I’d also noticed that links in the Control Panel were often not working as well.

A Google of this error talked about repairing Internet Explorer 7 using the Windows installation disk (I don’t have one as my PC came with it pre-installed). Except I’m running IE9. I uninstalled it and dropped back to IE8 but had the same problems.

As it turns out the issue is more a general explorer problem (IE and Explorer are much the same thing).

Eventually, and via a Microsoft support page, I find the answer – on the site Internet Explorer FAQ they provide a number of scripts which can be used to repair IE (IE7 and IE8 and, I’m guessing, IE9). And they worked perfectly.

Read more and download the scripts – I wasn’t sure which one I needed to I rang both the 32-on-64 and 64-on-64 scripts.

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Microsoft doesn’t want Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) to die and, indeed, they’ve announced that they will continue to support it until 2014.

IE6 was launched in 2001 yet remains popular. Most of these users, I suspect, are businesses – we use it at my place of work. Except, there’s a growing back lash against the use of this version of the browser.

So, what’s wrong with it?

Well, security for a start, which has moved on a lot since 2001. For me, however, it’s the problem with web development. It isn’t compliant with the appropriate standards and developers often have to introduce “tweaks” to sites to get them to specifically work with IE6. Microsoft had been pretty lax with these standards¹ and only really started making a nod to improvements with this release. It wasn’t until IE7 that serious consideration was made.

Then there are other issues – it doesn’t support transparency with PNG images, for instance. All of this means that whilst most modern browsers will just work if your site code is written properly, swathes of effort often then have to be put in to get it to work with IE6. Here’s a useful, but jokey, comparison.

But, hell no, Microsoft is going to keep supporting it, rather than withdrawing support and pushing IE8 out in preference. Odd, as they were keen to try and get rid of XP after Vista came out. That was until it became really popular again, thanks to Netbooks. Surely this isn’t a commercial issue is it? Microsoft appear happy to force users to upgrade if there’s money in it, but with free software such as IE, they’d much rather be seen doing “the right thing” for business.

However, playing devil’s advocate, I should point out that IE6 was the last version of Internet Explorer that was compatible with any Windows OS before XP. Therefore, if you’re hanging onto Windows 98 with your finger nails, you’re stuck with 6 as your IE choice. Having said, that, as I think that most of this is due to business, I suspect this isn’t their reason. I know at my place of work that certain essential online applications won’t run on newer browsers – and god help them think about buying anything newer

There’s a growing band of developers who are adding code of their site to detect and reject those using IE6. This is one way to go if you don’t want to develop a site specifically for this browser. The other is to swallow your pride and change it.  Personally, I’ve not got around to checking this site with IE6 – there is a vast list of browsers I need to give priority to first. In time, though, I will and I’m sure, like a fool, I’ll fix any problems.

1. probably because they could be – what was the alternative at this point?

First up was the official launch of Internet Explorer 8. Nothing much appears to have changed since the Beta versions and I continue to be left disappointed.

People are turning towards Firefox, not because it shows web pages better, but because it’s more customisable – plugins, themes, etc. Microsoft has never really got this. Yes, Windows has themes and IE has addons, but there are few available and they’re hard to develop and implement. Instead we have Web Slices and Accelerators, requiring web developers to change their code and are deeply, deeply dull.

Next up, the people behind Xandros Linux launched Presto, which is intended to be used as a fast startup alternative to Windows. I’ve tried it on both my home PC and my Netbook and, yes, it works. It installs easily and configures Windows automatically to dual boot. Unfortunately, on both PCs I had different BIOS errors during the Presto boot and, yes, it’s still in Beta but it’s only a few weeks before the final version is released. Yet it lacks the basic ability to change languages and keyboards. So I’m stuck with a US keyboard layout.

By default it books with Firefox, Pidgin and Skype and you can add (some free, some you must pay for) extra applications via their website.

The final version is going to cost about $20, but that’s as much as they’re giving away right now. Personally, I’m going to wait for the final version as, at the moment, it’s seriously lacking that “oomph” that would get me excited.

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At first I used CyberPatrol, which is a paid-for product that will do everything from barring particular websites to time restricting program and internet usage. In time I moved to the free Windows Live Family Safety – this would monitor and restrict internet usage. I also had my daughters email settings send me emails that she received. Now both of these have gone (the latter longer than the former).

Now I no longer restrict what sites she can view but instead rely on being able to check her viewing history. She uses IE as a browser and I can check her viewing history at any point. I also know her email password – and she knows she’s not allowed to change it. In both cases it’s down to spot checks (assuming I make them) which makes it more of a threat of being caught than anything else. None-the-less she’s mature enough now to know what’s wrong and what’s right and that I can give her the level of trust that allows me to do this.

Before you wonder why she doesn’t just clear her viewing history, well, apart from it being obvious that she has, I’ve taken steps in that I’ve created two scripts. These (and they work up to and including IE8) will switch off and on the “General” tab in the Options, which is where the option to clear history exists. This isn’t fool-proof but will certainly do for my needs.

Here’s the code to turn the tab OFF.

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ Control Panel]
"ProgramsTab"=dword:00000000
"ContentTab"=dword:00000000
"GeneralTab"=dword:00000001
"ConnectionsTab"=dword:00000000
"AdvancedTab"=dword:00000000
"SecurityTab"=dword:00000000
"PrivacyTab"=dword:00000000

And here’s the code to turn the tab back ON.

REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel]

Both should be saved as .reg extensions and executed – they need to be run only once.

The first script adds a new entry into the registry and allows you to turn specific tabs off – in this case the General tab, but you can turn off others simply by changing their corresponding dword to 00000001.
The second script removes this new entry and, hence, restores any hidden tabs.

Alternatively, download the scripts here from.

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This width is designed to fit on the width of what I deem to be the smallest screen that a reasonable number of people are using (on PC’s – not going into mobile phone handsets and the such). That size, in my belief, is 800×600¹- the initial Asus PC’s, which sold so well this year, were exactly that.

However, the width I’ve been using has been very much a “finger in the air” affair – so much so, that the appearance of a vertical toolbar causes the horizontal one to appear in some cases. Yep, I got it wrong.

I’ve therefore, recently, been doing some research – I wrote a JavaScript program to display the current browser size, and display a horizontal bar in varying lengths. This allowed me to work out how much “real estate” the browser was using up – e.g. launch IE7 and it takes up 21 pixels horizontally. That means whatever your screen size is set to, the web page will 21 less to play this. In fact, IE7 was the worst offender (along with IE6), so that’s become the benchmark²- 779 pixels.

Firefox uses 17 pixels and Opera, well, god only knows – I got strange results. Without a vertical scrollbar, it took up (strangely) 1 pixel horizontally. However, introduce the scrollbar and it took up – the same. It would allow my image to be 799 pixels wide and not bat an eyelid. Make it 800 though and the scrollbar appeared. Why this happened I honestly don’t understand. But I’ve tried a 779 wide page and that works, so Opera is certainly not using up more than the “magic” 21 pixels.

Konqueror uses 19 pixels and Safari (on Windows) is the slimmest at just 15 pixels.

The Copy+ site has already been converted to this new width, and the BMTG site will be soon too.

1. according to Google Analytics this was the 5th most popular resolution used by visitors to the BMTG site
2. IE does something that the other browsers don’t – it has a permanent horizontal scrollbar. So whether it’s needed or not, it’s there using up the same amount of space all the time.

The least techy of my sites is BMTG, which garners just 1.67% of users from Chrome. Next up, Copy+ is 3.55%. This site is 5.66%. Not fantastic, but not too shoddy.

Other things that came out in this that Firefox is the most popular browser for this site (it’s IE on the others), Chrome usually has similar percentages to Safari (considering Safari is available on both Windows and Mac, I guess that doesn’t look too good for Safari). Opera is usually languishing in 5th place.

So, Chrome isn’t doing too badly, considering it’s shortcomings. But it is fast and simple, which is what many people want. Having said that, the more tech the site is the more visitors appear to use it. Which in my mind doesn’t go – Chrome is a very un-tech browser.

I guess you just have to be geeky to try something else out and not stick with what you know – many of the visitors were probably doing what I did last week and was just giving the browser a test drive. Time will tell – I’ll try the same again in a few months and see if those percentages remain.

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First of all, it’s possible to crash IE 6 via a single line of code…

<style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input></table>

It doesn’t crash Firefox, Opera, etc. For whatever reason, it causes a fatal error in mshtml.dll.

The second thing I’ve learnt today, thanks to a throw-away line in a magazine, is that you can email a Wii console.

The Email address is wxxx@wii.com, where xxx is their friend code. For example, w123456789012@wii.com (no, that’s not mine).

Nice.

Thank you for your interest in obtaining updates from our site.

This website is designed to work with Microsoft Windows operating systems only.
To find updates for Microsoft products that are designed for Macintosh operating
systems, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/mac/.

Nice. I was using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP MCE SP3.

It knows which system I’m using from the “user agent” but one of many websites which displays your current user agent information, showed that I was happily using Windows. Weird.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; WTClient2)

Weirder still was that if I used IE Tab in Firefox, the page would appear without a problem. As IE Tab simply uses Internet Explorer but in Firefox, it shouldn’t have been any different. Again, I checked the user agent and that was the same as running it under IE normally.

Double weird.

Anyway, after a reboot even IE Tab stopped working.

Googling the issue found that most people seemed to have Spyware or Virus’. In panic, I did a check but found nothing. However, I also came across a Microsoft blog on how to reset all of IE 7′s settings – I tried that and Microsoft Update is now working again.

Now, and this comes from experience, all may not go well when two Firefox installations try to share a profile – particularly if one of those Firefox installations may break add-ons. So, having installed IE8 I thought it was only right to also try out the current beta of Firefox 3.

So, my workaround for this is to ensure you have seperate profiles and that each version of Firefox definitely uses the one it should do. Here’s what I did…

• Find your existing Firefox installation folder – usually C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox – and open up a command window
• Run firefox.exe -ProfileManager – the profile window will appear
• Ensure your current profile is named something appropriate. I changed it from default to David
• I then created a new profile named Test and closed the profile window down.
• Now change your current Firefox shortcut so that it specifically launches your original profile. In my case, this was "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P "David"
• I now downloaded the Beta 4 of Firefox 3.
• Run the downloaded program and select Custom installation – ensure it installs into a different folder than your current Firefox application. In this case it defaulted to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 4
• Once installed, de-select the option to launch the new Firefox installation.
• Find the new shortcut and change this to point to your newly created second profile. In my case this was, "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 4\firefox.exe" -P "Test"

And that’s it. Each version of Firefox will launch with it’s own profile and you can tinker about with your Beta installation all you like without affecting your normal browser profile.

First impressions? Well, apart from the first run after the install hanging, and it prompting me during the install for how I’d like it set-up and then not doing what I asked, it’s gone relatively smoothly I’ve not had a chance to look at the new features yet, only to try out my sites. And they break. Not badly, but they break.

The most immediate solution to this is to add the following to your HEAD (which I found in a Whitepaper)…

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7">

This will force IE8 to display the page as it would in IE7. It’s not ideal but when IE8 is doing strange stuff with your web pages that no other browser is, it makes you wonder whether it’s worth changing your code (especially as this is a beta… some of those breakages may not be valid). I’m loath to change my sites based on a beta, but at the same time don’t want IE8 going live and my sites not being ready… the above META tag is the ideal solution.

Never-the-less I’ll keep IE8 installed on my home PC. I found a solution for running IE7 separately (I already do for 5.01, 5.5 and 6) so I can continue to test with that.

The default home page for IE8 has lots of useful links to resources. There are also release notes available, a “readiness toolkit” and lots more available at the IE Developer Center.

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