# Internet Explorer question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 5, 2007, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647 "2007-03-05T06:54:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/1 "2007-03-05T06:54:24Z")
This question, sadly, reveals my deep laziness. I have internet explorer set to a particular home page (obviously). But since (I guess) this means I don’t ever have to type in this page address or direct IE to this page, the address ends up dropping pretty far down on the pull-down address bar. So this means that when I open IE and want to go to a frequently-visited website (which, by definition, is one of the websites I visit most often) I have to open the pull-down list of recently visited websites, then scroll up to the one I want to go to. This is a minor inconvenience, but one I find annoying. Is there any way to keep my home page address at the top of this pull-down address list? ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/2 "2007-03-05T06:58:12Z")
Last I checked, Internet Explorer sorted those addresses alphabetically, not by frequency of visit. No, to my knowledge you can’t change the order, but if I read you correctly you’ve got it set as your start page, so just click the Home icon and you’re there. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/3 "2007-03-05T07:12:34Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] Last I checked, Internet Explorer sorted those addresses alphabetically, not by frequency of visit. No, to my knowledge you can’t change the order, but if I read you correctly you’ve got it set as your start page, so just click the Home icon and you’re there. [/QUOTE] Mine seem to be sorted by how recently I visited. But the problem is when I want to visit a frequently-visited page that is different from my home page. I have to scroll up! The humanity! The wasted labor! ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/4 "2007-03-05T08:22:02Z")
[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion] Mine seem to be sorted by how recently I visited. But the problem is when I want to visit a frequently-visited page that is different from my home page. I have to scroll up! The humanity! The wasted labor! [/QUOTE] You can organize them any way you want. Go to the ‘organize bookmarks’ toolbox (when you right-click to create a bookmark, ‘organize bookmarks’ should be one of your options). You can grab bookmarks and drag and drop them wherever you like on your list. You can create subfolders, too. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/5 "2007-03-05T08:35:24Z")
Wait. Are we talking about bookmarks or the stored addresses in the address bar? Are we talking about the page you have as your start page, as per the original post, or a different one, as per the second post? ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/6 "2007-03-05T08:54:39Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] Wait. Are we talking about bookmarks or the stored addresses in the address bar? Are we talking about the page you have as your start page, as per the original post, or a different one, as per the second post? [/QUOTE] I’m talking about the stored addresses in the address bar. That’s where I have to scroll up from my home page address to access (e.g.) the Straight Dope Message Boards. If my start page address always appeared at the top of this list of stored addresses in my address bar, then it would always appear next to the addresses for my most recently-visited sites. This would be desirable. But as I said earlier, my start page address always appears pretty far down the list, forcing me (gasp!) to scroll up to get to somewhere I actually want to go (rather than somewhere I visited once, for 20 minutes, several days ago). ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/7 "2007-03-05T08:59:28Z")
Is the order of the sites stored in the address bar related to the order of the history view? If you click the history button, you’ll see that you have several options for sorting there; including ‘by site’ (alphabetically), ‘by most visited’ (popularity) and ‘by date’. I don’t use IE, so I can’t easily test whether the sorting orders are related. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/8 "2007-03-05T09:04:57Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] Is the order of the sites stored in the address bar related to the order of the history view? If you click the history button, you’ll see that you have several options for sorting there; including ‘by site’ (alphabetically), ‘by most visited’ (popularity) and ‘by date’. I don’t use IE, so I can’t easily test whether the sorting orders are related. [/QUOTE] I changed the history sorting to ‘most visited’, but it didn’t change the order of stored addresses in my address bar. Curses! Sadly, I have to go home now. But maybe some IE genius will provide the answer by tomorrow. Here’s hoping! ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/9 "2007-03-05T13:59:45Z")
How many addresses do you want quick access to? You could instead use the Links toolbar which shows all of your favorite links as icons right beneath your address bar. If you re-name the links with shorter names (like SDMB, Wiki, etc) you can get quite a lot in there. Go to View - Toolbars - Links to show the Links toolbar, then visit your favorite sites and drag their URLs to the toolbar. Right-click on the button that is then created and choose “rename” to give it a shorter name. You can also order these buttons to your liking. This is a beter way to have instant access to your favorite sites rather than using the History of the Address Bar which has always seemed sort of random to me. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/10 "2007-03-05T16:18:47Z")
I’m with **ZipperJJ**. Why are you using the drop down Address list? What’s wrong with Favorites, whether or not you put them on the Links toolbar? ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/11 "2007-03-05T16:52:50Z")
Why don’t you just click the little “house” icon which directs you to you home page? ---
**Author:** ![LionelHutz405](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lionelhutz405/32/536_2.png) [@LionelHutz405](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LionelHutz405)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/12 "2007-03-05T17:03:12Z")
[QUOTE=MarcusF] I’m with **ZipperJJ**. Why are you using the drop down Address list? What’s wrong with Favorites, whether or not you put them on the Links toolbar? [/QUOTE] Many people do that. I have no idea why, since that is what ‘favorites’ is for. But it’s common. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/13 "2007-03-05T17:38:35Z")
[QUOTE=Billdo] Why don’t you just click the little “house” icon which directs you to you home page? [/QUOTE] Yeah, why don’t you just use the home button or shortcut [alt+Home]? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/14 "2007-03-05T19:49:07Z")
[QUOTE=PatriotX] Yeah, why don’t you just use the home button or shortcut [alt+Home]? [/QUOTE] Because he said: > [@](#): > > But the problem is when I want to visit a frequently-visited page that is different from my home page. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2007, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/15 "2007-03-06T01:35:33Z")
Ooh! I didn’t know about the ‘Links’ button. I’ll do that. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2007, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-explorer-question/394647/16 "2007-03-06T09:35:01Z")
[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion] I’m talking about the stored addresses in the address bar. That’s where I have to scroll up from my home page address to access (e.g.) the Straight Dope Message Boards. If my start page address always appeared at the top of this list of stored addresses in my address bar, then it would always appear next to the addresses for my most recently-visited sites. This would be desirable. But as I said earlier, my start page address always appears pretty far down the list, forcing me (gasp!) to scroll up to get to somewhere I actually want to go (rather than somewhere I visited once, for 20 minutes, several days ago). [/QUOTE] It took me three readings to understand, but I finally do. I’ve never myself simply clicked the address bar to get to the addresses. I haven’t used Internet Explorer much for a couple of years, but if you start typing the address the rest shows up, doesn’t it? That saves you scrolling.