02:01 PM CST on Wednesday, January 25, 2006

By WALT ZWIRKO / WFAA-TV

What are you doing right now? Looking at a Web page on the Internet. We all spend a lot of time these days doing the same thing, so what better time to check out two new ways to go surfing.

I just checked the stats for WFAA.com and found (to no real surprise) that 85 percent of our visitors use some version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to visit our site.

That's a shame, because there are some really cool alternative Web browsers (like Firefox ) that offer some neat and unique features.

But Microsoft has been hard at work preparing Internet Explorer 7. We got a look at a bootleg copy of IE7 (at least a beta version of it) from the ActiveWin.com Web site.

One feature that's sure to please is the ability to zoom in and out of an entire page using a tool in the corner of the window. If you need to see more, just shrink it down. And you can enlarge it if you need a closer look.

Simple and useful, the magnification tool also works for printing oversize pages on standard paper.

Microsoft also put a built-in search box in IE7, eliminating the need for a third-party add-on (and defaulting, of course, to Microsoft's MSN search facility).

Borrowing a page from Firefox, Microsoft's new browser will have tabs—the "most requested browser navigation feature," Microsoft says in a technical overview of the product.

What does it mean? You can have multiple Web pages open in a single window; click a tab to switch from one to another. This simple improvement dramatically reduces screen clutter if you have a lot of pages open at the same time.

Under the hood, IE7 will have "dynamic security protection," designed to reduce the risk of intrusion that has plagued earlier versions of Internet Explorer.

Microsoft isn't saying when IE7 will be released. It's in the first stage of beta testing now, which means the bugs are still being worked out.

A lot of people don't realize that a cell phone can also be used as a Web browser on the go.

Most mobiles these days are capable of connecting to the Internet, but because most Web sites are designed for big-screen browsing, this is far from the ideal way to look for information.

But that could change for a lot of folks thanks to Opera Mini, a new (and free) browser that uses a special "small screen rendering" technique to let you view content.

For example, the CNN home page as viewed on a traditional computer screen offers a wealth of news and other information at a glance.

Opera Mini takes that data and scrunches it down so you can see it in a single column—without the need to scroll back and forth—and it handles the task remarkably quickly, even on a cell phone like mine with a relatively slow connection to the Internet.

There's even a very handy "history" list that lets you quickly jump back to a previous view.

One warning, though: While many cell phones provide access to the Internet, it's almost always an extra-cost feature. If you don't have a "data" package that supplies you with access, you could end up with extra charges on your next bill.

Once you become accustomed to info on the go, you'll be hooked. I regularly use online services from my cell phone to research movie times, restaurant menus and driving directions.

I've found that aside from the tiny screen size (which Opera Mini handles as well as can be expected), the main problem in using a mobile browser is information entry—using 12 tiny keys to type in words and sentences.

I expect we'll see voice recognition input options within a year or two, and that could change everything.

Watch Computer Corner every Wednesday on News 8 Midday at noon, or online any time. .

E-mail askwalt@wfaa.com