Understanding Netscape Toolbars and Other Bars

This top bar is on the top edge of every program.  This bar is called the Title Bar of that program window.  This tells you the program name and any file or site window that would be currently open in that program. The far right side has buttons (from left to right): Minimize, Maximize, and Close.  These are used to shrink the program down to the bottom of the screen, maximize the size of the window so it is as large as your monitor screen or close the window.

This bar is called the Menu Bar.  This bar appears in every program just under the Title Bar.  This bar contains names of pull-down menus of commands that are related to that program.

This bar is called the Navigation Toolbar.  This bar contains buttons that allow you to:

-  go Back or Forward to web pages you have previously visited;

-  Reload or refresh the web page you are viewing to get the most current copy of that page.  Sometimes if a page seems to hang when it is loading up on the screen, Reloading it brings it up faster;

-  go to your Home page or initial web page that you first want to load when you run Netscape;

-  Search for topics;

-  go to Netscape’s home or main page;

-  Print the current web page;

-  set Security for certain web pages or features of Netscape;

-  Shop on Netscape’s shopping web page;

-  Stop the current web page from loading.
The animated ‘N’ or logo of Netscape shows you the progress of loading certain web pages.  When it is animated, a page is loading; when it stops, the page should be completely loaded onto the screen.

This bar is called the Location Toolbar.  This bar contains a drop-down list of your bookmarks, which also allows you to add/delete/edit your bookmarks; a green bookmark icon to allow you to create a shortcut to the current web page you are viewing; a field showing the exact location of the web page you are viewing; a drop-down arrow to view a history of past web pages you have viewed; and a ‘What’s related’ search list for specific search sites.

This bar is the Floating Toolbar, which can either be viewed floating on top of your Netscape window with large icons or can be closed by clicking on the ‘X’ in the upper right corner to shrink it down to small icons in the lower right corner of the Netscape window.  This contains an icon to take you to Netscape Navigator, Netscape Messenger (or email), Newsgroups within Messenger (if set up), Addressbook for email, or Netscape Composer to create web pages.