As some of you probably know I'm a bit of a techie addict and can never resist new gadgets, new hardware and new software. So it goes without saying that when the new Internet Explorer version became available I downloaded it. Now, there are features on IE 9 that I like. I like the clean interface. I like the ability to pull a tab off the address bar to make a new window, and I like being able to pin favourite sites on my Windows 7 Task Bar, but the new browser does take a bit of getting used to.
The tabs of the websites you open are now on the right of the Address Bar, at the top of the screen. You can still click Ctrl when you are opening a new web page and the tab opens to the right of the tabs already there. So far so good. However, when you want to close them, that's when the problems start (for me anyway). Theoretically the extra tabs can be closed by right clicking and then clicking on Close Tab, or you can click the x at the right of the tab. The tab vanishes okay, but the page is still there - blank with a little whirly thing in the middle and there it stays until you close the whole browser down, that is, if the browser hasn't frozen. The only way then is to bring up Task Manager and close it down from there. This is what is driving me nuts.
Wait on, though. I think I've found a solution. You recall that further up this blog I said I liked the ability to pull a tag off the Address Bar to make a new window. I've found that if I do this I can close the page by clicking the X at the top corner of the page. Voila, no blank page and no small whirly thing in the middle.
The other thing I kinda like, although I'm not sure I like it better than the row of favourite sites below my Menu Bar in IE 8, is the ability to pin these favourite sites to my Windows 7 Task Bar. The idea is that the site icon will stick there. Well it took a bit of trial and error in the first place to successfully pin a website to the bar. I pinned Smashwords and then my own website, they both came up with Internet Explorer icon, then I pinned my two You Tube videos to the task bar and they came up as two separate You Tube icons. So you can see the difficulty. It is identifying which of the favourite icons is the one you want, although all is not lost because if you right click the icon it tells you which site it relates too. What a hassle.
Apart from these small moans I'm gradually coming to terms with IE 9, although I still find myself going to the left of the screen to click favourites instead of the top right corner.
Moans over - until the next time.
Chris
5 comments:
IE 9... Hmm, another Microsoft Product. Word drives me to distraction.
We run IE 8 at work (blah) but at home we're running Firefox on all of our systems. Tried FF 4.0 and it was a pig, constantly locking up so reinstalled an earlier version. Guess it was released too soon? Maybe that's some of the problem with IE 9.
Have fun getting it sorted out... (grin)
I haven't used IE since my computer (without telling me why), stopped doing so of its own accord. So I downloaded Chrome, Firefox and Safari and just swap between them. And I'm so used to Word 2003 and Windows XP that, despite coveting every new computer I see, I'm not planning to move away from them until I have to.
I just can't resist new tech and software, although I have no intention of moving from Word 2003. I don't like the new version of Word which is similar to the one on my Mac. Oh, and I'm definitely getting the itch to build a new computer. Best displacement therapy there is.
Think I'll stick with my present version of IE at the moment after reading that, Chris! And I too love Windows XP, so I'm holding on to that as long as possible.
Hi Chris,
Loved you article on e-books. I know the jury is still out but just as television was predicted to be the death of radio(and wasn't) perhaps there's room for both?
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