Chris Pirillo » ie

Internet Explorer 9 Thoughts

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 21:00:39 +0000

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The IE 9 beta is definitely something you should try. We uploaded a screencast not long ago to much positive response. There are good things coming down the pike, and Microsoft is definitely getting back into the game.

In four earlier platform previews, aimed primarily at developers, Microsoft has already shown off some of what it’s delivering in IE9: dramatically improved performance, thanks to hardware acceleration and an improved JavaScript engine, along with a relentless emphasis on compatibility with modern web standards.

Even Ed Bott is happy with what he’s seeing. Nothing – and certainly no browser – is perfect, and this is no exception. However, I do believe that we are going to see Internet Explorer start to increase its hold on the market once again.

What are your thoughts?

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How to Convince Someone to Switch Web Browsers

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:50:27 +0000

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Someone in the live chat room recently asked how they can convince a relative to stop using Internet Explorer. The answer is that you really can’t – and you shouldn’t. They use what they use because they like it. It’s a matter of personal preference, folks. How would you like it if someone told you you need to stop using Chrome, Firefox or Safari? You’d not be a very happy camper.

If they aren’t happy and are looking for suggestions, then go ahead and give them your ideas. When you try to convince someone to change – whether it’s Web browsers or even religions – you’re superimposing your experiences onto them. You’re forcing your own opinions and perspectives on someone’s life.

If they’re using IE for all the wrong reasons (such as using a very old version), that’s a bad reason. Explain to them why it may not be safe. It may work well and look good to them, but it isn’t safe. Tell them the dangers, and help them understand why they should upgrade or look at a different browser.

If you are going to insist on trying to get someone to change, don’t simply say something is better or faster. You will never win them over. Point out specific features you feel they would appreciate and need that they cannot get in the browser they are using now. The same can hold true if you are talking about phones, gadgets or computers.

Show them something they will be able to do outside of the limitations of what they have now. Ask them what they want their browser (or anything) to do, then show them what fits best with their needs – even if it is Internet Explorer.

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What’s New for Internet Explorer 9

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:48:03 +0000

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The beta for Internet Explorer 9 was officially released this morning during a press conference. This streamlined version has a better user experience and is far faster than any previous iteration of the application. With this release, Microsoft is asking us to “unlock the beauty of the web.” The team in Redmond feels that a browser should be focusing on a website – not the browser used to access it. IE 9 contains a lot of design changes and new features to make visiting websites an efficient process.

The new streamlined user interface features minimalized focus on the Home, Favorites and Settings menu buttons. They aren’t right in your face and larger-than-life anymore. There is a new position for Tabs and a new design for the URL bar. The speed is a drastic improvement, making it a competitor to other browsers once again.

The scrolling feature is a much smoother experience than in previous versions, assisted by new hardware acceleration. There is better Flash and HTML 5 integration. You will find that you now have the ability to easily see which add-ons might be slowing down the browser as it launches. There’s also a download manager to warn you if the code you’re trying to nab is potentially malicious.

Keep in mind that IE 9 will only work on Windows Vista or Windows 7. If you’re still using XP, you’re out of luck and unable to experience the actual goodness that we’re seeing out of the Microsoft camp today.

Thanks to Matthew for this excellent screencast and first peek at Internet Explorer 9.

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How to Remove Internet Explorer 8

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:40:56 +0000

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Marques has been an excellent screencast contributor in the past months, and today’s addition is no exception. Many people prefer to never use Internet Explorer, instead choosing one of the many other browser offerings. Marques is using this screencast to show you how can you remove IE 8 from your computer entirely. Be forewarned, however, that doing so could possibly cause some Windows programs and files to not work properly. Another solution is to simply remove the IE icon from your Start Menu and desktop, and just don’t open it. Also, of course, you may need IE at some point for your Windows Updates (many ppl still use that method to get the updates).

To remove Internet Explorer, you first want to head into your Control Panel. Once there, go into your “Programs” area. Once there, you’ll notice a button near the top (under the heading Programs and Features) that says Turn Windows Features On and Off. Click on that to bring up a window that will help you do just that.

Uncheck the Internet Explorer box, and you’ll have it fully removed. There are also other things in the box that you can safely remove, such as the Tablet features (IF you’re not using a Tablet, of course!). Make sure you thoroughly research all of the things found in the list before you decide what you want to uncheck!

That’s all there is to it. Removing Internet Explorer is fairly quick and easy to do, and may help keep your system running a little faster without some of the previous bloat associated with it.

Thanks, Marques, for another outstanding screencast!

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Rent Movies from YouTube

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:10:42 +0000

You read the title correctly, yes. Beginning Friday, you can rent movies on YouTube. The Google-owned YouTube has partnered with the Sundance Film Festival to offer five independent movies for rental. In addition, Google is looking for other independent artists and companies to work with in order to bring you even more titles in upcoming weeks.

YouTube is also inviting a number of its partners to participate in the new rental service, allowing those it selects to keep their rights, decide where they want their content to be available, the price of their video and the rental duration. One day, YouTube will offer even more services where movies are concerned, even going so far as to bring movies to platforms other than the website, including Apple TV, Boxee, Wii and PS3.

Is this something that will potentially interest you? Would you pay a flat rate (or perhaps subscription fee?) to rent movies on YouTube? What types of films are you hoping to see there in the future?

Don’t forget to stop by our software center to see what deals we have for you today! We showcase everything from Windows and Mac software to the hottest must-haves for your mobile devices!

How to Improve Internet Explorer

Chris Pirillo — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:22:24 +0000

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Back in the day, I used to love Internet Explorer. It was awesome… up until version 4 and above. A lot of people out there still use IE, and will continue to do so. You can install a new plugin that Google has released – and have your install of Internet Explorer kick serious browser butt once again.

Installing the new Google Chrome Frame plugin will allow you to still run Internet Explorer. But, instead of using the IE rendering engine (the way that HTML and objects are rendered) this plugin will supplant it with Google’s engine. This is so much faster, and will make web pages look even better.

You don’t need Google Chrome’s web browser installed. You can simply load this plugin, and everything will run faster and better from within Internet Explorer – including javascript! You can also start using open web technologies – like the HTML5 canvas tag – right away, even technologies that aren’t yet supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8!!

So if you have friends and family who insist on using Internet Explorer, go ahead and install this plugin for them. They’ll never know you did it, and they’ll be raving about how much faster and better their IE is running!

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The Community Speaks out About Google Chrome

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:23:35 +0000

I recently recorded a video talking about Google’s new Web Browser, Google Chrome. I was excited about it then, and I still am. Google Chrome has set the bar higher for all other browsers, and we won’t allow others to lower it. I’ve received a lot of feedback about Chrome since my video aired. I wanted to share what three people had to say.

From NamelessFragger

I learned about this browser two days ago, only because someone posted a forum thread about it. I read the comic, and was totally thrilled. I then found out that the browser was released the same day.

I normally use Opera 9.52, which is generally regarded as fast. However, if Opera is light speed, then Chrome is ludicrous speed! (Of course, that could have something to do with the fact that my traditional Opera usage has hundreds of tabs open at once, whereas I think I’ve had only ten or twenty Chrome tabs open simultaneously.)

What I also like is how Chrome handles tabs. All too often, I’ve had Opera brought down entirely by one bad tab. While I haven’t had any bad tabs in Chrome yet, the knowledge that I’ll probably be able to close just that one tab while not bringing everything else down is reassuring.

I also like the fairly minimalist interface. It leaves a lot of room for whatever Web page I’m looking at. Oh, and Chrome can play embedded WMV videos without much hassle. IE and Firefox can too, but for some reason, Opera never does so out of the box. (However, I never bothered switching since I liked the rest of Opera too much…until now.)

All in all, it’s just been an amazing experience, and this browser is only in beta phase still!

From Jake

First of all, what you said in the first Chrome video about it being developed on Webkit and being fast is dead on. This thing speeds along. I barely have any add-ons on Firefox, and Chrome just goes 2 or 3 times faster. From screenshots that I saw, I thought the UI was going to look ugly, like a matte blue color and looking like a blueprint page or something. That’s not the case. Sure I don’t really enjoy the light blue color scheme, but it’s not overbearing and it’s easy on the eyes. Having the tabs at the top really streamlines the look in my opinion, as it leaves more room for the actual page. The shortcut to hide the bookmark bar really leaves a lot of room for viewing the actual page. The incognito mode is a nice little gem too. It read my Firefox bookmarks like a charm, and had to do barely any setup.

There are some drawbacks that I saw. My biggest concern is viewing picture links. I searched for a picture in Google images search and went to view full size, and it downloaded the picture to my default downloading location. I could not get the picture to appear in the browser. Instead, it made a bubble in the bottom-left corner that basically opened the picture in the Windows picture viewer. I don’t know anything about coding really, and the options are extremely vague. I couldn’t find any solution to this problem. Another feature that I used sometimes in Firefox (that I found lacking in Chrome) was a style sheet option to show no style, but obviously that’s a very minor gripe and can easily be forgotten.

Other than that, I can’t really say I have any problems with the browser yet. I’d like to see more themes and add-ons. Seems like the browser is off to a great start and hopefully it will get some add-on developers and themes.

From Scott

I saw one of your new videos yesterday about the release of Google Chrome. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that; I never saw it coming. I’m a fan of Google software, so I was naturally excited to hear that they were releasing a Web browser. I’ve been using Mozilla Firefox as my default browser now for over a couple of years, and have never found anything better for me. You name it — Safari, IE, Maxthon, Flock (which may be my next favorite), K-Meleon, Avant, Slim, Opera, Slim — I’ve tried about everything out there pretty extensively. I keep a lot of browsers installed to launch up every now and then.

First, I’ll discuss some of the things I like about Google Chrome. I find Chrome’s launch time to be noticeably faster than Firefox, which is nice (but is probably because I run FF with lots of plug-ins/extensions/themes that it must load up). Chrome’s page load times are very impressive; it’s a bit faster than FF, and perhaps even a hair faster than Safari (which, yes, I’ve found to be consistently faster than FF, even on Windows Vista). I like the “Incognito” browsing feature; I’m not sure I would use that too often, but nonetheless, a cool feature. Another thing I liked in Chrome was the way the “Find” function was designed. They did a good job with that.

Now, for the “bad stuff.” The GUI is, well . . . interesting, but I’m not a fan yet (e.g. I don’t particularly like the tabbed browsing system positioned above the navigation area as opposed to below). It might just be me, but overall, the Chrome GUI reminds me way too much of IE–yes, of course that’s a bad thing. I don’t care for the font system in Chrome, either. Compared to Safari (which I particularly like) and Firefox, it just seems bland and underdeveloped. Chrome seems to be on par with Safari or IE in terms of customization/tweaking; there isn’t a whole lot available to the user. A couple of other things I was really disappointed to see in Chrome’s GUI: The downloads are manage in a new tab? I don’t care for that at all. That just seems inefficient to me. No “Home” button? I hate when browsers don’t include simple, often-used functions *cough*Safari*cough* like the “Home” button. So far, I don’t think it’s possible to change things like that in Chrome. No spell checker in Chrome, either? Wow . . . . lame. ‘Nough said. There’s also some weird functionality things about Chrome that I don’t like (e.g., you cannot open previous pages in a new tab via click the “Back” or “Forward” button in conjunction with Ctrl).

In the end, Google Chrome was somewhat of a disappointment to me (granted, I’m still giving it a shot over the next several days). Yes, I realize that this is just a beta, but from my experience, betas just don’t improve enough to make a difference by the time they are released in their final form. I use Firefox over other browsers for a few simple reasons: It has a proven, sophisticated security system; it’s more customizable than any browser, bar nun, which means you can make it look/work exactly how you’d like it to; it’s intuitive and simple, yet it’s full of useful features that make sense to both average and power users; above all else, it just works. Mozilla’s got it right.

How to Sync Bookmarks Across Multiple Browsers

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:11:04 +0000

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Over the years, you may collect a ton of bookmarks within your browser. Let’s say you change browsers, or even Operating Systems. How can you sync all of your links between the browsers, and how can you make sure that the links are still good?

AM-DeadLink detects dead links and duplicates in browser bookmarks and text files. If a bookmark has become unavailable you can verify and delete it permanently. Additionally you can download FavIcons for all your Favorites and Bookmarks.

AM-DeadLink can check the following resources:

Internet Explorer Favorites
Firefox bookmarks
Opera bookmarks
Mozilla and Netscape bookmarks
URLs from tab delimited text files
URLs from comma separated text files

Unfortunately, AM-Deadlink is only for Windows. For a Mac, you can try BookDog. Bookdog allows users to sort (selectively alphabetize), import/export, migrate, verify, find redirects, search, and find duplicates among their bookmarks collections in Safari, Firefox 1.5-3.0, Camino, Google Bookmarks, del.icio.us, OmniWeb, Opera, Shiira 2.x and Netscape Navigator. Migrations can be scheduled using Apple’s Automator, and bookmarks on other networked Macs or backup disks are easily accessible. Bookdog has a 14-day free trial. After that, the cost is just $19.95.

After you install Bookdog, you spend a few minutes adjusting how you want your bookmarks sorted, click Sort and within seconds your bookmarks are all in order! Click Analyze to find duplicates and then eliminate those you don’t want. Open the Preferences, activate Bookwatchdog, and your bookmarks will be re-sorted after you make changes. Automatically. Do you seem to have alot of bookmarks that don’t work anymore? Tell Bookdog to Verify. He’ll make a quick visit to all the websites you have bookmarked, present a report of their responses, give you some options on how he can automatically fix bookmarks that have been “redirected”, and finally present a handy tool which allows you to quickly review and fix the remainder. Using Camino, Firefox, Opera, del.icio.us, Shiira, Google Bookmarks™ and/or OmniWeb in addition to Safari? When you tell him to Migrate your bookmarks between browsers, he finds the right folder and avoids creating duplicates. You can migrate unilaterally (one-way) or bilaterally, “synchronizing” all missing bookmarks between browsers. And you can do so from an AppleScript or schedule Migrations using Apple’s Automator.

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Clear Search in IE History

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:26:03 +0000

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – I have been trying for years to get my parents to switch to Firefox. They still use IE, even though they complain about it a lot. Mom was recently wondering how to get rid of all those saved searches in IE 7.

My mom has a new blog. She does a lot of researching to find things to help her in her writing. Apparently, her search history in IE7 has gotten quite large, and she’s wanting to clean it out some.

Being me, I figured this is a simple matter. Open IE, go to Tools>Internet Options>General tab. Under browsing, click the delete button, which opens up the dialoge box. There you have options to clear cookies, cache, form data, passwords…. but no search history? What the heck?

Apparently, in order to clear that search data in the box, you have to delete all form data. This includes websites you’ve asked to save your name, usernames, etc. You know… that whole “auto complete” thing we all use to save us time. What if I don’t want to delete all that though? In that case, I can manually go through that form data, and delete things I don’t want one by one. This will, of course, take a very long time if there’s a lot there.

Well, mom… just one more reason you should be using Firefox.

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Freedbacking Internet Explorer

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:57:44 +0000

Sorry I wasn’t able to get this up until now, but I promised I’d have it here within a day of publishing last night’s report (Internet Explorer Feedback).
The IE team has responded to my feedback on their latest beta. Can’t say I’m happy with their answers, but I’m extremely impressed with their transparency, honesty, and ability. Their responses have been italicized below, with the first five responses already online. I figured I wasn’t the only person with these pecadillos, so I wanted to share their answers with everybody…

Okay, I know I didn’t want to get into the UI problems in IE7b3, but the command bar’s Home icon menu items sport a different vertical height than others (like the Print menu). Whyâ€¦ why?! And why does the Quick Tabs button look different than the Home button, even though both of them have drop-down menu items?! The window flashes when I select options in the Favorites Center, WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE WAKE UP OVER THERE?

Home icon menu has different vertical height because we custom draw the menu with two more pixels of height in order to make favicons appear un-cramped. This is the same padding added to the classic Favorites menu or to the All Programs menu in the start menu. However, it does look a little odd for the bottom two items. We’ll investigate if we can use different padding for those items.

Quick tabs button looks different because we wanted to visually associate it with the tabs, since it is a tab management feature that operates on all tabs at once. All of the command bar functions operate on the currently active tab or the browser as a whole. We’re not able to reproduce the window flashing in the favorites center: Can you be more specific about what you mean by “selecting options in the favorites center?” In any event, a great deal of our time for the next few months will be spent on performance and polish issues, so it may be that we’ve already addressed this in internal builds, which is why we’re not seeing it internally.

You still can’t control the specific point size of a default font. IE7 would have you walk through a convoluted process rather than let you, for example, say that you wanted 9pt Courier New for the default fixed width font. That would’ve been too simple, methinks.

Today we do not have a simple UI to change the default font. We pick up the default font of the system. You can change the default font in a couple of different ways. (1) You can change the system font and that changes the default browser font. (2) You can change the default font through a user style sheet (for example you can create a style sheet with “:body {font: Arial 12pt;}” and load it through the accessibility tab under Internet Options). We’re looking into making this easier in a future version.

The “Delete Browsing History” dialog is still a kludge compared to the Firefox one. What’s the fear in making it work just as well – if not better – than the competition’s? Initially, I was also confused by the labeling of this feature – believing it only pertained to my URL cache. They should be using another word instead of History. Might I suggestâ€¦ “Delete Browsing Social Studies?”

This particular design was chosen for usability reasons and it tests pretty well for initial usability. We have, however, seen that power users do prefer the checkbox model, so we are investigating changing the design in a future release. As for the name – it’s designed to make sense to the average user. The typical power user (that understands things like URL caches) will figure it out quickly enough, as you have.

Why does the entire window freeze and stall for a second (sometimes) before it closes completely? Seems to be a problem when I have more than one tab open. When I click the close button, the window should disappear instantly. It doesn’t.

There are known issues with third party toolbars causing this phenomenon. All tabs except the last one close quickly and then the last one stutters. IE7 itself frees additional resources when the last tab is closed, so sometimes this does result in a UI stutter as IE closes. It’s usually not very noticeable â€“ much less than half a second. If you can give us some more information about what add-ons you have installed, perhaps we can confirm this for you.

When “ico” files are rendered in the browser, why are they just as aliased around the edges as they were in IE6? Firefox doesn’t have this problem, and Opera doesn’t have this problemâ€¦ so I’m waiting for a damn good reason why Microsoft can’t fix it.

.ico files contain multiple versions of an icon. IE6 and IE7 both display icons in a web page by picking the first icon in the .ico file. In a future release, we’ll look into making the change to pick the highest-resolution icon in the file. The “good reason” for not fixing this now is simply that we have many more high priority issues to work on in IE7 before looking we can fix issues with rarely-used features. It’s not a great reason, but it’s the truth. If you’re interested, we have some script solutions that you could look into that allow you to open the .ico file and extract whichever version of the icon you’d like to see. Let me know if you’d like me to forward that information.

As noted above, the IE team responded to five other issues. This is great information – and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how IE7 improves before it goes gold.