Number 218 - July 2001

Coping With An Unwanted Home Page
by Bob Thomson, Tacoma Open Group
Every so often I visit a site whose author has decided I can't live without and, in his own egomaniacal way, injects his site address into my copy of Internet Explorer as my Home Page. Or, perhaps a more likely scenario, one of my grandkids innocently accepts an invitation to do so. Then, when I invoke the Internet Explorer browser from the desktop symbol, to my great annoyance, I get his "Home Page" whether I want it or not. ARRRGHH! If this happens to you, it can be changed back, easily, to something you prefer.     I will give instructions for Internet Explorer because that is what I use. I expect that the procedure is similar for Netscape or other browsers.     Invoke Internet Explorer and, on its tool bar, click on Tools/Internet Options. The resulting screen has	several tabs across the top of the display. Usually it comes up with the General tab on top. If not, click on General. The top field of the three shown is Home Page and you are given three choices, Use Current, Use Default, Use Blank. Each of these may be selected by clicking on the button or pressing the underlined letter on the keyboard. Then click on Apply to put it into effect. I normally choose Use Blank, which yields a blank screen and allows me to enter the address I want to go to. Most of the time I don't actually enter the address, but instead, select Favorites and pick one of my preselected sites and go from there.     You can, of course, enter and Apply a home page address of your choice in the Use Default position and then when you invoke your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer) to start "surfing the web" you will go to that "Home Page".
Number 218 - July 2001