Mike Southby

For those who are interested, the very latest incarnation (albeit in Beta) of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is now available to download from here.

Review and my thoughts to follow shortly…

The install or upgrade of Microsoft Internet Explorer will give you the option to change your default search engine just as in previous versions of IE; of course for many this is going to involve a change from Bing to Google.  Now it may only be a minor point but after this initial choice their doesn’t seem to be an easy way of changing to a regional variant of Google using the Search Add-In menu, being that I live in the UK it seems a reasonable assumption that I am going to choose to change my default searching habits to UK searching – or at least have that choice.  Easy to do you’d have thought, alas not in IE!

After giving it some thought, the answer is actually quite easy, instead of using the menus within IE simply visit the webpage that was first seen at the beginning (of course most people will have gone straight past this screen and no longer have access to it), the webpage is:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx?dcsref=http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx

Here you will have the option to create your own search provider which is a lot easier than it sounds.  All you need to do is the following (using Google UK as a guide):

• Open a new tab in the browser (IE, of course), ensuring you leave the existing page open as you will need to come back shortly
• Visit the search engine that you want to be your default, in this case http://www.google.co.uk
• Perform a search for ‘TEST’ ensuring that you use all capital letters and that you check the UK option to return search results based on UK sites
• Copy and paste the URL of the page containing the search results into the box back on the ‘Add Search providers To Internet Explorer’ page
• Choose a name for this search provider, in this case Google UK
• Hit install

That’s it, simple.  Next time you use the search field in IE you’ll be presented with relevant sites.

After the requirement of the European Commission for Microsoft to offer a choice of browsers to its users (See Article), I noticed that Windows Update has today downloaded a small update which finally gives me the choice (not that I or anyone else of course could not have already manually changed browsers beforehand) as to which browser I prefer to use with Windows 7.

The update in question is KB976002 – Microsoft Browser Choice Screen Update for EEA Users of Windows 7.

Once downloaded and applied, the update adds an icon to your desktop (appropriately named Browser Choice) which when clicked, opens up Internet Explorer and continues to offer you a selection of alternative browsers for you to take a look at or download (the download links and appropriate links to the relevant vendor sites for information are included for convenience).  The current options are:

• Internet Explorer
• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Safari
• Opera
• Sleipnir
• Avant
• K-Meleon
• GreenBrowser
• FlashPeak
• Flock
• Maxthon

By clicking the Browser Choice icon and running through the options, you’ll notice that Internet Explorer is automatically unpinned from the taskbar but that it is not uninstalled (of course Internet Explorer forms an integral part of the OS and can never be fully uninstalled), although it is possible to further remove all reference to it by un-checking the Internet Explorer option by going to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off.

I think the inclusion of this choice is a step in the right direction but I would have liked to have seen it taken a step further.  It would have been great to have seen an option to not only choose additional browsers, but the ability to define your default browser and remove reference to Internet Explorer (if that’s what you choose to do of course) all in one place.

Personally I still use Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome 4 so this update has not changed anything for me but I am sure that it will have an impact on the browser trends within Europe over the coming years as more and more people come to realise that they have a choice; perhaps then Microsoft will start developing further releases of Internet Explorer to the same set of standards as other vendors in the hope that its popularity increases once again.

Discuss.

If you’ve arrived at my blog using Internet Explorer 6, you’ll find that some of the features do not work as they should and the blog doesn’t always display correctly.  You’ll still be able to view my posts which of course is the most important thing (well, I’d like to think so…), but you’re overall experience may not be as good as it could be.  You’ll also receive a notice to consider upgrading to a new browser.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. In its day it was a decent enough browser but in 2009 its time is fast coming to an end, a decade is a long time in the IT world and things have moved on.  As any developer or coder will tell you, working with IE6 is one of the most difficult and frustrating things to deal with on a day to day basis; it takes up a disproportionate amount of their time.  Aside from that, IE6’s support for modern web standards is very lacking, restricting what developers can create and in essence, holding them back from making the web a better, more interactive place.

So whilst not mandatory, I strongly urge you to upgrade your browser,  my personal favourite is Firefox, you’ll find the web will look a much nicer place…