there to a different directory.
A download is a file (e.g. a zip file) copied from the web server computer to your local client computer. With a normal download, the file is saved in your local client computer (hard disk). Now, the web page displayed on your computer screen is also a download, because it is copied from a web server to your local client computer. The thing here is that it has a different method of saving (File|Save As) instead of the dialog box for normal downloads. Also, saving a web page displayed is more optional than saving a download file like a zip file. With normal download, the intention from the start is to save the file instead of displaying the file as you do with the web page.
The items of the tools menu are not the same in different browsers. However, all Tools menu have the item labeled, “Options” or something similar. The use of this in different browsers is the same. However, its use is technical for the technicians or engineers, so I will not talk about it in this series.
Add-ons
The Add-ons item can be found under the Tools menu. I decided to talk about it here in a whole section because it is a very important vocabulary. Add-ons are applications that let you personalize a browser with extra functionality and style (presentation). The add-on application can be that for a time saving sidebar for example. As another example a different add-on can produce a whether notifier for the browser. As yet another example, a different add-on can give you a new theme (formatting with colors) to the extent that it will look as if the browser was made for you.
If you have forgotten the meaning of an application, well, an application is a large program that actually consists of other programs.
Plugins
A plugin is a small application or just a program similar to an add-on, but it does not change any presentation of your browser. While an add-on comes with extra functionality and presentation, a plugin comes only with extra functionality. For example, your browser may not be able to display a particular type of image or show a particular type of video. A particular plugin will be able to display the image or show the video. You should know that, from a technical point of view one image can be recorded in different types (forms). In the same light, one video can be recorded in different types (forms). A good analogy in everyday life is the recording of music. A song can be recorded in a CD or in a DVD. The software that reads a CD is different from the software that reads a DVD.
With the browser, different software is offered by different plugins or different add-ons; however, you use the same computer for the different image types or different video types.
Some plugins and add-ons can be downloaded free from the Internet, while others have to be bought.
The Help Menu
The more important items of the Help menu are:
Browser Help
About Browser
where the word, Browser, here is the Browser name like, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera.
If you click the “Browser Help” item. A book-like application (or program) window will appear. This window could also be a web page. It presents itself with topic headings of the operation of the browser. You can click the topic to read the details or explanation.
The “About Browser” item, when clicked, a small window dependent on the browser will appear. This window gives you the version of the browser and possibly the copyright information and date of release. It would also give you some other information, of which you may not find correspondences in different browsers. A version number is something like, 1,1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc.
Yes, today, you have to learn how to drive, how to read and write, be computer literate and be Internet literate. We stop here and continue in the next part of the series.
Chrys