Customization in IE8

Customization in IE8 | Microsoft Share Point

Customization in IE8 | Microsoft Share Point — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:49:55 GMT

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re: Customization in IE8

punkcoder — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:27:56 GMT

I'm happy to see you can move the Stop / Refresh buttons to the left of the address bar. I never understood moving them between the address bar and the search box; always seemed like a bad design decision to me.

re: Customization in IE8

Alex — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:47:43 GMT

Smart Address Bar and browsing history.

It is good, but it also runs into chaos. For example, a forum site will have hundreds of entries in my history, but I am usually only interested in getting to the forum listings (list of articles, instead of the individual articles) via the address bar (if I needed to find an article I read before, I would have gone to the history pane to search for it). The old IE7 behaviour is better because the forum listings usually have a shorter URL and appears at the address bar before the longer article URLs.

Many times, I only want to go to the root of the host (ie path=/). It is also easier done in IE7 than IE8.

Finally, it seems pressing ALT will confuse the smart address bar (eg ALT-SHIFT+ENTER, trying to open the first entry) . I nearly always want to open it in a new tab without getting the focus, and it cannot be done from the smart address bar.

re: Customization in IE8

dave — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:53:21 GMT

you still don't get it, do you? less is more.

re: Customization in IE8

Blake Coverett — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:05:44 GMT

I've been disappointed how much customization as been removed from IE6 through IE8. Why, for example, can the favorites bar only be dragged down after the tab bar, and not before? And if you do put them all in one line, why does locking the toolbars then cause the command bar to overflow? It's generally a mess, and enough so that I leave the favorites bar turned off and don't bother with web slices etc.

re: Customization in IE8

Matt — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:42:47 GMT

I remember years ago seeing a joke article showing what Microsoft Office would like like in the future. It had the entire page filled with toolbars so you could barely see the document.

That interface was better than yours because at least there was a lot of functionality.

Don't you think you should try to get the vertical space at the top of the browser reduced so people can see more web page?

re: Customization in IE8

Vad — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:25:58 GMT

It would be nice to have a option to change the order of the Smart Address bar result

e.g. favorites before history.

But unfortunally there seems to way to do that.

And history often suggest old unusable (with sid) pages

re: Customization in IE8

SiSL — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:45:07 GMT

One of features I missed from IE3 is the skinning of background image :)

re: Customization in IE8

Don Reba — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:53:12 GMT

The feedback could not be more contradictory. :)

In my opinion, two toolbars is too much, and no toolbar is wide enough for the tab bar. Hence, there is no place for the favourites bar.

re: Customization in IE8

Don — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:13:03 GMT

How about the firefox plugin model where I can basically add whatever customization I want via a plugin?

re: Customization in IE8

Chris Hubick — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:32:25 GMT

How about you let me put the menu bar back up right at the top, just below the title bar. You know, so it's consistent with pretty much every other application I have used on the PC over the last 15 years?

Customize the Smart Address bar

Nick — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:14:04 GMT

Very impressed with IE8!

The smart address bar feature is very good but I'd like to be able to choose the display order - for example I would rather have favorites appear before browsing history.

re: Customization in IE8

hinop — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:24:17 GMT

on my vista, Firefox looks like XP :P. IE8 does take advantage of the new innovative UI look and feel. I wish there is more than just 1 theme though.

re: Customization in IE8

Vertical Real Estate — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:26:55 GMT

Hey thanks for this, I see some people have multiple lines of toolbars and have everything switched on. So it's good you have that option.

But me, I find my vertical screen space the most valuable real estate on my computer. I want as little as possible there, particularly on a laptop or NETBOOK where the vertical resolution is at a premium.

So in my IE8, everything that can be turned off, is. If I need to change some options, it's easy enough to hit Alt to get the menu bar.

But it could be better. Two things:

First, the status bar offers one valuable bit of information I want, which is the website address of a link BEFORE I click on it. I'd suggest a "tooltip" style interface when I hover a link to fix this.

Second, I think Chrome had a good idea with using the title bar of the window for the tabs. (It looks ugly in Safari though, so thoughtful art is key there.) I realise this isn't a good option for less clued up users because they'll get confused, but for the geeks/experts, it would be awesome to have that option.

re: Customization in IE8

David Bailes — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:01:53 GMT

You say that the Smart address bar is one of your favorite features. Alas, for people who can't use a mouse and rely solely on keyboard navigation, the smart functionality of the address bar is effectively inaccessible. Using the keyboard there's no quick way of moving between the different groups of suggestions (typed, history, favorites, etc.).

re: Customization in IE8

Mitch 74 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:03:18 GMT

IE8's interface is more flexible than IE7's, that's for sure.

It still lacks the flexibility IE6 offered.

And it's still miles away from Firefox's: as another comment pointed out, vertical space is the most appreciated resource a browser can give, especially now with wide screens: why can't I put shortcuts aside the legacy menu bar? Said menu bar is useful to me, but enabling it wastes so much space!

Another thing, dating back to Office 97: since toolbars can be reduced to icons only, why can't I have vertical toolbars?

re: Customization in IE8

Viktor Krammer — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:44:29 GMT

1 Make the small X toolbar close buttons in front of every toolbar optional. It is wasting screen space if you are using 3rd-party toolbars.

2 Make the Favorites button optional, this is very important when you turn tabbed browsing off, because then the Favorites button occupies one full line.

3 Make the toolbar separator lines optional. Personally I like it better without the vertical lines between the toolbars.

4 (regression bug) Show 3rd-party toolbars in full screen mode if auto-hide is enabled.

5 Allow the user to hide the navigation bar.

re: Customization in IE8

Olivier — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:33:52 GMT

@Chris Hubick: since IE7 there's a registry trick somewhere to get the menu bar above everything.

Problem : when you open the favorites panel and you pin it, the address bar goes back above the menu bar... When you close the favorites panel, the menu bar goes back to the top...

Talking about customization in the favorites panel, why can't I get icons instead of the texts "favorites", "feeds" and "history" ? It was very useful to see the feeds icon changing when feeds were updated. Yes, I've checked "Show only icons" for the toolbars), is there another parameter somewhere ?

re: Customization in IE8

Nick — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:45:19 GMT

One of my LEAST FAVORITE features is the IE8 "Smart Address bar"

Mainly because it failed miserably.

There is one very important item missing.

There are no FAVICONS for any of the sites so all users see is a big list of meaningless text.

Thanks for providing this EPIC FAIL feature and NOT providing a REGISTRY hack option to FIX it.

Congratulations on your "Innovate--" failure.

re: Customization in IE8

PabloY — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:15:36 GMT

I don't get it.

I don't understand Microsoft. You have many problem to fix. All these aesthetic options are useless. Who tell you boys, that we needed all these things.

With IE8, besides its many propietary features that complicate web development, you do not even improved the user interfase. Hidding the top menu does not makes you cool. Makes you fool. It's not about hidding things, it's about rethinking the way we use the browser.

For me IE does not change anything since IE5. It's always the same story. Don't tell us that this is customization. The only customization king here is Firefox. You want something new, something really different, think Chrome. Safari, as everything that comes from Apple, is great user experience.

re: Customization in IE8

mattbg — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:21:49 GMT

Getting rid of system folder history in the IE Autocomplete history would be good. Is there anyone that actually accesses system folders with their web browser?

re: Customization in IE8

mattbg — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:23:15 GMT

One regression in IE8 is that you can't stack other toolbars on the same row as the Favorites bar. You could do this with IE7 and prior because you could put other toolbars on the same row as the Links toolbar.

re: Customization in IE8

Paul R — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:44:56 GMT

I like the new Smart Address Bar, I just wish that you'd make proper use of the FavIcons that pretty much every website has. Visual clues like FavIcons make finding the entry you want so much faster. FireFoxs address bar does this so well.

re: Customization in IE8

AT — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:45:40 GMT

I'm also quite impressed with IE8. Firefox is NOT some miracle, it has its own issues. I only wish IE had built in customizable filter to block content like ads and Flash, similar to Firexox's Adblock plug-in.

Regarding "changing the position of the stop/refresh buttons", it is good that they default to right. However, I have difficulty of understanding why Back/Forward buttons are on left side of the window when most people are right-handed? This makes absolutely no sense to me. And it is not possible to move them to right.

re: Customization in IE8

Michael — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:05:22 GMT

I miss a consistent UI between operating system and Internet Explorer and other Microsoft applications.

It seems the different development teams at Microsoft decides what they think is the best approach leaving the users with different approaches on who to get the work done.

That's ok for power users (the ones posting in this blog) but leaves most users confused.

The fact that users can configure their Internet Explorer interface in many ways makes things worse for this users. "There was once a button somewhere around to do this - I didn't do a thing but now the button is gone."

re: Customization in IE8

Michael Urman — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:54:41 GMT

The two things I'd like most:

1. Ability to right click on the back and forward buttons like in other major browsers, yielding a popup menu of back or forward history respectively (similar to the dropdown, but one direction only). As a generalization, right clicking on button-like things in the extended titlebar area should not be like right-clicking the titlebar.

2. Ability to hide the funky icon that appears when I select text. The accelerators are already in the context menu and the icon just gets in my way.

re: Customization in IE8

Joe — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:01:29 GMT

hello,

has enyone noticed issue with icons in toolbar?

an example: installed cooliris, which adds new icon. uninstalled cooliris and ie8 adds Research or any other icon which has not been there before. wtf? why is ie8 adding any icons by itself?

re: Customization in IE8

Sterling — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:39:47 GMT

Customizing IE8 is way better than it was in IE7 but there are still some customize options that I would like IE8 to have. For example, the Tabs Band should be only occupied by the tabs (hences its name), so why is the Command Bar in the Tabs Band? If I disable the Favorites Bar (I have it enabled all the time), why is it that the Favorites Center move to the Tabs Band? (I moved the Command Bar to the Favorites Band so that the Tabs Band would only have, you guessed it, TABS!)

Why can't IE8 be like other browsers in that most have a common layout?

The Favorites Center and Add to Favorites Bar icons should be combined into one. Why not add the latter as an option, such a checkbox, to the former?

Why can't I move the Favorites Center or Command Bar options to be inline with Back, Forward, Refresh and Stop? There it would be a more logical place.

The Smart Address Bar is one of my favorite features in IE8 but I think it could be a bit smarter. Usually it display a few entries down the entry I'm trying to get to.

Showing only icons on the Favorites Bar is a good idea but IE isn't known for handling well favicons. Just look at the screenshot you posted, all those IE page icons! Granted, the sites favorited might not have a favicon but, it could also be IE that lost the favicons (as it has happened to me before).

IE8 is a good-to-great browser, but there are excellent browsers out there. I have only used IE since v6 but once Google Chrome starts getting features that are in IE8 and beyond, who knows, I might switch to that browser. I have been a loyal IE user for more than 10 years but eventually I'll have to decide whether to continue with somewhat limited browser, that, granted, I like -- IE, or switch to a browser that is starting to look interesting. I havae tried Firefox but I keep going back to IE. Chrome might end that cycle.

Internet Explorer 8 : a sinistra o a destra

Pietro Brambati Blog — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:41:11 GMT

Preferite i bottoni a destra … o a sinistra … Ecco come: Per tutto il resto: Customization in IE8

re: Customization in IE8

Matthew Raymond — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:41:27 GMT

AT: "However, I have difficulty of understanding why Back/Forward buttons are on left side of the window when most people are right-handed? This makes absolutely no sense to me."

It's UI convention to put things in the top left so that their position doesn't change when you resize the window. This also has the side effect of making their screen position constant when the window is maximized. Also, Western cultures read left-to-right, so they look to the top left first.

I personally feel that the IE interface is a nightmare for users. You have lots of icons all over the place, most of which have no labels and are only described by tooltips, so there was clearly no real thought given to discoverability or patterns of eye movement. The menu is hidden by default and appears in an non-standard position enabled. Pressing the Alt key is not a good solution for bringing up the menu bar because it requires the user to know this in advance an it forces a resizing of the content area and a redraw of most if not all controls in the chrome, which is visually annoying. In addition, the new tab button still has no icon unless you hover over it and there's a toolbar taking up the space for tabs BY DEFAULT. It's just a mess.

re: Customization in IE8

hAl — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:44:28 GMT

@AT

There is already an excellent ad blocker called Admuncher for IE. It is often regarded as better than adblock.

On the other hand, IE 8 does indeed provide some default adblocking capabilities trough InPrivate browsing:

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/08/internet-explorer-8-ad-blocking/

There are many other adblockers for IE as well.

And as we speak more are being developed

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/19/internet-explorer-8-ad-blocking-gets-easier-with-adblock-ie/

re: Customization in IE8

net — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:57:59 GMT

Personally, I really would like to be able to move the command bar and the favorites bar to one row. The command bar can be moved to its own row (as you showed in this blog post), but the favorites bar cannot be moved next to it on the same row. Having just a few favorite items, this way I could spare a row of space on my screen for better page view space, but it seems it is not possible at the moment. Will it ever be possible?

Just remember that you can move every single item to every single place on Firefox's user interface. I find this possibility very useful.

Thanks for the attention.

re: Customization in IE8

Viktor Krammer — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:02:19 GMT

6 Add permanent icons to buttons in the status bar. Icon less buttons with only a tooltip to distinguish them is a usability nightmare.

7 There is an issue with the menu bar if you are in fullscreen mode with auto-hide enabled. If you press Alt, a menu pop-up appears and immediately disappears again.

@AT

another ad blocker for IE8 is Quero

re: Customization in IE8

net — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:04:02 GMT

Sorry, in my previous post I forgot a couple of points, always from a spare space point of view:

- I would also like to be able to disable the search-box through the IE interface without having to change some key in the windows registry

- Also it would be useful to be able to move the command bar to the same row of the address bar

re: Customization in IE8

John A. Bilicki III — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:06:29 GMT

*THIS* is what a customizable GUI looks like!

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/3019/ie8betterguier2.png

When are we going to get an actually customizable GUI for goodness sakes?

All you guys had to do was add TAB support for IE6 but no...

re: Customization in IE8

donmoore — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:47:54 GMT

About every third time I launch IE8, I get a message telling me that my last browsing session closed unexpectedly and it gives me only 2 options: Resume last session or Go to my home page. Can I turn off something to stop this dialogue message from appearing?

re: Customization in IE8

Dan — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:12:22 GMT

donmoore: Your browser is probably crashing (silently) on shutdown. Try disabling unwanted addons.

nick: After you graduate from primary school, you'll stop thinking it's cool to type in ALL CAPS. We can't wait!

re: Customization in IE8

Roland — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:24:39 GMT

I had to turn off AutoComplete for the Address bar because it's just too slow. My Windows Search index (under Vista 32-bit with 2 GB RAM) contains 250,000 items, and it takes several seconds while typing until results appear in the address bar drop-down list. This slowdown started to appear in RC1, beta 2 was very fast in this regard.

After clearing the "Use Windows Search for better results" check box, AutoComplete reaults appear almost immediately and the feature is finally usable. I wasn't aware that I could turn off this feature until reading your article. Thank you!

re: Customization in IE8

Tihiy — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:40:20 GMT

The man who made 'Short Titles' feature is surely an dot-obsessed idiot.

re: Customization in IE8

NeilMc — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:27:05 GMT

Anyone know how to get rid of the following prompt

in AutoComplete?

DownloadWindowsSearchToImproveHistoryAndfavoritesResults

re: Customization in IE8

EricLaw [MSFT] — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:55:58 GMT

@NeilMc: The prompt goes away a few days after you click it.

re: Customization in IE8

Sheldon — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:07:35 GMT

Neil, do this:

REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\WindowsSearch" /v "ShowPrompt" /t REG_DWORD /d 0

re: Customization in IE8

Dan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:37:31 GMT

Michael Urman, for your #2, you can hide the accelerator button using the checkbox inside Tools | Internet Options | Advanced. It's named "Show accelerator button on selection" and it's near the top.

re: Customization in IE8

xpclient — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:12:01 GMT

With the new IE8 smart address bar, I really really find myself taking more time to quickly go to a previously visited website even if I use Shift+Enter. Please give users the OPTION to revert to earlier style address bar behavior or new behavior via a checkbox.

I'd also like to second this request echoed several times by many users to allow customizability like IE6. Please please allow customizing IE9's various bars (standard toolbar, menu bar, address bar) like how it was possible in IE6. I'd like to drag the toolbar buttons on the same line as the menu bar to allow more space horizontally for the tabbed browsing, that does not seem to be possible. Or drag the favorites bar alongside the menu bar. I'd like to move the search box somewhere else. At the same time, don't overhaul the UI and remove features/disallow what was possible in the earlier versions to improve productivity or some "less is more" mantra.

The "Find" (on this page) bar is also too thick. Also, if I've added any custom toolbars like Live Search Club, I move it to the menu bar to increase horizontal space, but look how the toolbar won't let me adjust itself accurately even after unlocking and trying to move it, and forcibly hides part of the menu bar (http://rapidshare.com/files/224309769/IE8Customization.png.html).

And you again forgot to replace the extremely ugly middle click scroll icon for IE8.

re: Customization in IE8

Interface Guru — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:38:20 GMT

What good is any of this if you still can't minimize the current tab by clicking on it - as you can in Opera (from which it was 'borrowed') ?

Tell me that.

And another thing.

Why is the current tab so poorly highlighted ?

When I look along a row of open tabs, it takes me ages to spot which one is the current one.

These are some basic interface deficits that MS should have addressed before the trivial stuff.

re: Customization in IE8

Rob^_^ — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:47:19 GMT

Hi,

You forgot to mention that the Search Box is resizable.... Hover your mouse between the Address Box and the Search Box, you will see the East/West cursor appear, right click and resize the Search Box/Address Box to your preferences.

Regards.

re: Customization in IE8

uitvaartverzekering — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:42:14 GMT

xpclient, thank you for the link.

re: Customization in IE8

David — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:32:35 GMT

Remember in IE6 (and lots of other browsers) when we could move the address bar, or put things to the left or right of it? I still miss that (though not too much, since I haven't used IE much since). It's not very customizable until I can move or hide things I actually want to move.

re: Customization in IE8

alex — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:14:28 GMT

i go back to ie7!

i dont like the design and the Customization of ie8

ie8 looks very old.

re: Customization in IE8

rex — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:11:15 GMT

"Why is the current tab so poorly highlighted ?"

Good Call!

This was a major setback in the IE8 tab design.

Firefox, Chrome and Safari all do this ***MUCH*** better!

re: Customization in IE8

Esben Sundgaard — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:34:58 GMT

I like the new IE8 smart address bar a lot! I think it is much better than IE7 and Firefox!

re: Customization in IE8

jack — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:21:11 GMT

favorite bar need more customization: add new favorite website at the end of favorite bar options and display most visited favorite website option

favorite 1 click star button changes color to alert user that website is already added in

favorite center/bar

reopen closed tab button should be available

option to show favicon in smart address bar

seperate home button from command bar

re: Customization in IE8

Jack — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:44:57 GMT

Help about Inprivate Browsing, Ok When using the regular IE browsing mode does the Inprivate filter still work or does user have to use Inprivate browsing mode in order for the Inprivate filtering to work.

re: Customization in IE8

Viktor Krammer — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:08:15 GMT

BTW I really like the pictures in this blog post, even the insects, which I am usually afraid of.

re: Customization in IE8

EricLaw [MSFT] — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:37:25 GMT

@Jack: In the final version of IE8, you can use InPrivate Filtering independently of InPrivate Browsing. Simply hit CTRL+SHIFT+F (or click the status bar icon) to turn it on/off.

re: Customization in IE8

Maz — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:30:15 GMT

@EricLaw

Is there a way to have the InPrivate Filtering automatically turn on when you start IE?

re: Customization in IE8

wai — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:57:00 GMT

@ Maz

seems you need to turn on it manually, from the information in http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/features/browse-privately.aspx

"InPrivate Filtering is off by default and must be enabled on a per-session basis."

re: Customization in IE8

Dan — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:02:41 GMT

wai,maz, there's a regkey to turn on filtering by default:

In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Safety\PrivacIE

create a dword "StartMode" with value 1 or 2.

See e.g. http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/02/ie8-ad-blocking-with-the-inprivate-filter

re: Customization in IE8

Parrotlover77 — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:00:55 GMT

If you enjoy customization so much, you must be upset when they actually take away features between product versions.

So how about giving us back IE's ability to respect the inline autocomplete option?

The Smart Address Bar is cute, but I use the "smart" features about 1% of the time compared to typing the start of an address and hitting "enter" to accept it.

And no, the shift+enter doesn't count, because it keeps trying to make "smart" decisions for me, instead of just using the alphabetical top like inline used to do. 99% of the time, the "smart" suggestion is wrong for me.

re: Customization in IE8

Lu Hulu — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:40:38 GMT

Why does IE user have to turn on Inprivate Filtering when starting IE 8? Is that normal?

re: Customization in IE8

Dan — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:34:55 GMT

Lu, yes, this is normal. But you can just set a registry key if you always want it on:

In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Safety\PrivacIE

create a dword "StartMode" with value 1 or 2.

See e.g. http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/02/ie8-ad-blocking-with-the-inprivate-filter

re: Customization in IE8

Wchris — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:30:37 GMT

Help needed with IE8 - cannot install? I downloaded the installation file and run. Installation message says I need to update a file. I download the update file and try to install, but merror message says that my SP3 files are newer than the update. The installation then aborts.

re: Customization in IE8

Sklep Zoologiczny — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:49:32 GMT

I have to admit I hate IE but quite cool post. Anyway there is no way to help IE be better...

Antivirus and the impact on performance

kh — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:16:14 GMT

A major problem that seemed to be overlooked in terms of windows and the performance, are antivirus software. Antivirus software can slow down the PC and web experince.

There is a huge difference between antivirus programs and their impact on performance on Windows and webbrowsing.

See, for example the free AVG antivirus and Eset antivirus 4.

The free AVG antivirus, and others antivirus slow down PC and Web browsing on older PC and are Netbook extremely. While Eset antivirus 4 has almost no influence in perfomance in practical use.

Microsoft has plans whith a free antivirus called Morro a continuation of OneCare.

Therefore Microsoft should do a lot more work in marketing and telling pc users how much influence the antivirus has on performance on PCs and webbrowsing.

I really hope that Morro from Microsoft become just as fast as Eset antivirus 4, whith just as small footprint.

re: Customization in IE8

net — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:09:21 GMT

For example, why does one have to edit a registry key to turn InPrivate Filtering always on? Why can't you just put an option for that somewhere?

re: Customization in IE8

Dan — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:33:08 GMT

net, you need to be VERY careful what you wish for. If IE offered a "set it and forget it" option, then it's pretty likely that most users would turn it on and start blocking all of the advertising sites. As soon as they did that, the advertisers would retaliate and start taking steps to avoid this blocking (which is pretty darn easy for them to do).

For those of us that like to block advertising, the absolute WORST thing that could happen is to have IE start doing it automatically, or making it even easier for most people to do so. Right now, we're flying under the radar (mostly) and advertisers haven't bothered circumventing all of the ad-blockers because they're not losing enough revenue. If they start losing more money, then pretty much all existing ad-blockers are going to become much less effective.

re: Customization in IE8

Lu Hulu — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:47:44 GMT

In IE 8 when Inprivate filtering is on the history is not showing "smart address bar". Is this a bug or is that normal?

re: Customization in IE8

Lu Hulu — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:47:47 GMT

In IE 8 when Inprivate filtering is on the history is not showing "smart address bar". Is this a bug or is that normal?

re: Customization in IE8

Quality Directory — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:48:33 GMT

My AutoComplete is behaving funny and that's irritating. In the absence of that, I like the new IE8.

re: Customization in IE8

SEO Treats — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:20:54 GMT

Customization to fit personal preferences has never been easier with any other browser I know of.

re: Customization in IE8

EricLaw [MSFT] — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:38:41 GMT

@Lu Hulu: No, you should still see your history in the Smart AddressBar when InPrivate Filtering is enabled. I'm not able to reproduce the problem you've reported.

re: Customization in IE8

Mark B. — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:42:02 GMT

I'd love to see some way to reassign F12 for the DevToolBar - because one of our webapps uses F12....

re: Customization in IE8

Brugan — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:33:10 GMT

Where am I missing the "use personalized favorites menu" setting that used to be on the advanced Internet Options tab?

Thanks in advance for your help.

re: Customization in IE8

EricLaw [MSFT] — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:16:04 GMT

@Brugan: The personalized menu system was removed from IE7/IE8.

@MarkB: The devtoolbar hotkey cannot be remapped, although you can bring up the developer tools using ALT+T, L

@LuHulu: No, that is not normal, and I'm not able to reproduce missing history when InPrivate Filtering is enabled.

re: Customization in IE8

Brugan — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:30:47 GMT

@EricLaw

Thanks for your prompt response. I'll miss that feature in ie8. It works just fine on several computers I have running both Vista and XP with ie7. Dunno if that's progress or not...

re: Customization in IE8

ken — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:38:13 GMT

"We’d love to hear how you would like to further customize future versions of Internet Explorer."

How about, you look at the reasons that people choose other browsers over yours? Have ANY of you on the IE dev team *EVER* used another browser, other than IE? I really doubt it; if any of you did, you must suffer from short-term amnesia because IE's UI is still hands-down the absolute worst browser UI there is.

Try all of these, I promise it won't kill you; and when you do try them, please please PLEASE TAKE NOTES!!

- Firefox

- Safari

- Chrome

- Opera

re: Customization in IE8

EricLaw [MSFT] — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:50:35 GMT

Ken, I'm a regular user of all of the above, as are many people on the IE team. We also try out the niche browsers you didn't mention from time to time.

I'd love to see what specifically your "top 5 list" would contain. thanks!

re: Customization in IE8

Mark B. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:58:07 GMT

@EricLaw

Is there any hope that there will be an option to disable the DevTools, at least via Domain Policy / IEAK?

While *I* find them really cool (and have been using the add-in for quite a while), I think it's the sort of thing that is just going to create confusion in end-users.

I was just fine with having to install it, really.

re: Customization in IE8

EricLaw [MSFT] — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:41:30 GMT

@MarkB: While I think most users are unlikely to be confused by the developer tools (it's sorta hard to stumble upon them unknowingly), yes, they can be turned off via Group Policy like almost anything else.

Inside GPEdit, click Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Internet Explorer / Toolbars and configure the "Turn off Developer Tools" policy.

re: Customization in IE8

Rose — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:24:21 GMT

Help, I just downloaded 8 & I can't get onto the internet Wht?

re: Customization in IE8

Rose — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:24:26 GMT

Help, I just downloaded 8 & I can't get onto the internet Wht?

re: Customization in IE8

Rose — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:24:26 GMT

Help, I just downloaded 8 & I can't get onto the internet Wht?

re: Customization in IE8

Dan — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:00:26 GMT

Rose, you're clearly on the internet because you made this post. :-)

If you're saying that IE always shows the "Page cannot be displayed" error message: Do you have a 3rd party firewall program? If not, what are your settings inside tools/internetoptions/connections/lan settings?

re: Customization in IE8

Rembrandt A. Martinez — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:13:17 GMT

Lol inter net explorer is the best explorer I have used. Other explorers are not even touching it! Goodbye.

re: Customization in IE8

Bill — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:59:21 GMT

I would like to put the Favorites Bar to the left of the tabs - like it was in IE7. When I move it, the bar splits into two pieces, with Favorites where I want it, and "Add to Favorites" to the right of the tabs. When will this be fixed?

re: Customization in IE8

steve — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:23:49 GMT

well having downloaded this and installed it, my first impressions are YUK!

Why cant you make this look like i.e6, 5 4 etc, that was the explorer we used for years, and suddenly you changed this into 'tabbed' browsing.

this is just awful, JUST STOP THIS STUPID TABBED BROWSING IDEA FOR ALL YOUR SOFTWARE!!

why don't microsoft actually ASK the people who use their products what they think, or even learn how they use them???

i.8 is totally usutable for use by children, and visually impared, i.e 6 and before was perfect, and easily customiseable.

re: Customization in IE8

Dan — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:10:57 GMT

steve, I'm not sure if you're a kid or simply never learned that it's best to think before writing, but I'll give you that advice now.

Tabbed browsing was the number 1 request for IE7 when it was in planning back in 2004, and remains one of the most popular features. If you want to turn it off, it's a single checkbox away (tools / options / general / tab settings).

As to the claim that "children" or "visually impaired" people cannot use IE8, this is both incorrect and insulting.

re: Customization in IE8

John Marsh — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:14:29 GMT

I do NOT like having a list of my "Favorites" sites appear (along with "History" sites)in the drop down box of the address box. When I delete all settings, they still show up. How can I make the Favorites list go away...permanently?!

re: Customization in IE8

EricLaw [MSFT] — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:20:46 GMT

John: simply click Tools / Internet Options / Content / Autocomplete Settings and uncheck the "Favorites" box.

re: Customization in IE8

John Marsh — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:50:58 GMT

EricLaw...THANK YOU!!! It worked!!! This was driving me crazy after I upgraded yesterday!!!

I spent 40 minutes on Windows 1-866-234-6020 Help Line last night. 1st person had no idea what I was talking about so he transferred me to 2nd person (India I think) who didn't even understand my question. He sent me an email this morning from "NA Windows Connectivity - Frontline CVG PUN" asking for feedback.

re: Customization in IE8

Rich Harding — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:52:28 GMT

Is it not possible to hide an add-on toolbar without disabling the add-on itself? If it's doable I can't seem to work out how myself - and I'm a Windows app programmer of over 10 years standing!