Hide the Favorites Bar, Suggested Sites, and Web Slice Gallery in Internet Explorer 8 / IE 7

By default, Internet Explorer displays the "Favorites Bar", a special toolbar that allows you to access websites you visit often: this is a "Favorites of favorites" selection, which you can use in addition to other websites you have bookmarked. As you may know from the previous tutorial, you can add websites to your Favorites Bar quite easily. But if you want to save a bit of screen real estate and see more of web pages without the need to scroll, hiding the Favorites Bar is a good place to start (and you can change your mind and decide to show it back later on with just a couple of clicks!)

Hide the Favorites toolbar in Internet Explorer

Follow these steps to temporarily hide the Favorites Bar:

• First, open Internet Explorer; once it is running, you will see the Favorites Bar right below the address bar, as shown in the screenshot below:
  
  
• Your browser tabs are displayed underneath it (not visible on the screenshot). So, to hide the Favorites Bar, just right-click inside any empty area of a toolbar (the Favorites Bar itself, the Tabs toolbar, or the Command Bar - basically, anywhere between the address bar and the web page itself). Make sure that you are not right-clicking on one of the Favorites Bar buttons, otherwise you will not see the correct context menu:
  
  
• Once you see the same right-click menu as the one pictured above, notice that some items (like "Favorites Bar") are checked, while others aren't - this is how Internet Explorer shows you which toolbars are currently showing or hidden. Just click on the "Favorites Bar" entry, and Internet Explorer will uncheck it, and hide the toolbar.
• The change of settings takes effect immediately, no need to restart your web browser.

Restore the Favorites Bar toolbar in Internet Explorer

If you change your mind, and decide that after all, you did enjoy having your most frequently visited websites displayed as toolbar buttons, no problem: it only takes two clicks to re-enable the Favorites Bar. Right-click as described earlier, between the address bar and the website currently loaded, and click on "Favorites Bar" inside the context menu.