Internet Explorer Tip One

Internet Explorer Tip One
Mac Tip #85/22-Jan-2003

For several years now all new Macs have come with the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) web browser already installed. You use a web browser for looking at web pages.

[Update 2009: Internet Explorer was long ago discontinued on the Mac. Safari and other web browser can also display many types of images.]

Web pages usually consist of some combination of text and pictures, with maybe movies or music as well. Internet Explorer (IE) knows how to handle most of these, though there are some strange formats which it can’t handle.

So, if someone has sent you a picture and you don’t know any other way to look at it try dragging it on to an open window from Internet Explorer (or any other web browser for that matter, such as Netscape, Opera, Safari, Mozilla etc). If the picture end in .jpg or .gif then the web browser should be able to show it to you. If it ends in .bmp, .pict, .psd or any one of dozens of other extensions then all bets are off.

Web pages are text files with special coding in them. They almost always have .html or .htm at the end. If you receive one of these html files you can drag that onto your web browser too in order to view it.