A couple of months ago I wrote about the features packed into the Opera Internet browser, which includes the ability to use an amazing variety of shortcuts.

I lamented that I was not able to switch to Opera from Internet Explorer because Cogitum Co-citer, a fantastic copying tool previously reviewed in this column, does not work with Opera.

Now however, thanks to an article on Traffick.com, I've discovered some additional undocumented add-on features that improve my views on Internet Explorer (IE). Most of the features are only available for IE5. I do not advise upgrading to IE6, mainly because Outlook Express no longer works with Hotmail in IE6.

The tools can be downloaded from the Microsoft site at: www.microsoft.com/Windows/ie/previous/webaccess/default.asp. On the Microsoft page you'll find a download for one set of utilities called Web Accessories.

Web Accessories puts additional features on a pop up menu or the links bar. The pop up menu in Windows can be accessed by right click your mouse on a particular page, or by using the short cut 'Shift F10'.

The Web Accessories kit features eight utilities, including a feature to open a frame in new window. This option works to remove dreaded HTML frames from a Web page. If you're on a frames page but just want to see the main frame right-click the window and select the option.

Another useful feature, especially if you have poor sight, is an option to select an image and zoom it to a larger size. The quick search feature must be activated from the links bar. Once activated the feature allows you to do a quick search of ten search engines by typing in a shortcut in the address bar of your IE browser.

To use the Lycos search engine to find sites on Bermuda one simply types in 'ly Bermuda' to get the results. I was initially disappointed that Google was not on the list until I found out that the feature allows you to add shortcuts for any search engine.

This is a great feature that I'm going to use a lot. The quick way to search using this feature is first to use the shortcut "Alt D" to put the cursor in the address bar of the browser, then key in the search shortcut and the search term. Another search utility, Web Search, allows you to highlight a block of text, right-click on it and send that text to a default search engine to see search results.

The default search engine seems to be Yahoo!, but I could not figure out how to switch it to Google. The fifth utility gives you a means to toggle images on or off on a page, depending on whether you want to speed surf. The toggle is located on Links bar of your IE browser.

The text highlighter utility lets you highlight selected text in yellow on a Web page just as you would in Word document. A more useful feature is the Links List utility, located on the "right click" menu.

The feature brings up a new window that lists all the links on a particular Web page. The image list feature has a similar function but instead lists in a separate window all the images, their sizes and how long they take to download at various connection speeds.

The second useful kit available on the Microsoft download page is Web Developer Accessories, which adds two utilities to your browser. The DOM Tree Tool lets you view the entire document object model properties in tree form via right click or the tools menu. The second tool is more useful for the budding Web page developer.

Usually to see the source HTML for a Web page one would use the pulldown "View" menu and select "Source" to bring up a Notepad document with all the code. For large and complicated pages this makes it difficult to find exactly how to mimic a particular feature you like on a Web page.

The Partial Source tool allows you to highlight a particular section of a Web page, right click on it, and bring up only the HTML coding for that section. Another kit available at the Microsoft download page is the IE5 Power Tweaks Web Accessories. This pack adds an Offline/Online button to your tool bar that's useful for notebook computer users.

It also adds a right click menu command allowing you to copy URLs directly to the clipboard and then paste the locations in an e-mail or any document. Microsoft also offers browser packages from Alexa, the New York Times, and Bloomberg.

These put up Explorer bars in the right frame of your browser window giving you site navigation information in the case of Alexa, or updated news from the New York Times or Bloomberg.

Of course, do not get out of hand and inflate your browser size unless you feel you are going to use these features. But for me, browsing using IE5 just got faster and easier.

Tech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology. Contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com or (33) 467901474.