The File Menu of a Browser
Internet Literacy - Part 6
Forward: In this part of the series, I explain the use of the File menu of a browser.
By: Chrysanthus Date Published: 31 Aug 2012
Introduction
A browser has a horizontal menu bar at its top area (header block). The first item in this menu bar is File. When you click File, you see a drop down menu, which I simply call, the File Menu.
Clicking the File Menu Item
When you click the File item in the main menu bar, you see the following drop down menu:
New Tab
New Window
Open File…
Save Page As…
Page Setup…
Print Preview
Print…
Work Offline
Exit
All these are items of the File menu. Each has its own function. I spend the rest of this part of the series explaining each of the file menu items.
New Tab
When you click this menu item, a new window tab will appear with its blank web page. This is the official way to produce a new blank tab window. Clicking the + button on the right of the window tabs, is a short cut.
New Window
When you click this item, a new browser window appears with its own header block (File menu, Address bar, etc.).
Open File
When you click this item, a dialog box appears similar to the Open Dialog Box of a Word Processor. You can select any directory (folder) in the dialog box. You can then double-click any web page file in the directory. The web page file will open in the browser window. Remember, web pages can be saved as files. The normal extension for a web page file is “.htm” or “.html”. Today, browsers can open a few other file types. All browsers can open text files, for example. All browsers can open common image files so that you see the image (as the only content of the web page).
Whatever file you open with a browser, the content is displayed in the current tab window, and the operating (DOS) system path to the file appears in the address bar of the browser. The URL appears in the address bar of the browser only when the file is read from a website of the Internet.
When you click the Save As item, a dialog box similar to the Save As Dialog Box of a word processor appears. A web page can be saved and you use this box to save the web page. You use the box to choose a directory (folder) and if you like, give the web page a new name. The web page is saved as a web page file.
Page Setup
You click this item when you have the intention to print the web page. When you click the item, a dialog box appears. In the dialog box you can set the margins for the page to be printed and do a few other things.
Well, printing a web page is not a straightforward task from the point of view of the website designer. If you try to print an ordinary web page, only a small portion of the page might be printed. The page may be too large (wide) for the paper and so the right vertical portion may not be printed. This means you would have to know the size of the paper that would take the web page. It is impossible to know this just by looking at the web page.
Currently, if a website designer wants you to be able to print his web page, he designs 2 web pages of the same information: one is to be displayed on the computer screen and the other is to be printed. The one to be printed may omit certain things like some images. The one to be printed is design to go directly on a letter size paper or an A4 paper.
If you are a website designer, know that I have come up with techniques to design a web page that would be displayed well on the computer screen and the same web page would be printed on a letter or A4 paper. To see the article (tutorial) I wrote on this, just type, “Designing Web Page for Printing”, without the quotes, and my name, Chrys, in the search box of a search engine and click Search.
If you are not a website designer, and in future if you come across a website that has been design using my technique, that is fine, otherwise, if you want to print a web page, you would have to look for the printed version of the same web page (which the website designer might not have prepared).
To know whether a page can be printed, or whether the page was design for printing, you would have to do Print Preview (see below).
Before you attempt to print any website page, you should first click this menu item. When you do that you will see a new page on your computer screen showing you how the page will be printed. If the page can be printed, you will see that no information is cut off (on the right) of the print preview display. This applies to the situation whether or not the page was design for printing. When you have seen what is on the Print Preview display, you can close the displayed page by clicking a Close button or its X button.
Note: a single web page can be printed in more than one paper page, going downward.
When you click this item, a dialog box appears. In this dialog box you choose things that are directly related to the printing. For example, you can decide how many same copies will be printed per page; you can decide which pages will be printed, from what you saw in the print preview. You can also decide whether the printing quality should be high, normal or low. High quality printing takes a lot of printing ink; normal quality printing takes moderate ink; low quality-printing takes least ink.
Work Offline
When you are working online, you get web pages from the servers of the Internet. When you are working offline, you get web pages you saved in the hard disk of your local client computer. If you click this item (Work Offline), it receives a tick. If you click it again, the tick goes off (toggle). The presence of the tick means you have to work offline. The absence of the tick means you have to work online.
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