Internet Explorer Flaws to Fix for IE 9
I was going to just leave Internet Explorer alone. Everyone knows that it is the bottom of the pile when it comes to browsers. The only people who use IE are those who are either not computer savvy enough to know that there are options and how to get them, and those who do know about the better web browsers out there, but figure that it just is not worth the effort. Even Microsoft knows IE 8 is already junk, that is why whenever it posts press releases about how fast Internet Explorer is compared to Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari, they compare them to the non-existent Internet Explorer 9 and not the currently released Internet Explorer 8.
Today, however, two of IE 8′s many shortcomings popped up in my face again and I figured that I would write this post in hopes that a growing chorus of user voices might just get Microsoft to pay attention to what is really wrong with Internet Explorer instead of what they think is wrong with Internet Explorer.
First and foremost is the Apple Computer-like arrogance that keeps IE from offering a way to choose your own setting for how IE 8 handles browser sessions. In every modern web browser out there, except for IE 8, you can choose to restore your last browsing session by default. That is, you can tell the browser to open all of the same tabs and webpages that were open during your last browsing session automatically the next time you start your browser.
Internet Explorer offers the ability to restore your last browsing session, but requires that you do it manually. The stated reason for this enormous deficiency in browser functionality is privacy. Microsoft thinks that the possibility that someone might inadvertently see the website you were looking at last time is more important than you (the user) wanting to be able to pick right back up where you left off. Or, in the case of yours truly, not only pick right back up where I was online last time, but also to BE REMINDED of where I was last time without having to jot down notes or send myself a reminder or whatever.
While privacy is important and a worthy goal, allowing the user to use the software in the way that works best for them is WAY more important. It makes perfect sense that for privacy reasons Microsoft does not set Internet Explorer 8 to reopen the last browsing session by default. It makes NO SENSE whatsoever that Microsoft will not provide that option as one of the settings that can be customized in IE 8. I guess this feature wasn’t widespread enough during the development of IE 8 for Microsoft to bother copying it into their “revolutionary” new browser.
Spell Check Missing From IE 8
There is also no spell check in IE8 by default. In a world where more and more is done online on the Internet, being able to spell check your entries into fields and forms is paramount. Of course, at the time, although everyone else had a spellchecker, and Microsoft has access to arguably one of the most complete spellcheck programs anywhere (the one in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office), they didn’t bother to include it. You have to download an addon called ieSpell in order to get spell check in IE 8. I guess that they wanted to make sure that at least someone downloaded an IE addon since as we discussed above, anyone willing to go download add-ons would have long ago downloaded a better browser instead.
Password Saving Wrong Time
Finally, IE 8 has a very annoying flaw in the way it saves and remembers passwords for websites. Apparently when Microsoft sent down the command to copy the password save and remember function from better browsers like Firefox, they didn’t actually pay enough attention to how it was done to copy it right.
When you enter a username and password in Chrome, Opera, or Firefox, the next page continues to load behind the dialog box that asks you whether or not you want to save the password. This is critical because all webpages hide the password you enter behind astericks which means that you can never be sure that you got the password right until the login page loads and sends you on your way with a successful login. On good web browsers, you enter your username and password, and then, if there is any doubt in your mind about whether or not your login will be successful, you just wait and see. If the login works, THEN you click Save or Yes to Save your password. If not, you click No and enter the password again and the browser correctly offers you a chance to save THAT password.
The jack#ss that designed Internet Explorer 8′s password save and remember functionality makes you answer the question BEFORE the next page will load. That means that you have to say Yes in order to see if the login was successful or not. If it was not sucessful, then you have already saved the WRONG password thanks to this bassackwards feature.
The worst part is that when you re-enter your login information and actually get it right, IE may not even offer to change the wrong information it already saved, especially if you fat-fingered the username. Now that website has TWO username and password combinations saved and one of them will be wrong forever unless you go manually dig into the guts of the IE settings menus to find and delete that wrong information.
Microsoft, while you are building functions and support and speed into IE 9, if you could please fix these things that you got wrong in IE 8, we would really appreciate it. Of course, it isn’t really that big of deal. Those of us that know better only use IE for two reasons: to get stuff off your own website, and to make sure that our websites look right for the chuckleheads who use your browser.
Best Firefox Addon For More Productivity
The basic speed dial window all browsers have.
I usually don’t like to post stubs or preliminary articles like this, but I went all reviewer on Mozilla.org this morning and, of course, ended up writing a review of my favorite Firefox add-on of all time, Speed Dial. As that review got longer I felt myself wanting to show people how to really maximize productivity with this Firefox plug-in by configuring Speed Dial the way I have ended up tweaking it and setting it up. Don’t get me wrong, my why isn’t the only way, but when you see the power and customization of the Firefox Speed Dial plug-in in use in my setup, you can see why I think that Speed Dial is the most important Firefox add-on anyone can have. In fact, it’s the one real drawback to Google Chrome for me right now.
There is a Speed Dial extension for Google Chrome on the Google extensions website, but it is a pale imitation of this powerful Firefox add-on. It doesn’t have dial groups which is the main powerful feature of the Speed Dial plugin.
Anyway, it would be irresponsible of me to get into posting my Speed Dial Firefox extension review right now when I have deadlines barreling down on my like runaway trucks with no brakes on the side of a steep mountain. However, I don’t want anyone following the link I threw onto my review at mozilla.org to arrive and wonder where in the heck the review I promised is. Therefore, I’m going to post a couple of screen shots that I think will help any user with even a little bit of power browsing experience to understand the kind of productivity gains that are possible with this plugin.
If that is you, either install the plugin and start messing around with it. Just got to Tools -> Add-ons -> Options and start customizing away. (I recommend setting up either a Speed Dial icon on your toolbars, or doing like I did and setting the right click on a page to include the context menu option to Add to Speed Dial. You can make that work by right-clicking on the tab if you prefer, but I’m used to right-clicking on the page itself when I want to do something. One of the best things about this add-on is how much it can be customized to work exactly the way you need it to in order to help out with your own time management by making browsing faster and easier.)
The quick, quick, version of how to use Speed Dial to speed up your Internet browsing and boost your online power goes like this:
- Use Dial Groups – Every web browser offers some sort of dial based start up screen. Opera was first, but Google Chrome has one now too. IE has a similar concept although it is done via text links instead of actual configurable dials. What makes Speed Dial great is the ability to have MORE THAN ONE page of dials.
- Set Speed Dial to show up in new tabs instead of waiting to click something. Every time you press CTL-T you’ll get a list of your speed dials to use. Just make your current homepage the first dial on the first dial group to keep instant access to it.
- Customize the dial group tabs – You can change the colors to make tabs easier to find. Just don’t go crazy or you’ll hate it.
- Customize the dial groups – Need more than 9 websites for one dial group? No problem. One of the configurations is how many sites to show on a speed dial group. You can change both the default, and even better change on a per group basis. You can have 12 dials under Work and 6 dials under Facebook Games or vice versa, depending on your lifestyle
– If you have a widescreen monitor take advantage of that width by setting your default dial group configuration to 3 rows and 4 columns.
Lastly, if you are a power user looking for maximum time savings, you’ll end up with a lot of dials that link to a lot of webpages. By default, the speed dial thumbnails refresh frequently which means you could end up with a slow running Firefox when running Speed Dial and switching through several dials because thumbnails are being generated for each site no matter how fast you click. (See the link for details.)
There is lots more power. Read the docs or poke around the settings to see what else you can do to improve online productivity with Speed Dial. Or, come back here in the next day or two when I get time to go on full tilt. Even easier, grab the Best Hubris RSS Feed to make sure you get the updated Firefox plugin reviews as soon as they come online.
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- Configure Right Click Context Menu for Speed Dial
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- Configure Speed Dial Groups
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- Configure and Organize Dial Group Tabs
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- Configure Speed Dial Options
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- Productive Powerful Speed Dial Configuration
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- Speed Dial Power User Setup Productivity Boost
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- The basic speed dial window all browsers have.
Then you can check out my post about Firefox personas if you need to read more about the Mozilla web browser.
Better More Recent Google Results
Need better search results on Google?
Need more recent results for Google searches?
Want to reduce irrelevant Google search results?
Consider using the More Search tools menu located in the left toolbar on the Google search website.
I’ve noticed a lot of Google search users arriving here on Best Hubris and other websites are trying to add dates to their searches in order to get better Google search results and reduce irrelevant Google search data. For example, several searchers appear to be inputting 2010 into Google searches hoping to get results from the current year.
Unfortunately, the Google search ranking algorithm doesn’t work that way very well. Any webpage that has the number 2010 in its text will qualify, while webpages and articles posted during 2010, but without the actual number used in the text will not qualify. This webpage for example has the keyword 2010 on it three times so far. That means it will match searches for 2010 better than many other pages that are just as current.
So, if you are looking for current HP LaserJet 1012 drivers for Windows 7 by putting 2010 in your search, you might find this page instead of the one on this website that actually has a way to use HP LaserJet 1012 printer drivers on Windows 7 with a workaround.
Most searches will show a choice of dates limiting functions that include Past Month, and Past Year. Using these search date parameters will do a lot to make your Google search results more relevant.
For more specific date range based searches, use the custom date search function.
A good tip for better Google searches made easy is to just enter a start date into the custom date search interface. Google will automatically use the current date as the end date giving users a way to search the Internet from a specific date up until now fast and easy.
For example, if you are searching for information about how to use Windows 7 or want to search on new Windows 7 features, limit your Google search dates to March 1, 2010 or April 1, 2010 start dates to capture information published about the actual full Windows 7 release software and avoid all of those webpages and articles that were written about the Windows 7 beta.
That way if you want more information about advanced search in Windows 7 you won’t be reading all the speculation about what might be in the final product, or trying to match up screen shots of Windows 7 search features that were taking on Windows 7 Release Candidate instead of the full retail version of Windows 7.
Firefox Personas Preview Feature
When you spend a lot of time in the world of technology it is easy to get jaded. New features that are promoted (self-promoted, and then echoed by lazy writers) are almost never as useful as they are supposed to be, and half the time, they are not even new. I almost ruined my eyes looking at computer monitors full of accolades for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7′s “new” tabbed browsing feature, especially since I had been a power-user of tabs in web browsing since they came out in Firefox years before.
When new features are both truly useful and actually new, like the Ribbon Interface in Office 2010 (updated from a partial integration in Microsoft Office 2007), they are often met with initial resistance.
As a freelance technology writer I not only spend a lot of time in the tech world, I am actually forced to look at and use new software features regardless of how useful I could possibly find them because a client needs a review of new software utilities or a customized newsletter could benefit from a comparison of program features.
Check out a review of Citibank Thank You network rewards program.
The other thing that happens to us technology types is that we stop reading about what a program does. We most certainly do not watch videos that show us how to use new features. (How many seconds of your life does it waste to watch someone show you how to click File then New on a training video?) Fortunately, most of the time it works out just fine because when you are used to how software works, you know where to look for functions you need. However, from time to time, I miss out on a cool new feature or a great new function that would increase my productivity.
Firefox 3.6 Coolest New Feature
When it comes to software development, there are two kinds of functionality. One type of functionality affects the usefulness of the product. These functions make the software, better, faster, easier to use, and so on. The other type of functionality makes the computer software more fun to use, or just makes it look nicer. These days, it seems like there is a lot of action in the latter category.
Most of the “improvements” in the user interface design realm are actually just ways to make a software product look nicer, or most commonly, to make it so that you can superficially customize the application. Think of it as the equivalent of being able to add bumper stickers to your software.
For the most part, I don’t have much use for these beautification features. A computer is, what a computer is, and while using my own wallpaper is fun, it doesn’t really matter what the wallpaper is when I’m switching between eight full-screen windows in a desperate race to beat an important deadline.
As you can imagine, I haven’t played around much with Firefox’s personas feature.
This morning, however, I was bored (actually, I was procrastinating and rendering my ADD planner worthless) and I ended up on the Firefox Personas page after re-installing the Firefox NoScript Plugin.
While I don’t have much need for a new persona for my web browser, I was clicking around to see what was on the Mozilla website when I noticed something happen to my default Firefox browser.
When you hover over the sample picture graphic of a Firefox persona, it previews what that persona would look like if you installed it on your Firefox 3.6 installation. Tons of applications do previews like this, but the fun part is that Firefox previews the persona on your real installation. That is, the browser you are currently using to browse the available personas actually changes when you hover your mouse over the preview.
Now this is fun.
Normally, would have to download and install the browser extension or browser skin in order to “play around” with what it would look like. Then, when I am finished wasting time, I would switch back, and if I remembered, uninstall all the different personas I downloaded to check out. Hopefully they all uninstalled cleanly and there were no residual effects, although that is never a guarantee.
But, with the Firefox persona preview functionality I can see what my browser would look like with a hundred different personas, all without downloading or installing anything. So, I can see what my Firefox would look like if I installed the Kelly Brook persona (First, calculate the odds of the wife using my computer and Firefox…). Or, for a more whimsical (and socially acceptable at a client site) persona I can check out the Snoopy persona.
Here is my usual Firefox (the default) persona:
Here is the Kelly Brook persona:
In the end, personas are a play thing, like putting up a Go Buffs sign on my home office wall, but sometimes, playing is good. After all, all work and no play make Jack go crazy and try to chop up his family at the Overlook Hotel.
