dotTech - Topic: IE 8. . . . grrrrr! Tabs and ticks are really ticking me off!!

MikeR on IE 8. . . . grrrrr! Tabs and ticks are really ticking me off!!

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:56:49 -0700

Thanks for another informative post, Samuel: encouraging to realise I'm not alone in my experience of FireFox nor am I being too sanguine about IE's speed -- all user / browser encounters are subjective, and the way the Internet is, I get wary of comments about 'blazing speed' or 'lightening fast speed' which, having been authored once in relation to Chrome, suddenly become a kind of universal mantra.

As to IE7Pro, I'm pretty sure there are going to be many, many people as interested as I will be in reading your review, so thanks -- in advance -- for the effort undertaken!

Samuel on IE 8. . . . grrrrr! Tabs and ticks are really ticking me off!!

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:09:37 -0700

Yes, I still use IE. I know I’m a bad geek.
Well Safari I don’t use because Apple software is never good on a windows machine, though that doesn’t surprise me. Chrome is missing too many features of other browsers still and I think a lot of its speed is theoretical, after all most JavaScript now is used for AJAX, meaning it’s going to be slowed down by the call backs anyway.
Now you have the big one left, Firefox. I have it on my system, though that’s more for test that web pages work in it as well as IE. For starters, I don’t like its interface, though that’s purely a personal thing. In addition, I keep my web browser open constantly, with at least four tabs and Firefox’s memory leaks start to show.
Back to IE, yes I like its interface. Now I admit there are some things missing from it, mostly grease monkey scripts and a download manager, but I got this lovely add on called IE7Pro (works with 8 too though) which adds to IE a download manager and user scripts as well as some other nice features. I know Firefox is supposed to be faster the IE, but I don’t see it. At best case they’re the same, worst case I find IE to be faster, at least on my machine. Finally, although I suspect this will be fixed soon, being on Windows 7, only IE8 so far uses 7’s features. I do use Firefox though, hilariously enough, for one website, Apple.com that seems to always crash IE!
(Working on a review of IE7Pro for the freebies section.)

MikeR on IE 8. . . . grrrrr! Tabs and ticks are really ticking me off!!

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:33:57 -0700

Hi Samuel: muchas gracias for that! I've now unchecked everything there and look forward to nag-free surfing. . . er, I hope!

Hi Ashraf: FF might baffle other users of our family's computers. I did try it out and liked its 'adblock' service but overall the browser seemed, well, fragile: it crashed too often for my liking.

My reservations about Chrome are pretty much reflective of my reservations about Google in general: an outfit that depends for its commercial success on advertising, I do have privacy concerns and wonder just what exactly it is I'm trading to Google in the way of user info, user profiling etc in exchange for using its offerings. (All right, I'm paranoid: I admit it! So much so, I use Scroogle, not Google. . .)

IE is something I've gotten used to and I did find IE7 a marked improvement on its predecessors (am still unsure about IE8 though.) I'm aware Chrome is reportedly much faster as a browsing experience but to be honest, I don't find IE markedly slow. It seems pretty robust, too: I frequently have many pages running on separate tabs and IE hasn't fallen over yet.

Ashraf on IE 8. . . . grrrrr! Tabs and ticks are really ticking me off!!

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:35:00 -0700

You two use IE? I have lost all my respect for you both!

I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, any reason you guys use IE over FF or Chrome?

Samuel on IE 8. . . . grrrrr! Tabs and ticks are really ticking me off!!

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:39:31 -0700

I don't have a solution for the favorites bar, since I don't use it but to take care of auto complete, the problem is that your changing the wrong setting. Go to Internet Options > Content > AutoComplete > Settings. You can turn it of from there.

MikeR on IE 8. . . . grrrrr! Tabs and ticks are really ticking me off!!

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 07:26:39 -0700

If it ain't broke, don't fix it has always been my simple philosophy, so I still don't I know why I decided to move from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8. A moment of madness, methinks.

I now have irritating, time-consuming problems to address that never occurred with version 7 but seem insoluble on version 8, notably:

1. My old 'Links' bar has become my 'Favorites' bar. (On semantic grounds alone, it hasn't, but let's not quibble about the misspelling. . .) Every time the browser is started, this new bar features at extreme left a tab for 'Recommended Sites'. Well thank you, Microsoft, but I can recommend my own sites. So I delete the tab. And it comes back next time. And I delete the tab, and it comes back next time. And on and on and on. . .

2. My Internet Tools / Advanced allows me to choose whether to turn on 'auto complete' or not. I certainly do NOT want it turning on, thank you. So I've always had that option unticked. Guess what? Every browsing session now is interrupted by an idiotic splash screen asking me if I wish to use auto complete. Why? The damn thing's not an option of mine, it's unticked. . . but is it? Er, no. There it is, Tools / Advanced, ticked. So I untick it. And next time, the tick is back. And untick it, and next time. . . So I reset to default, re-check all the different options, tick the ones I want, untick the ones and I don't -- including 'auto complete' -- and that's it. And then next time, well, hell-oo, here's that little screen again: do I want to turn on auto complete????

This auto complete farce seems to be irritating many, many more computer users than just me. Yet different tech forums I've checked haven't produced anything in the way of explanation or solution: they seem to consist of telling a user to untick 'auto complete' option, when it's already abundantly plain the user has done that repeatedly. Doh! Or, even more pointlessly, the advice is to use FireFox instead (I don't want to / need to / this computer is a family machine and not every user is going to wish to learn how Firefox functions.)

So. . . my question is: how does a user of Internet Explorer 8 make changes that reflect the user's preference and which are not then mysteriously undone the next time the browser is used?

Thanks!