Firefox still has a lot more features to speed up your searching, but IE 7 is a big improvement over older versions.

• Use the search toolbar. Press Control+E to switch to the search toolbar, which now works just like Safari’s and Firefox’s.

• Add new search engines. IE now supports the OpenSearch standard, and will show the engines you download in the search toolbar. There’s hundreds of plugins out there, here’s a list from the Mycroft project, and here’s Microsoft’s list and installation guide.

• Use FindAsYouType for in-page searches. IE’s default Control+F search isn’t as flexible as Firefox’s in-page searching, but this IE add-on from Sven Groot gives you a lot of the same great features.

• Open results in tabs. If you hold down Alt when you press Return in the search box, the results page will open in  a new tab. You can then switch between tabs using Control+Tab to go forward, and Control+Shift+Tab to cycle back. Holding down Control and clicking on a result will open it in a new background tab, or if you press Shift as well, it will pop to the front. This is most useful when you have a lot of slow-loading results, or you want to compare many result pages.

• Use PeteSearch! Watch this space for the release of PeteSearch for IE, which already offers hot-keys, split-screen previews and link checking for Firefox users.

More Search Tips…