IOBit in their latest update to SmartDefrag has, at least, started offering their own toolbar instead of someone else’s.  That’s an improvement … sort of …

IOBit Free Toolbar

Tags: web browser

Today I had a need to run a batch resize of some scans made for work.  IrFanView came highly recommended from places like LifeHacker.com.

IrFanView and the Google Toolbar

IrFanView did it make it really easy to run a batch resize of the scans.  It just wanted to default to installing a pesky tool bar in explorer.

Tags: web browser

The latest version of Java attempts to install the Bing Toolbar for Internet Explorer. While it looks “cooler” than most, it is yet another toolbar that I don’t want or need.

Java and the Bing Toolbar

Obviously one of the things that I do is make screenshots of these various applications that want to install these superfluous toolbars.  When Java Update first notified me of its desire to install this toolbar during the latest update, I did the normal ALT-PRTSCN to capture just the current window.  As soon as I did that and important part of the installation progress dialog went away.

Installer Hides Bing Option

You can see that the Java installer still wants to install the Bing Toolbar.  The installer lost the option to just say “No.”  It is kind of surprising to see part of the dialog disappear when a screenshot.  What’s so “secret” about making a screenshot of something that really shouldn’t be defaulted to “install” in the first place.

The only solution  was to cancel out of the update and start over.  The problems is that the Java Update application goes away and hides until it is ready to ask you about installing the latest Java update again.  It took a few rounds with this Java update to learn what was happening and to get the screenshot to make this post.

Tags: web browser

Fox News finally responded to an email that I sent them regarding their web site wanting to save information to my local system.  It only took a week to get a very, very generic email back.

Fox News Responds

I guess something is better than nothing even after the problem seemed to have resolved it self.

Tags: web browser

While visiting Fox News (www.foxnews.com) tonight the image below kept popping up in Google Chrome:

Google Gears Warning

Obviously, I appreciate Chrome asking me whether or not to allow the web site to store information on my computer.  Questions, obviously, remain:

• What does Fox News want to store on my computer with Google Gears?
• Why does Fox News think that this is necessary?
• Is it one of Fox News “carefully selected partners”?  If it is, why does Fox News allow their partners to “store information” on my computer?

Without more information about what Fox News is attempting to do I’m always going to say “Deny” to these sorts of things.

This is new behavior.  It isn’t something I’ve ever seen from Fox News.  I haven’t seen any other web site attempt to use Google Gears to “store information” on my computers.  Running a Google search for the phrase “The website wants to store information on your computer using Gears”  doesn’t yield any useful information.  Either the issue happens infrequently or no one except me cares when websites want “to store information” on my computer.

Update

Based on Matt’s comments below I did a little digging.   Loomia is a “content recommendation engine”  (company, Wikipedia article).  It’s certainly a reasonable theory as to the source of the Gears popup.  I’ll still probably continue denying the request to store information without further details as to what is being stored.

The interesting thing now is that other browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox are not showing a similar warning.  Is there some code behind the Loomia widget that behaves differently when Chrome is detected as the browser?

Tags: web browser

Since I’ve started doing more web development over the last couple of years, I’ve become much more interested in how web sites appear in different browsers.  This page article is going to show how this web site, at least a small corner of it, appears in a different browsers on several operating systems.  This isn’t an exhaustive review of any of the browsers.  It’s really just to demonstrate the appearance of one web page in various browsers.

Camino

Camino (Mac OS X)

Chrome

Chrome (Mac OS X)

Chrome (Windows XP)

Chrome on Mac OS X is still a beta, so it isn’t quite as robust as its Windows counterpart.

FireFox

FireFox (Mac OS X)

FireFox (Windows XP)

I’ve been finding lately that the latest version of FireFox (3.5) on Windows takes a long time to load.  So long, in fact, that I often end up starting additional instance because I think that I somehow missed clicking on the icon.  Regardless of the slow load, it is hard to beat the Firebug plugin for buidling web sites.

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer (Windows XP)

I know that Internet Explorer 8 is supposed to bring all sorts of useful and cool enhancements, but I haven’t been able to figure out what they are or how they could make my web browsing exerience more satisfying.  The only thing that I’ve seen that is different is that IE8 locks up more frequently than IE7.  As always, IE 8 remains the favorite (read as: only) target for third-party application browser application toolbars.

Maxthon

Maxthon (Windows XP)

Maxthon is a browser that I recently learned about.  My understanding is that it is quite popular in Asia, particularly China.  I don’t really like this browser.  You can’t really see if from this small screenshot, but the UI is, in my opinion, very busy.  If I’m going to work on web sites that could run in any browser, it is worthwhile to work with this one.

Opera

Opera (Windows XP)

Safari

Safari (Mac OS X)

Safari (iPhone)

Safari (Windows XP)

Conclusion

I find that my personal preference is trending towards Google Chrome on Windows (XP and Vista) and Mozilla Camino on Mac OS X.

Tags: web browser

Another entry in the continuing series of identifying applications that want to install free Internet Explorer toolbars.

Java and Yahoo

There is an interesting pattern that is beginning to develop with Sun and Java updates.  More about that in a later post.

Tags: web browser

A couple of days ago my trusted Windows XP laptop decided that it was time for me to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8.  I decided to go ahead with the installation because once Windows determines that it is time to install a new version of IE it won’t stop pestering me until I consent.

I must say, I’m not happy with the new IE 8.

First, the installation completely disregarded the fact that I have a different default browser set up (FireFox).  It helpfully said that IE 8 would be my default browser.

Default Browser Ignored

So that meant I had to go through all of the excess steps of the “Choose custom settings” process.  This eventually led to the “Do you want to discover websites you might like based on websites you’ve visited?” question.  The installer helpfully left both choices unchecked.

Suggested Sites

Thanks, but no I don’t want IE and Microsoft keeping track of places that I go so that Microsoft’s “carefully selected” partners can tell me about all of the “wonderful opportunities” that they have available for me.  I don’t mind the question per se.  It just irritates me that there was no default choice.  The default choice should have been “No.”

If you notice from the “Default Browser Ignored” dialog, the subject of “discovering websites” isn’t even mentioned in the list of things that the installer is going to do for me automatically.  Was that just an oversight?  What would the “express” setting have been?  I suspect that it would have been “Yes.”  But maybe that’s just conspiracy thinking on my part …

With the new version of IE, the “tabbed browsing” functionality has ceased working correctly.  The new page just stays on the “Connecting …” animation forever.

Stuck Going to New Page on a Tab

Getting stuck like that makes it kind of difficult to check and see if the new post to this blog looks OK in IE 8.

Tags: IE, web browser

An interesting free disk defragmenting program, SmartDefrag from IOBit, contains this free browser tool bar offer.  It also helpfully offers to change my search engine.

IOBit - SmartDefrag

Tags: web browser