How do I restore the main menu bar in MS Internet Explorer?

Back when Microsoft Windows XP was the most recent release of Windows, and Internet Explorer 6 was the most popular browser, users were accustomed to seeing familiar menus across the top of the browser window, "File", "Edit", "View", etc., which had been present in almost all Windows programs since the 1980s.

For some reason, with the release of Windows Vista in 2006, Microsoft decided to take out the menus displayed at the top of the browser. Vista, of course, went on to be one of the most hated operating systems ever released by Microsoft, the target of much sophomoric, juvenile snarking by people with nothing better to do, partly because of this and other user interface problems. There's nothing more frustrating for the user than to be looking for a menu option, or a button, that used to be there, and for some reason the software maker took it away.

All right, that's a lot of warmup for a simple answer. To get the menus to re-appear in Internet Explorer, simply hit the "Alt" key on your keyboard, and the menus will magically re-appear:

As it happens, even when Windows Vista was released, most of the world stayed with Windows XP and refused to upgrade. But now with the release of Windows 7, which fixes many Vista-related problems (also known as "Windows 7: The Apology"), it's probably inevitable that we'll all have to upgrade eventually, especially after computer manufacturers start making hardware that works only with Vista and Windows 7, not Windows XP. Hopefully simple tips like this will contribute in one small way towards making the transition easier!

Bennett Haselton is a technology and political blogger with helpful tips about how to bypass Fortinet's FortiGuard Internet filter.