Who threw away the menus?

It's not just tabbed browsing that makes IE7 look different from its predecessors -- the overall interface has gotten a makeover as well. Gone are the familiar text menus, banished into the ether (although as I'll explain, you can bring them back from the afterlife). In their place is a toolbar, with drop-down menus that appear when you click an icon on it.

Menu choices are logically placed beneath their icons; the Page icon, for example, drops down a menu that lets you copy and paste, send the current page by e-mail, change the text size on the page, and so on. The Tools menu, as you've probably already guessed, contains the usual miscellaneous grab-bag of tools, including managing the pop-up blocker and anti-phishing filter (more on that later), and so on. If you've installed programs that integrate into Internet Explorer, you'll most likely get to them via this menu as well.

If you're of the "real-men-and-women-use-menus-not-icons" school, you won't be pleased with these changes, but for most of us, after a bit of adjustment to this new way of working, life will go on. And if you really need to use the old-style menus, press the Alt key and they'll return from the dead. If you click anywhere on your screen, or if you press Alt again, though, they'll vanish. If you want them revived permanently, instead click the Tools icon and choose Menu bar -- they'll never go away unless you uncheck the Menu bar selection.

Finding favorites