Forcing Use Of Default Browser | Advice Corner | Forums

Thanks to all for your feedback. All of it is valuable. Taking everything that was said here, I did some further investigation.

First I would like to respond to jumbi's question:

jumbi said:

However, the initial question makes me wonder:

What is the problem if a couple of programs behave like that?

Just let them open, so what?

IMHO, its not such a serious technical problem to spend time for.

I am a fervent Firefox user. Others may prefer IE, Opera, Safari or whatever. The point of bringing this issue up is that, IMHO, it should be up to me as the owner of my computer what browser is used.

Here is what I found upon further investigation:

My firefox settings where, in fact, set to check if Firefox was the default browser:

However, if you think about it, this option probably only applies when Firefox is started. It is simply a check, not an enforcement.

When I went into Add or Remove Programs/Set Program Access Defaults, as suggested, here is what I found:

My settings were not set to specifically use Firefox.

So, I next selected Mozilla Firefox and saved the setting. Then I brought up my test – in this case, Linkman/Help, click on Tutorial, which takes you to their website.

Test Case result? It fired up IE. 

I next went into Add or Remove Programs and un-checked the Enable access to this program for IE, thinking this would disable it. I verified this by displaying the Internet Properties menu which no longer had the option to set IE as the default browser:

Before changing Enable Access setting:

After changing Enable Access setting:

Test case result: Still brings up IE!

Upon further reading – Un-checking Enable Access only removes any shortcuts on your system to IE; It does not disable access globally.

Summary:

It appears that to disable IE it must be, in fact, uninstalled.

I had thought about uninstalling IE in the past, not for this problem, but just to clean up my system. However, I did not do it because, as some of you have also stated, I am afraid there might be dependencies on IE built into Windows. I'm not sure about Windows Explorer (as questioned above), but I'm pretty sure Microsoft Update depends on it, even if it is accessed through Help and Support instead of directly through IE.

Also, as pointed out above, on rare occasions I have run into websites that do not work correctly in Firefox, but do work in IE (a "bug" in that website's code, IMO. )

So…..What I will do, and have done in the past, is report any forced IE access by a program as a bug. I did this once with a program called "SnagIt" and the response was "We'll fix it……someday."

Anyway, Thanks again for the feedback, and I hope everyone learned something. I know I did!!

jumbi said:

- A practical suggestion for usage of browsers, as I prefer it:

…..but when I want to login simultaneously to a site with 2 different accounts eg facebook, then a second browser comes handy. 

…..I always have a "clean" IE just and only for these sites. Someone else could use it also for other sites with financial data like paypal, neteller, moneybookers, ebay, etc. It is very important to have such a "clean" IE without every day surfing dangers or addons, even for experienced users with many parallel clean and protection tools.

As I remember lately, even firefox had some issues with "infected" addons and for anyone who use it as the main browser and tests various addons, this can become a security hole at anytime in a future addon update.

Hoping to inspire others to adopt similar strategy…based on experience and firefox magic :-)

Excellent points! I see your logic….

I do have multiple financial accounts at some institutions and have wanted to be logged on under 2 IDs at the same time. I had never thought of this solution. Thanks.

As to your "Clean IE" idea, I run Online-Armor++ which has a "Banking Mode" described as follows:

"Banking Mode

Banking mode is designed to secure your online banking. When you enable Banking mode, Online Armor will only allow your computer to connect to Trusted or Protected websites. This ensures that you (or your computer) cannot be tricked into visiting a fraudulent website designed to steal your login information, and that your computer cannot send information to any other sites.

Instead of exclusively maintaining a list of “bad” websites,  Online Armor uses the Trusted list and any websites you define in the Web Sites section of Online Armor. Any  connections to sites that are not on these lists will be automatically blocked while in Banking mode."

I haven't implemented this feature yet. It seems it would be a good solution for secure websites that do work in Firefox. Or in combination with a "Clean IE" might provide even more protection.

Thanks for your feedback.