For some reason, the auto-update feature of many software programs fails from time to time. On my computer, the number one culprit is the Thunderbird email client. I don’t think it properly tries to get admin permissions when it should and therefore the update doesn’t work. I think this is particularly true if Firefox (another Mozilla product) is already running. Whatever the recovery mechanism does, doesn’t work any better.

It gets so boggled that when I try and manually install it, from inside the program via the Help menu, or by downloading and re-running the installed from Mozilla, it STILL doesn’t work.

Ninite Review – Online Software Install Service

Enter Ninite. I can go to www.ninite.com and click Thunderbird (and a bunch of other software, if I want) and get an installer. When I run the installer, it checks to see if I already have the software, and if so, it updates the installation. Whatever process Ninite uses, it doesn’t get hung up in the same way as the official Mozilla installer, most likely because it does not bother with whatever version check or recovery file the original erred installation generated. It just goes in and updates all the files, without any checking or asking.

Which, brings me to the other amazing thing about Ninite. The installers are all fully automated. There is no user interaction required. The defaults are all used for a new install, or the update leaves all of your previous settings intact. Obviously, if you want to do some customizing, this isn’t the route for you, but in 90 percent of the cases when I install software, I just click Next, Next, Next, Finish, anyway.

There is one exception. When I install software with toolbars, or that wants to make Bing my default search engine, or whatever, I click NO. Sometimes, developers get tricky and that isn’t enough. Foxit Reader, a PDF reader, pulled a stunt like that a while back where you had to make some very unintuitive clicks to avoid getting some junkware toolbar with your installation. Fortunately, Ninite is run by good guys, for good guys. All toolbars and other extra software, no matter how “valuable” are automatically declined with a Ninite installation.

Ninite Tips and Tricks

At this point, Ninite is already a golden member of the Go-To online service club, but wait– there’s more

Ninite does more than just install one software program. Using the super simple check box interface, you can select one, two or even dozens of software packages to install. The file Ninite delivers will install all of the selected software with a single execution and not a single second of user intervention. This comes in very handy to install lots of software on a new computer or to re-install a ton of programs on a restored machine.

It gets even better. Remember how I said that if you already have the software installed then Ninite will just update it for you? Well that works for multiple software installations as well. So if Thunderbird is updating, but Spotify is new, Ninite knows enough to update Thunderbird and do a new installation of Spotify, again with no user interaction.

Now, here is the best software upgrade method you will ever use. Create a Ninite installer of all your usual software programs. Save that file to your desktop, or other handy spot on your computer. Now, just run that installer every so often to keep ALL of your software up to date, with no hassle and no junk toolbars other other garbage. Any software already running the current version is just skipped. You don’t have to create a new Ninite installer file. The installer automatically connects, downloads and installs the most recent version of software available.

For example, if you update Java via the package from Oracle, you’ll get a vampire process installed on your computer that runs at startup and keeps running 24 hours per day, seven days per week. It’s sole function is to occasionally check for Java updates. Turning it off takes a lot more than you might think thanks to a bug that prevents you from turning off the Java updater unless you manually launch it with admin privileges. The problem is, once you kill it, it will come back with EVERY SINGLE UPDATE. But, if you update via Ninite, they’ll keep that little junkware app from re-installing on your computer.

Obviously, Ninite only works with free or open-source software, but that covers a lot of ground on my machine, ranging from web browsers to email clients, to image viewers to developer tools. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Windows Live suite isn’t available which means you’ll have to watch out for seaport.exe getting installed and then kill Seaport on your own.

Give Ninite a try, you won’t be sorry.

Easy Software Installation Online is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

As an added bonus, I can double check and make sure that the right-half has olives and the left-half has ham, or vice versa, and not just hope that the person who answered the phone in a noisy restaurant got my overly complex order correct.

However, today I ran into a bit of a snag with Pizza Hut’s website. It seems the folks who designed it are from 1990.

Don’t Use Pop-Up Windows on Legitimate Websites

When I finished entering my order, I clicked to finish by entering my credit card information and clicked the button to submit my order.

Nothing happened.

This is a problem because clicking the order button more than once can end up submitting your order more than once.

I’m betting that the guys at Pizza Hut would probably notice that two identical orders for the same address came in seconds apart, but that doesn’t mean that the computer wouldn’t charge my credit card twice anyway. I waited a couple minutes to see if anything happened and then clicked the submit order button again.

Nothing.

Now, I’m frustrated and worried. Did I just order twice or did I not order at all?

Fortunately, Pizza Hut sends confirmation emails when I order online, so I checked my email. Finding no confirmations, I checked my spam folder to be sure and then tried again.

Still nothing.

At this point, I would guess that the average potential online Pizza Hut customer gives up. If the company is fortunate, those people call and place their order, but there are, no doubt, plenty of instances where potential customers are irked enough that they just don’t bother to place their order at all.

On a hunch, I tried one more thing. I went into the settings for my browser and added PizzaHut.com to my exceptions list for the pop-up blocker. When I clicked the order button, a small window popped up saying that my order was processing.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!

Everyone Blocks Pop-Ups

Dear Pizza Hut,

I know that you guys make pizza, but I assume that you have an IT guy on staff somewhere that handles some of that “computer stuff” for you. You either paid someone a lot of money for your website ordering system, or you built it in house with some full-time employees. Either way, someone doesn’t know their head from their butt when it comes to building usable websites. I suggest you get them some training right away, or at the very least, that you remind them that EVERY SINGLE WEB BROWSER THERE IS currently blocks pop-up windows by default.

Signed,

The Customers Who Actually Use Your Website

Seriously.

• Internet Explorer blocks pop-up windows.
• Firefox blocks pop-up windows.
• Google Chrome blocks pop-up windows.
• Opera blocks pop-up windows.
• Safari blocks pop-up windows.

See the pattern?

The worst part is that the pop-up window on Pizza Hut’s website does NOTHING. It’s a dialog box that says it’s processing, only this is an online application and not a desktop application. Apparently, if that window won’t display, the order won’t process.

At least when other companies insist on using pop-up windows, they are smart enough to tell you that you need to allow pop-ups. Pizza Hut’s website just sits there.

Don’t Use Pop-Up Windows

I already “dumb down” my web browsing when placing online orders with non-online companies like Pizza Hut. I make a special effort to use Internet Explorer with no plug-ins or add-ons and not Firefox or Chrome because I have had too many experiences where the clowns who end up designing and implementing big brand websites never bother to test anything other than IE.

In other words, pop-up windows are so out of date, and considered such bad practice that even Internet Explorer blocks all pop-up windows by default. That means that Pizza Hut’s online ordering system is failing for everyone who has a recently purchased computer but who doesn’t know that they have to go in an make a special settings configuration change for Pizza Hut online orders to work.

Note to Pizza Hut: If you are wondering why there are an abnormally high number of users who fill in an order but never complete the transaction, turn on some tracking to show whether or not the pop-up window fails to display. You’ll find that is a major contributor.

Or, just get with the program. No one uses pop-up windows anymore.

What other websites do you use that require pop-ups be enabled to function properly?

Pop-Up Windows in Online Ordering is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Ever since Yahoo’s business strategy was leaked on some PowerPoint slides, people have been expecting this, but I hadn’t heard anything.

Now, you either have to except to move to AVOS or Delicious is shutting down in July 2011.

Check out the blog post here: http://blog.delicious.com/

Or, log out and back into your account to see this screen:

Yahoo Sells Off Delicious is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Another major reason Google is broken is the title tag.

The title tag is one of many codes used in the programming language of the Internet called HTML. In HTML, the webpage creator defines a title tag by putting something in between <title> and </title>.

You might think that whatever is input between the title tags is the title that you see on a webpage, but you would be wrong. The visible title at the top of most webpages is actually created by something called a header tag. Header tags are also powerful search engine optimization factors, but secondary to the title tag.

The title tag does not impact anything that you see ON a webpage. Rather, the title tag determines what is displayed in the title bar of older web browsers before their were tabs for each web page that was open. Today, the title tag determines what is displayed on the tab of a particular webpage. Any modern browser with more than one webpage open uses tabs and the title is almost never completely displayed, yet the title tag is STILL one of the most powerful Google ranking signals.

Overemphasis on Title Tag

Once upon a time, the search engines on the Internet were very unintelligent. The earliest ones did nothing more than count the number of times word or phrase appeared on a webpage. Thus, if a webpage said, Ford Trucks, ten times, then it was “better” result for someone searching for “ford trucks” than a page that only said it six times.

Of course, when people caught on, they just started repeating the word as much as possible. They stopped even bothering trying to include it in text somehow and just started putting words at the bottom of the webpage and repeating them over and over. Some webpages started doing it with the same text color as the background color so that it didn’t look bad to people, but all of those keywords counted.

The main reason for Google’s success was that it did not depend on those keywords for its rankings, so all of those spammy webpages didn’t clutter up its search engine results pages, or SERPs.

Instead of using the text of a webpage, where there was too much keyword spam to use reliably, Google uses the title tag to determine what a webpage is about. While counting incoming links can tell you which pages are best regarded, you still have to pair the content with the searcher’s intent. The best root canal webpage in the world is a terrible result for someone searching for beach volleyball, no matter how many links it has pointing to it.

Thus, Google search rankings are a result of a combining how well the text in the title tag matches the text typed into the Google search box and then how many links are pointing to the best matching webpages.

This is how the content farms consistently show up high in Google search rankings. A webpage with a title tag of “how to use hp laserjet 1012 printer on windows 7″ is a better match for the same search than a webpage titled HP LaserJet 1012 Windows 7 Printer Drivers, even if the latter has more incoming links and better information. By constantly adding content with every possible variation on popular or frequent searches, the content mills can rank their webpages high for specific Google searches.

Repetitively publishing such similar content just to capture subtle variations in search text typed by users is not feasible for legitimate publishers. The New York Times, for example, would not be well served by publishing an article about pentagon spending in numerous variations just so that it will rank highly for not just the original title, but for other ways that users might search for it. Thus, the Times ends up with one well-deserved high ranking, while someone else claims the high rankings on all the variations.

Ironically, the more legitimate a resource is, the less likely it is to customize its title tags on every webpage. For example, many government webpages are the actual, legally defined authority on certain subjects, but because they do not “optimize” their title tags, other webpages (legitimate or not) show up above them despite the boost that Google gives to webpages housed on .gov domains.

For example, searching for “colorado school rankings” brings back not the official Colorado Department of Education website, nor the test results for the official test, but rather numerous sites that republish the data of the former.

Why don’t the real websites rank higher?

Because their title tags are things like “Colorado Department of Education” and “Unit Assessment Test Rankings”.

No matter what data is on your webpage, if there is another page with a closer title tag to the search performed, it won’t show up, even if the exact phrase does appear in the body of your article.

Up Next: Why Google Is Broken – Anchor Text

Why Google Is Broken – Title Tag is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

A blog post announced that Google Chrome beta is getting a built-in PDF reader. That means that I will no longer have to have a temporary directory to download PDF files into manually just so that I can click on the downloaded file to open it up in my PDF viewer. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have been able to handle this for years via useful, easy to use, extensions and plug-ins.

The developers of Chrome no doubt claim that their browser lacked such basic functionality because of security reasons. I never like this answer. As the user, I should get to make the decisions about how I do or do not want such things implemented. It’s the same reason that I hate how Microsoft IE has no option to automatically re-open the last browsing session for "privacy reasons." But, it is what it is.

Now, Chrome has a PDF viewer installed by default. When I click PDF links, they should just open and display within Chrome instead of having to open them later in Foxit Reader. According to the blog, the PDF files will be sandboxed. That means that today’s run of the mill PDF exploits won’t work when the file is viewed in Chrome. Guess the hackers will have to come up with something new. In the meantime, it would be nice if Adobe could pull their heads out long enough to make their reader more secure. Oh, and lighter and less bloated would be nice too.

With a PDF reader built into Chrome, the last major feature missing that is keeping Chrome from becoming anything more than my "lightweight" browser is a Print Preview function. Nothing prints with less consistency or more waste than webpages, which makes print preview a critical function for anyone who prints anything off of the Internet more than once in a blue moon. As a freelance technology writer, I need to be able to not only find data and information, but to digest it, compare it to other data, and then keep that data should anyone ever raise any questions about it. Something like Zotero, or OneNote, or a bunch of screenshots helps, but nothing makes an editor feel warm and fuzzy like good old paper.

The ongoing irony about Chrome is that as a browser by the techies and for the techies, it has managed to produce some amazing features, functions, and speed, but it has some glaring holes that are very big deals for the average computer user that Google insists should just be fixed by an extension, or when they really don’t like it, that you "don’t really need it anyway."

Here is to the new PDF viewer. May you be as stable and garbage-free as the built-in Flash support. In fact, may Google build in all Adobe products and extensions so that finally someone can do so in a way that isn’t overstuffed, unsecure, and instable.

Google Chrome Built-In PDF Viewer is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

As a result of the rollout of Instant Search, Google decided that nobody needed the WonderWheel anymore (or it just didn’t want them using it anymore) and removed it from the More Tools section on the sidebar that shows up on the left side of the screen during web searches. Fortunately, you can get the WonderWheel back by changing some Google settings, but it isn’t pretty.

Basically, you have to change one of your search settings. These are the same settings where you can turn on and off the adult content filter and change your search results to 20 per screen instead of 10, and so on. There is new setting in there for Instant Search. Select Do Not Use Instant Search and your Google search interface goes back to the way it was before the rollout of the the new instantly changing search screen, including having the WonderWheel.

The bad news is that no one knows how long going back to the old version of Google search will be an option for users, but for now, at least, you can revert to the original setup and use WonderWheel. In doing so, you lose access to the very useful update of Instant Search. To get around this, either use one of the web browser private browsing modes and change the setting in there only when you need to use Wonder Wheel, or setup a different profile that has WonderWheel on but Instant Search off, and vice versa so that you can easily switch between.

Or, you can do like I do. Since I rarely use Internet Explorer (usually only to go to microsoft.com) I have changed the Google Instant Search setting OFF in my IE browser and left it on in my real web browsers so that whenever I need wonder-wheel, I just fire up Internet Explorer and do my searches inside there.

Have a good one.

Google WonderWheel Tool Gone Restore It Fast is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

In case you aren’t familiar with it, Woot.net offers one “deal” every day. When that deal is sold out, it is all gone and you can’t get anymore. No new deal takes its place until the next day, when there is once again a new deal for the day. Sometimes the deals are amazing, and sometimes the deals are pretty much the same kind of price you would be able to get anywhere if you just looked around a little bit.

One thing that Woot does on a fairly regular basis is offer refurbished or reconditioned products. A refurbished item is one that has gone from being new, to getting back into the manufacturer’s hands where it is fixed or looked over, and then sold again. Since the device technically is not new, it is labeled as refurbished.

Theoretically, a refurbished item has been restore to “like new” condition, but this is an obvious falsehood since no manufacturer offers the full “like new” warranty on their refurbished products. They know as well as you do that a product that had to be fixed is more likely to have other problems than one that was fine right out of the box the first time. So, you get either no warranty at all, or a much shorter one than normal.

Depending upon what you are buying and how likely it is to break, buying refurbished can be a good way to get a great deal by paying much less than a new product costs for one that is likely just as good. On the other hand, some products aren’t very robust in the first place and paying less for one with a virtually useless warranty is not a good idea. Saving money requires only buying the right kinds of things when they are refurbished. The catch is that it is not always easy to tell which is which.

That brings us to the Refurbished iRobot Roomba. Frequent users of Woot like to joke about how often reconditioned Roobmas show up on the website. It seems that the iRobot Roomba 530 Robotic Vacuum with Virtual Wall seems to show up the most often. When refurbished Roombas show up in a Woot-Off, they bring the special multi-deal day auctions to a screeching halt while it takes hours to sell out.

In fact, I would guess that Woot has to hold off the iRobot folks lest their products fill the site several days each week.

Which begs the question, is buying a refurbished cheap irobot roomba a good idea? Or, are refurbished Roombas a scam?

Unfortunately, the answer is that iRobot Roombas are great little carpet sweeper vacuums when they work properly. However, they are incredibly fragile. The problem is that doing what the Roobma does actually requires more expensive hardware, but people won’t pay more for robot vacuums. That means that iRobot has to try and make do with the fastest manufacturing processes and the cheapest parts.

Frankly, the company has done an admirable job in being able to make a robotic vacuum with all of the features people want at a price they are willing to pay. But, in the end, Roombas are very temperamental and prone to breaking both quickly and often. The company stands behind its products with a one-year manufacturer warranty, which is good. However, since they break a lot, the company ends up with TONS of Roombas that it fixes and then has to resell as reconditioned Roombas or refurbished Roombas.

• If you want to see for yourself, check any of the Roomba forums and you’ll see many Roobma problems that are so common they have names. Do a search for roomba circle dance, roomba battery problem, and roobma cliff sensors, for several examples. (Hint: Ignore all results from ehow.com or fixya.com as they are usually worthless.)

• For an even more useful search include either roomba 4xxx or roomba 5xxx or even roomba 3xxx in your search. This is how Roobma owners and techies refer to the specific problems that plague each series of Roomba robotic vacuums. (The xxx is a place holder. Most problems that happen to any of the 4000 series Roombas happens to all of them whether they are Roomba 4100 Red, Roobma 4105 Sage, or Roomba 4210 Discovery.)

• Or check here for a very active Roomba owners forum where you can read for yourself about not only the issues with Roombas and how to troubleshoot roomba vacuums, but also the fixes which often involve one tiny component such as an internal LED, but renders the entire Rooba robot vacuum useless unless fixed.

Refurbished Roombas are sold with only a 90-day warranty. Basically, the company washes its hands of the ones that were broken by getting them working and shipping them back out with a short warranty that ensures they will likely not have to deal with that particular unit again, which is good, since plenty of new ones are headed back into the factory at any time. For consumers however, it is not so good. If there was a weak solder or connection on one part that is fixed, but the other another has not broken YET, it might also have a weak connection and will break soon, although probably after 90 days.

The question is whether or not this is a self-defeating strategy for iRobot and its attempts to build a market in robotic vacuums. While it may be true that there is no wiggle room in increasing the costs associated with making Roombas, reselling units that are more likely to have trouble than brand new units could very well be creating a population of Roomba owners who will

1. Never buy another Roomba again because the refurbished one they bought broke so quickly
2. Will recommend to friends and neighbors not to buy Roombas because they break too easily
3. Will be willing to buy a robot vacuum from a competitor when technology allows better, longer-lasting, roomba-type vacuums to be built for lower costs
4. And, of course, will tell friends to buy the other brand because it doesn’t break right away like Roombas do

As corporate strategies go, the one iRobot seems to be pursuing is one destined to fail. There are only so many consumers willing to try a robotic vacuum in the first place. Each one of them that is alienated by a faulty refurbished Roomba reduces that pool by one more. While Roomba is the only game in town today, people tend to have long memories of being burned, especially on higher priced items like the iRobot Roombas. That means that when they are easier to develop and sell than they are now, there are going to be plenty of waiting customers for new competitors.

Although it might cost Roomba more on the bottom line in the short-term, the company would be better served for the long-term by offering a full one-year warranty on its refurbished Roombas, just like it does on new ones. Doing so might even allow for them to be sold a higher price than they are now. More importantly, doing so would stop the creation of an army of Roobma haters who think that Roobmas are junk and buying one is just a scam. Perhaps, most useful of all, as refurbished Roombas came back in for service the company could learn what it is that goes wrong most often the second time around and perhaps preemptively “fix” the potential problems on every refurbished Roomba before it goes out the door, resulting in fewer warranty service requests on refurbished Roombas, thus negating the additional expense of servicing them for a longer time.

Of course, that only works if the company is not fully aware that all Roombas are just ticking time-bombs that the company needs to ship and get off of the service life-cycle as quickly as possible to avoid bankruptcy. In which case, there really is no valid strategy, other than to hope that people never wise up.

The author has owned two Roomba vacuums, a Roomba 4100 Red, which worked perfectly for almost three years before the battery died, and a refurbished Roomba 530 which developed the common Roobma problem where when turned on it keeps trying to backup because it thinks its bump sensor has been activated. The author still owns both Roomba, although both gather dust in the corner of the basement because replacing the Roomba Red battery is too expensive, and fixing the 530 Roomba requires near complete disassembly or paying as much as the purchase price to have it fixed. When asked, the author tells people, “When they work, they are pretty great, but they seem to break very easily, so it might not last very long.”

I’ve never seen anyone buy one after I tell them that, and I am not an iRobot Roomba hater. I just can’t justify buying a new one until I start hearing that they are much more reliable.

Are Refurbished Roombas A Good Deal Or A Scam? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Google has been a helpful force in other areas as well. It’s Chrome browser started a JavaScript speed war within the browser community without which advanced cloud based computing offerings (like web apps) would not be possible. The Android operating system has provided a much needed boost to the mobile phone community, allowing users to get advanced, forward thinking features, without having to sell out all control to whatever Apple decides is "right" for your phone.

In the non-computing world, Google has put its weight and money behind "good" causes and projects like wind energy and more.

Unfortunately, it is beginning to seem like the company does not have the vision to see beyond the latest "fun" technology cooked up by its programmers in their vaunted 20 percent time. The latest debacle comes courtesy of its so-called net neutrality proposal that it cooked up with Verizon. Google finds itself in the unfamiliar position of having to defend not only one of its offerings, but its motivation as well. Whenever a company, any company, must expend as much energy as Google has on defending a non-product idea, it’s a safe bet that it is backing the wrong horse.

In this case, Google is increasingly parsing out the language in its net neutrality proposal. It claims that detractors are getting it all wrong and what it really means is good for everyone, if only you read it their way. Unfortunately, it is just this ambiguity that is the problem. Assuming that one counts on Google being completely benevolent now and in the future (a big assumption), there is nothing to stop others from taking the company’s proposal and reading it exactly as the naysayers say it will be read. What is to stop AT&T, Comcast, or some new telecom company from using "good guy Google’s" words against them, and us?

In a misguided effort to make themselves a key player in the net neutrality debate, Google has put its name on something that has shaken lose some of the hard earned goodwill the company has built up over the years. In the future, this net neutrality proposal will be regarded as a mistake in business strategy by company management. Just how big of a mistake, will depend upon how quickly (if ever) Google realizes it and changes course. If that happens quickly, then this chapter will be regarded as a rare stumble by the Internet giant. If, however, Google insists on pushing a bad position for too long, this moment could very well become known as the beginning of the end.

Will Google recognize the overwhelming, and near universal, backlash against its net neutrality proposal in time, ala Facebook? Or, will Google be unable to see past its own vision of greatness in time to salvage its reputation?

Google’s Net Neutrality Blunder is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

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.

Internet Explorer Flaws to Fix for IE 9 is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Then you can check out my post about Firefox personas if you need to read more about the Mozilla web browser.

Best Firefox Addon For More Productivity is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC