Internet Explorer

Open IE’s Private Browsing Mode the Easy Way

by Kapuwa on Jul.16, 2009, under Internet Explorer, Windows 7

Internet Explorer’s “private browsing” mode is an excellent way to hide what you’re looking at from prying eyes, but it’s normally hidden under a menu… but we can make it easier to access.

The Normal Way

To open an InPrivate Browsing window, you can either use the Ctrl+Shift+P shortcut key, or just use the Safety \ InPrivate Browsing item on the menu.

And you’ll immediately see a private browsing window, which will leave no traces of your browsing history. Useful!

The other thing that private browsing is useful for is checking your email on somebody else’s computer – no danger of cookies lying around letting them back into your email account once you’ve gone.

Windows 7 Makes it Really Simple

If you are using Windows 7, all you have to do is right-click on the icon in the taskbar and choose the InPrivate option. You can also click and hold the left mouse button on the icon, and slide your mouse up… the menu will pop up and you can choose it there.

In other news, Windows 7 is really, really slick. If you haven’t already, check out our coverage of the beta release.

Create a Shortcut to Open Private Browsing Mode

If you haven’t made the switch to Windows 7 yet, you can still create your own shortcut manually. Simply create a new shortcut to Internet Explorer, and add the following to the end (after the quotes).

-private

The final path should look similar to this, depending on your system:

Give the icon a useful name indicating that it’s a private mode shortcut…

And now you have a shiny new icon to start up Internet Explorer in private browsing mode.

Disable/Enable Click Sound in Internet Explorer (IE) for Windows XP/Server 2003/Vista

by Kapuwa on Jul.06, 2009, under Internet Explorer

If you want to disable the click sound in Internet Explorer found in Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista, then follow these steps:

Open the Start Menu / Settings / Control Panel
Double click on the “Sounds” control panel. In this control panel, Scroll down in the events window until you reach “Windows Explorer” and under this you will find “Start Navigation“.
Click on “Start Navigation” and you will see a .wav file appear in the “Name:” box. This is the sound that is associated with the click sound.
In the “Name:” drop down menu, select (None) and then hit “OK“. This will set no sound to be played when you’re navigating on the web.

Keep in mind that this will remove the click sound from hitting buttons and links on all web sites you visit until you set it back. This is a safe change to make and does not affect any other functionality of your Windows Explorer browser.

Conclusion

In this article we have shown easy ways on how to disable the click sound in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer found in Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. The changes are made using the Control Panel and don’t require any messy registry changes.

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