Using Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer

By Tom Gibson

At the present time, there is only one Internet browser available for the Windows CE Operating System and that is Microsoft's Pocket Internet Explorer. All of the Handheld PCs come with MPIE either built into ROM or on the CD that came with your Handheld PC. The latest version is 1.1 and it is available from Microsoft's Handheld PC download page at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsCE/hpc/ along with all of the other offerings from Microsoft. If you have installed MPIE from a CD installation, you may still want to visit Microsoft to get the latest patch for version 1.1 that adds some features like Security, Caching and Cookies technology. In this article, I will assume that you have read Craig Peacock's article on how to configure your H/PC to connect to the Internet, and will cover more of the Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer features and explain some of the vocabulary used.

Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer is an application that will let you view and maneuver through the World Wide Web (WWW) or Internet. It is a fairly full reproduction of its big brother, Microsoft Internet Explorer. The World Wide Web is really about 30 million computers that are all interconnected by various methods with trunk phone lines as the backbone. The Internet is still dominated by UNIX based machines, although Microsoft's Windows NT servers are becoming a bigger part of it. The pages or sites are for the most part done in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) which is an old technology, but allows pages to be shown with a mixture of graphics and text depending upon the browser that you have. MPIE is a browser and is able to display graphics that are embedded in the WWW html pages. The browser reads in the document like a word processor would and formats it so that you can view it in the manner that the author planned. There has been much written about the World Wide Web and Hyper Text Markup Language, so I will not bore you with any more here.

The best way to learn anything is to get in there and muck around. However, the Internet and Web browsers can be intimidating, so I'll try to give you some of the major points of how to maneuver around the web, view different types of pages, download files to your H/PC and configure MPIE.Surfing the WebI have had better luck getting a good connection to the Internet by first starting MPIE and then using the Remote Connection to dial up my ISP (Internet Service Provider), and when connected to my ISP, going back to MPIE. It really shouldn't make any difference in which order these tasks are done, but as I said, I've had better luck my way. Don't be discouraged and have patience if you don't get a good connection every time you try, that is the nature of the beast and the adage "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" is certainly valid with the Internet.

When you start MPIE, it opens to your "Home Page". This does not mean that you have an Internet site of your own, but rather an HTML page either on the Internet or on your H/PC is opened. MPIE comes out of the box with a home page designated that is from Microsoft and has links to some of their Windows CE pages. You can designate your own home page by tapping File Properties and selecting the General tab on the Properties screen. Here you will see a box at the bottom of the page that says Address (URL); this is where you place your choice of a home page. To make an HTML file on your H/PC be your home page, you use the following format. I'll use the built in page as an example: file:///windows/default.htm . This tells the browser that the home page is on your H/PC and that it is the document called default.htm in the Windows directory. If you want to make a page on the Internet be your home page, use this format. I'll be using Handheld PC Magazine's Web Page for this example: www.hpcmag.com . This tells MPIE that your home page is on the WWW at a domain named thaddeus.com. As I said earlier, the Internet is still dominated by UNIX based servers, and UNIX is very picky about the way you enter addresses, it is case sensitive and you must have it right. The Internet is especially picky when you get beyond the domain name of an address. Your browser may find WWW.HPCMAG.COM to be the same as www.hpcmag.com, but it will not find WWW.HPCMAG.COM/PREMIER/MPIE.HTM if the file name on the server is not all caps (you can test this link against the actual link of http://www.hpcmag.com/Premier/mpie.htm). As a general rule of thumb, the Internet is in all lower case. HyperLinks The easiest way to get around the Internet is to follow HyperLinks. Links are usually designated by Underlined Text. A link will take you to another page on the Internet by tapping on it. The page could be within the same site, or a page on the other side of the world. If you don't like where a link has taken you, tap on the Back button (<) to go back to the last page you were on. Many pages on the Internet have HyperLinks on them to take you to related sites other places on the World Wide Web. For example, Thaddeus Computing's Handheld PC Magazine Web page has links to many Handheld PC related sites. There are links to all of the manufacturers of Handheld PC's, links to many of the 3rd party providers, and links to other general H/PC interest sites. Pages like these make good home pages, because they give you a lot of places to go to get information or download files. On the Default Home Page for MPIE, there is a HyperLink to take you to the Microsoft Windows CE Home Page, and another link to take you to a Web Tutorial. Everyone should take this tutorial, you never know what you'll learn, and taking an interactive tutorial like this can only increase your enjoyment of experiencing the Web. Again, this is a place where patience is needed. Many of us are used to clicking on a document on our PCs and having the document open right up. This doesn't happen on the Internet unless the page is still in cache. MPIE has a caching mechanism built into it, and pages and graphics are kept there to help speed up maneuvering around on the Internet. This will be especially apparent when you hit the Back button (<) and the page that took 60 seconds to load originally, takes only 5 or 10 seconds. MPIE also tells you when it's working. If you look in the upper right hand corner of the screen, you will see Microsoft's patented "flying window", this will tell you that MPIE is working, either looking up an address, attaching to and loading a page, or whatever. The page will not be fully loaded until the Flying Window disappears.

Sometimes you may want to search for a particular subject on the Internet. This is where the search engines come in. There are probably 30 or so major search engines available on the Internet. The different search engines all do their thing a little differently, and you will be well served to find 1 or 2 that you like and use them. A couple of the major ones are as follows:

There are many other search engines out there. You need to find the one you like and put it in your Favorites folder. The World with a magnifying glass icon will also take you to MSN's search page, where you can do a search from any of the above search engines along with a search of Microsoft.

The Favorites folder is a place in MPIE where you can put Internet addresses that you go back to all the time.

Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer showing the Favorites pull down menu. Note that the three bottom titles are actual bookmarks. Tap on one to go to that Internet site.

This will save you a great deal of time. You won't have to remember the URL or address of the site, or how you got there in the first place. When you find a page you like and want to come back to, add it to your Favorites folder by tapping Favorites - Add to Favorites, tap the Favorites icon or use the (CTRL) T hot key combination. To go back to an address that you have stored in your Favorites or Bookmark folder, tap on Favorites Open Favorites Folder, tap or use the hot key combination of (CTRL) (SHIFT) T and select the location you want to go to. Many of the bookmarks or addresses in the Favorites folder will have the name or key words of the site so you will be able to tell what they are. MPIE prompts you for a description of the link while providing what MPIE thinks it should be called. You can over ride this by simply typing in a description that is meaningful to you.

Another major reasons to go "On Line" is to download software from the Internet. There is a vast collection of freeware/shareware/ demoware available for download on the World Wide Web. The amount of Windows CE software to download is growing everyday. However, like in other facets of life, you must be careful of what you download. There are many strange, malicious people out there who get kicks from writing computer viruses that can infect your computer, so protect your self. Don't download anything from a location that you don't trust. The manufacturers of the Windows CE machines and all of the 3rd parties developing software for the H/PC are reputable and are safe places to download files. These companies are very protective of their reputations and virus check all of their software before posting it, so the chance of getting a computer virus from one of them is very small. Thaddeus Computing, Inc also virus checks all of the software we post on our Web site to protect you.

Thaddeus Computing's Handheld PC Magazine WWW site (www.hpcmag.com). Note the "flying window" in the upper right section of the page. This denotes the fact that MPIE is still working on retrieving the page and has not completed loading.

I don't want to sound like a preacher, but as Network Administrator at Thaddeus Computing, it is part of my job to ensure that we don't infect our systems, and I am very adamant about it, so I'll warn you too - Practice Safe Downloading.

Many times you will download files to your Desktop PC that will later be moved or copied to your H/PC because of the storage space difference, but you can download them directly to your Handheld PC. Most of the time, the files you download to your H/PC will be HTML documents, which you can then view later using MPIE or edit in Pocket Word. To save an HTML document, simply tap on File, Save As, and MPIE will prompt you for a location to put the file and also a file name, under the Type it will say HTML Files (*.htm, *.html). To download a binary file to your H/PC, tap on the file you want to download. The Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer warning box will pop up, informing you that it is opening the binary file that you have selected, (such as freeware or a Word document), and telling you that "Some files can contain viruses or otherwise be harmful to your computer". It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source." I couldn't have said it better myself! MPIE then asks you if you would like to download the file and save it on your H/PC. If you do want to download it, tap on yes, otherwise select no and the download will be aborted. If you choose yes, you are prompted to tell MPIE where you want to put the file on your H/PC and then the downloading will begin. There is a big world out there on the World Wide Web, and we can all be there from where ever we are and whenever we want, thanks to our HP/Cs and Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer.

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