Setting Google as Your Autosearch Provider (or One Thing I Don't Love About IE)
Like any piece of software I have worked on, I have intense affection for the resultant software we ship (warts and all). However, there are usually a number of things you wish you had had more time to make better and every time you run across it in the product it drives you crazy.
One thing that bothers me with IE in XPSP2 is the amount of hoops you need to click through to set Google or some other search engine as your autosearch provider. A quick way to set Google is to use the reg file up on http://www.google.com/google.reg or to install the Google toolbar. But as a purest of sorts and a tester, I like to use the official UI to do this. In the case of IE in XP, this takes a while.
You need to do the following -
Click on the Start button
Click on Search
Click on Change Preferences
Click on Change Internet Search Behavior
Select Classic Internet Search
Select Google from the list
Click ok
Start IE
Click on Search button to open the search pane on the left
Click on customize at the top
Click on autosearch settings
Make sure Google is set as the search provider
Click ok
Click ok
That's way too many clicks. This is definitely something we are going to get right in Longhorn. Some may ask why we didn't fix this in XPSP2, which is a fair question. We didn't fix it in XPSP2 because we had a specific focus to go in and secure the browsing experience and platform. Doesn't mean we didn't want to.
Scott
IE Test Manager
