IE9 Preview
Microsoft has made it’s own range of tests that you can run and they can be found at the IE9 test drive site. It’s good to see how your current browser handles these tests as well.
Browsing Posts tagged web browsers
For years now I have used both SpywareBlaster and SpyBot to immunise my web browsers against hosts file. They also help to stop tracking cookies which are used to log what type of websites you visited.
Anyway I was updating them both today and I got to thinking, “How often do they check that the sites in their block lists are still active?” At present SpyBot is saying it has immunised me against 130712 sites and SpywareBlaster says 13138 sites. So I decided to test a random selection of 20 sites they have blocked. Out of the 20 all the domains had now expired and pointed to nothing (resulting in a oops message in the browser) or they were now a domain landing page. That’s one of these stupid pages you sometimes end up on when you mistype a web address which has a list of links loosely based upon the domain name.
I know both of these programs are free but would it be to hard for them to write a program that checks their list every so often to remove dead domains? The reason I say this is because Internet Explorers block list is stored in the registry and this can slow down your computers boot up time. Also the more sites are blocked the slower your web browser may become. SO come on programmers. Just write a program that runs through your list once a month and see if they are still active or not.
When Internet Explorer 8 came out Microsoft said they had seriously improved security and that it was now one of the safest web browsers to use. Apparently they were wrong. According to the Guardian newspaper here in the UK an exploit in Internet Explorer was used in the recent attack on Google’s systems in China.
So why keep using it? There are plenty of excellent alternatives these days. Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Flock and you could even use Apple’s Safari although it uses a stupid amount of memory on Windows.
I recently posted how Windows 7 in Europe was going to come without a browser. Apparently now it is looking like instead of having no browsers you will be asked to select a browser when you install Windows 7 and it will then install your chosen web browser. No word yet on which browsers will be offered. Personally I think nearly everyone will select to install Internet Explorer anyways as there are still a lot of sites (such as banks) that demand you use IE.
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Apparently when Windows 7 is released the European version will not have Internet Explorer included. The Windows 7 E moniker is just to indicate it is the European version and might be dropped before official release. This is apparently in response to the antitrust suit Opera filed against Microsoft for bundling IE as part of Windows. Personally I think that’s just Opera crying because they have an extremely pitiful share of the browser market. So manufacturers are now expected to add a web browser to Windows 7 when they preinstall it on the machines. Funny how all this happens just as Mozilla have added the ability for companies to brand Firefox.
Personally I can’t see many manufacturers not including Internet Explorer since it’s what most people are used to and there are still a few sites, such as some banks etc, that stil wont let you log in with anything but IE or, for some god forsaken reason, Netscape.
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Well Apple has gone and released the memory hog that is Safari 4. It does look good but given that it uses a ridiculous amount of memory I think I will pass. It has some nice features that only work on a mac. Go figure.
Also Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox 3.5. It is marked as beta 99 but is basically something between a beta and a release candidate. it has improvements to Tracemonkey, the engine used to clean up memory usage but not sure it works that good at removing things from memory it no longer requires.
Now Google Chrome has excellent memory handling it’s just a shame it’s options are sparse, it has no extension support (even IE supports extensions/plug ins) (apparently as of version 2 it does) and the rendering engine, WebKit, is far from perfect. Sites like Facebook can prove a nightmare at times when it’s divs disappear behind it’s ad bar.
I’ve personally decided to give Firefox a break and use Flock for a few weeks.
I’m a hobbyist web developer and nothing annoys me more than web sites that have obviously paid for someone to build their sites but whoever has built it has done a half arsed job.
My main gripe at the moment is sites that require you to have cookies enabled but have terrible code in place for if you don’t.
A good example is Game who put you in to an infinite redirect loop if you have cookies disabled. In fact you have to enable cookies on their site to see the page that tells you that you needs cookies enabled to view the site 
Another bad one I just found, and this one is really really bad, is download.com. You don’t need cookies to view the site but if you have them disabled and click through to view a programs page your browsers memory usage goes through the roof. I tested this in Firefox 3.1 b3, IE8 and Chrome. With all three browsers I had to use task manager to close them thanks to download.com’s sloppy web code.
So please, if you are going to write a site that requires that visitors accept cookies, make sure you have good code in place to handle people like me who have cookies disabled.
OK having recently installed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and had problems with it I was determined to find what was causing the problems and how to fix it.
Before trying any of the below first try resetting IE8 to it’s defaults. Open your Control Panel (you will find it in your start menu) and then open Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab and you will see the Reset button at the bottom.
Also it might be worth trying IE8 without add ons to see if it’s not something you have installed that is causing the problem. Just right click on the Internet Explorer shortcut (not the one in the quick start) and selct Browse Without Add-ons.
Problem:
IE8 takes around 10 – 20 seconds to start up and load first page!
Solution:
I found that this is due to the passive anti spyware method used by programs such as SpyBot S&D and SpywareBlaster (mostly SpyBot to be honest).
To fix it open SpyBot and click Immunize. Untick/deselect the hosts file entry and then click Undo at the top of the window. This should remove all immunization except the hosts file immunization. You can leave the hosts file immunization in place as this is used by the system to block bad domains and not IE8.
For SpywareBlaster I clicked Protection Status then Internet Explorer and unticked/deselected Cookie Protection. I left the Active X protection in place.
Problem:
When I open a link in a new tab the page gets stuck on loading!
Windows Explorer has started opening folders in new windows!
Solution:
After some Googling I found that both of these problems are down to a dll not being registered properly when IE8 was installed. The site I read tried to blame anti virus software for blocking it but I had mine disabled.
Anyway to fix it depends on if you are on XP or Vista as Vista requires the command prompt to be run as admin. I will first explain how to open the command prompt window for each Windows and then the instructions are the same for both.
XP: Open the start menu and click Run (or press Windows key and R). In the window that opens type cmd and press the enter key (or click OK).
Vista: Open start menu then click All Programs. Next click on Accessories. Now right click on Command Prompt and then click on Run as administrator. Click Continue in the window that pops up.
Now we have the command prompt open just type in regsvr32 actxprxy.dll and then press the Enter key on your keyboard. That should fix both problems. Now type exit and press Enter to close the command prompt window.
To be honest you might want to just ditch Internet Explorer. Given the amount of people that have had nothing but problems with IE8 it might be worth your while looking at other web browsers such as Flock, Firefox, Opera, Chrome or even Safari.
Have you recently installed the newly released Internet Explorer 8? Realised what a piece of crap it is?
Yesterday I installed IE8 on this Vista desktop just to give it a whirl. For a start it takes it about 10 – 20 seconds to even open and load the first page. Also when I chose to open a link in a new tab the new tab would appear but the page would never load. It would get stuck on loading. It also altered my Explorer settings. I had Explorer (Windows Explorer) set to open folders in the same window yet IE8 changed it so they opened in a new window. So I decided to remove IE8 and go back to IE7. Luckily Internet Explorer 8 is classed as an updated and not a different program so doing this isn’t that hard as I explain below.
Update: I found out that the reason IE8 was taking so long at start up was the passive anti malware provided by SpyBot and SpywareBlaster.
continue reading…
Just found out that Microsoft has finally released Internet Explorer 8 for public consumption. Now whilst IE 8 is a step in the right direction it is far from perfect. A good example of a typical Microsoft cock up can be seen here. So do you update? The decision is yours but just remember there are many alternatives these days such as Firefox, Flock, Opera, Chrome, Safari and many more.
