IRIS incorporates Mozilla as its web browser. Mozilla is full-featured, cross platform, and open source.
For additional help using the Web Browser Application than what is provided below, click Help->Mozilla Help Contents in the top menu bar of IRIS.
The IRIS web browser window is shown below:
No special set up or configuration procedure needs to take place before using the IRIS web browser application.
To display IRIS's web browser, choose "Web Browser" from the Application selection pane or, from the GO->IRIS Applications menu.
There are buttons from within the Mozilla main window to enable you to perform standard browser functions such as step backward and forward to previously visited web pages, to reload and stop loading the current page, to go to one's "home" page, and to print a hard copy of the current page.
Additionally, the menus at the top of the IRIS window allow you to perform standard browser functions such as create a new web browser tab within the browser interface (File->New->Navigator Tab), manage bookmarks (Bookmarks->...), and set the preference settings for the web browser (Edit->Preferences...)
The default home page (chrome://iris_browser/content/IRISHome.html) can be accessed by clicking Go->Home. Among other links found here, you can edit your contact information and view release notes and other IRIS information.
The Data Item Viewer Pane allows you to identify related Projects, related Tasks, and Notes for each URL you access.
If you perform a web search using www.google.com or www.yahoo.com, IRIS will intercept the string you searched for and perform the same search within its data repository. Google or Yahoo will display the web search results within the web browser pane and IRIS will display the data repository search results as "Local Search Results for '<search string>'" in the Suggestions pane located in the Sidebar->Connections and Suggestions pane.
If you would like to add your own search engine for IRIS to intercept search strings from besides Google or Yahoo, you can do so in iris/bin/iris_svc_config.xml. Just provide the URL that the search engine uses to perform the search in the "key" field and the HTTP-GET query parameter in the "value" field and IRIS will do the rest.
As you use the Web Browser application from within IRIS, IRIS harvests the URL and web page title and stores it in its database. This occurs whenever a new web page is visited such as when you click on a new link or enter a new URL. This data is intended to be collected for the purpose of learning, linking, or inference. It is also used to maintain history of what data items you have selected, with URLs considered as data items in this instance.