Tag: ie

12 Reasons to Test Drive Internet Explorer 8

September 01, 2008 by Jason

While rival makers and Opera have launched the latest iterations of their products, 3.0 and respectively Opera 9.5, as early as June 2008, is still in the development phase of 8, the successor of . August 27 marked the delivery of Beta 2, a deadline absurdly safeguarded by , with the company only managing to confirm a release by the end of this month, and taking its due time when it came down to making available the bits for the second development milestone. 8 is still far from the finish line, reportedly planned for November 2008, but Beta 2 feels more like a version ready for wrap-up than Beta 1.

The reason for this is the fact that, in comparison with the March 2008 release of , the second Beta is packed with features and functionality aimed at the home and business users, on top of what has already been available to IT professionals and content developers and designers. In this regard, Beta 1 was more of a skeleton on which built Beta 2. Now, although is not touting Beta 2 as a feature-complete version, it is clear that the Redmond company will move further only with the process of fine-tuning the got with Release to (RTW). Read More»

Microsoft Applauds IE8 Beta 2 Performance Boost

August 29, 2008 by Jason

8 is not the fastest in the universe. This, according to Manager, Christian Stockwell, working on the of the . However, this is not to say that the Redmond company has not poured a consistent amount of efforts into boosting the of ’s successor. In fact, 8 Beta 2, planned for release by the end of this month, will offer palpable proof of the new horsepower under the ’s hood.

“When we took a hard look at our goals and considered what we could do to build the best , we were presented with a quandary. On the one hand, we could focus very narrowly on scripting , trusting that our investment would noticeably improve our users’ experience. Alternatively, we could invest more broadly in realistic scenarios, measuring heavily-used subsystems and investing our effort accordingly. We opted for the latter ,” Stockwell noted.

Even as early as March 2008, GM Dean Hachamovitch indicated that was up 2.5 times, the inbox was loading 34% faster, the task of opening a new conversation took 45% less time, while that of opening a thread 25% less. With Beta 2, has tweaked the execution time for the , but it has also managed to up navigation and user interaction. Read More»

Five great add-ons for Internet Explorer

August 28, 2008 by Jason

are programs that add features to a or change the way it works. If you’ve ever wished could do something new or differently, chances are there’s an add-on out there that will fulfill your wish.

I must have tried out hundreds of over the years. In this column, I’ll talk about five that I use every day. They have all earned a place in my add-on stable because they really have made my online life easier, and I miss their presence when using somebody else’s .

Power users love

is a add-on for 7 that is indispensable to me in my day-to-day work. It adds a raft of new abilities to the , including advanced management of tabbed settings, a simple download manager, spelling checks of text you enter in forms, autoscrolling of webpages, quick searching of page text, ad and Flash blocking, custom keyboard , and much more. Read More»

The fastest way to open a local file in Google Docs

August 10, 2008 by Jason

What I really want to do is add a link to on the right-click (context) menu in . That way, I could open a file in by right-clicking it in and choosing Send To > .

Well, I wasn’t able to figure out do this. So instead, I created a shortcut to open , and then I browsed to the file and opened it the old-fashioned way.

This won’t save you a lot of time, but at least makes it easy for you to transmit the file to the service as an e-mail . And, of course, you can send the file to other e-mail recipients at the same time.

To create the shortcut to , log in to the service, copy the URL in the address bar, right-click the desktop or any folder window, choose New > Shortcut, paste the URL in the Location field, click Next, type (or the name of your choice), and press Enter (or click Finish).

Now navigate to the shortcut you just created, right-click it, and choose Properties. Click in the “Shortcut key” box, and type your preferred keyboard shortcut (I chose Ctrl-Alt-G). Read More»

Automatically Clear Temporary Internet Files

May 10, 2008 by Jason

In order to improve and reduce the amount of time spent waiting to view pages, stores many of the pages and graphics you have viewed in a folder on your . Next time you revisit a site, can use the content stored in the Files folder to display the site content, instead of retrieving them from the .

You can manually clear the contents of this folder in by selecting Options for the Tools menu. From the General tab, simply click the Delete Files button. You can also configure to empty the contents of this folder when you close your . To do so, select the Advanced tab from the Options window. Under the section, select the option to Empty Files folder when is closed and click OK.

Seven Tips to Manage Your Files Better

May 03, 2008 by Jason

Use these tips to help manage your files.

1. Use My Documents. For many reasons, it’s smart to take advantage of My Documents feature in . To open My Documents in , click Start, and then click My Documents. My Documents provides an easy way for you to store your personal documents. By using My Documents, you will be better able to:

2. Find files. provides easy access to the My Documents folder (and its subfolders) in many places: through the , the task pane in , common File Open and File Save dialog boxes, and other places. Note displays the structure of files and folders on your . To open , click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click . Read More»

How to speed up Internet Explorer 8 by increasing the connections limit

April 25, 2008 by Jason

When a ( 8 or for example) connects to a website it establishes . Each connection downloads one thing whether it is the html of the page, an image, or ad. are used as a throttle that’s being held back to keep servers and the from getting overloaded.

By default 8 only establishes two simultaneous at a time to download a page. The two simultaneous is specified in the HTTP standard. The two can be changed on your through a edit.

Increasing the maximum allowed simultaneous connects from 2 to 16 can increase the of some sites because the sites are downloaded in larger chunks at a time. Keep in mind that this won’t work on all sites because the number of can be controlled by the server. Read More»

Only Vulnerabilities in Safe ActiveX Controls Are Exploitable in Internet Explorer

February 06, 2008 by Jason

’s is without a doubt the main vector of attacks, when it comes down to -based threats. Its ubiquity, as well as its intimate integration into the platform, makes it an excellent avenue for attacks. With IE6, has gained an ill reputation for failing dramatically to protect end users. From IE6, which undoubtedly is an apex of insecurity compared to alternative browsers, the Redmond company moved to Vista and 7 under User Account Control, virtually cutting the from the critical areas of the operating system. -based attacks coming via in Protect Mode will not be able to write themselves to disk without specific user permission, because the runs with the very least possible privileges. Read More»

Security suites may cripple IE 7 after updates

December 29, 2007 by Jason

If you’re running IE 7 on XP SP2, you may get a Webpage cannot be displayed error when trying to access the . If so, any of several recent to 7 may have created a conflict with your antivirus or antispyware suite. You should check your suite’s configuration to make sure the updated version of is still allowed to access the , or contact your vendor for an update, as described in KB article 942818.

Over the holidays, I visited my Dad, who was having issues using AOL. Once I removed his 2006-era version of an antivirus , and updated him to the 2008 version, his system worked perfectly. While his antivirus signatures were being regularly updated via a paid-up subscription, the older version of his application itself was causing the conflict. Read More»

Speed up IE’s Web page loading by increasing the max number of connections

December 26, 2007 by Jason

This is an old and it’s well documented all over the place so I don’t feel so bad about cutting & pasting the content but nonetheless it was taken from Computerworld.

By default, allows only two simultaneous download sessions from a single server. This can affect the of your , because you’re not able to simultaneously download all the objects that make up a page, so the page displays more slowly. If you could force to download more objects at once, pages would display more quickly.

A to the does the trick. With this , you can force to use more than two simultaneous sessions. A good number is 10. Here’s do it: Read More»