Internet Explorer - Critical Fix

[IanB]

I'm a Firefox person, don't use Safari.
And another bad program to use, all you PC people, is Outlook express or similar for your e-mail.
Very easy to get bugs in to that as well as IE because people have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft and will do anything to jam 'em up (Layman term)

If not outlook express, what should we use. Life used to be so simple; phone line strung between the trees; ring was a long and two shorts (that's stopped you!!). Telegram if it was urgent; a letter if not urgent,................................................. .

[Tannin]

In the trade, we used to call it Microsoft Outbreak. A great many of the front-page-headline-level viruses were Outlook-specific; they were difficult to catch if you were not using Outlook and you couldn't pass them on at all without it. Famous examples you may remember include the Love Bug and Melissa, but there have been many, many more.

These days, Microsoft have fixed the worst of the holes in Outlook. or at least most of them, so it's not the screaming trainwreck that it was during the first half of the decade, but it's by no means a good choice, particularly as there are so many excellent email programs out there, including a number of free ones.

The most popular choice is Thunderbird, which comes from the same non-profit, for-the-public-good organisation as Firefox. Download it at: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/all.html

Apart from much better security, Thunderbird has excellent junk mail handling, is easier to customise to your taste, and most important of all, does not destroy your data if your system crashes.

If you walk into a computer repair shop with a crashed computer and you want your email back, if you were running Thunderbird, it takes 30 seconds to recover your address book and all your messages. If you were running Outlook or Outlook Express, there is no easy recovery. There a whole industry devoted to trying to recover Outlook data. (Hint: where an industry exists, whatever that industry does is difficult and/or expensive and/or requires special training and/or special tools.) To recover Thunderbird data, you drag the data folder from the old, crashed install over to the new install. That's it: drag and drop, problem solved.

There are many other good email clients, but I can never think of any particular reason not to use Thunderbird.

[IanB]

In the trade, we used to call it Microsoft Outbreak. A great many of the front-page-headline-level viruses were Outlook-specific; they were difficult to catch if you were not using Outlook and you couldn't pass them on at all without it. Famous examples you may remember include the Love Bug and Melissa, but there have been many, many more.

These days, Microsoft have fixed the worst of the holes in Outlook. or at least most of them, so it's not the screaming trainwreck that it was during the first half of the decade, but it's by no means a good choice, particularly as there are so many excellent email programs out there, including a number of free ones.

The most popular choice is Thunderbird, which comes from the same non-profit, for-the-public-good organisation as Firefox. Download it at: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/all.html

Apart from much better security, Thunderbird has excellent junk mail handling, is easier to customise to your taste, and most important of all, does not destroy your data if your system crashes.

If you walk into a computer repair shop with a crashed computer and you want your email back, if you were running Thunderbird, it takes 30 seconds to recover your address book and all your messages. If you were running Outlook or Outlook Express, there is no easy recovery. There a whole industry devoted to trying to recover Outlook data. (Hint: where an industry exists, whatever that industry does is difficult and/or expensive and/or requires special training and/or special tools.) To recover Thunderbird data, you drag the data folder from the old, crashed install over to the new install. That's it: drag and drop, problem solved.

There are many other good email clients, but I can never think of any particular reason not to use Thunderbird.

Thanks for that, I will certainly look into it.

[jim]

For email I still use Eudora. Having bought it years ago, I feel weirdly uncomfortable using anything else, including Thunderbird which I trialled earlier this year.

Plus there is a promise of a giant statue of me in front of Corporate HQ, if only I can get the thing off planet Earth.

[Tannin]

If you have become used to Eudora, everything else feels weird and odd.

Of course, normal people think that Eudora feels weird and odd. So far as I know, there isn't anything in particular wrong with it, and people who like it love it, so why change? (Or am I thinking of Pegasus? I always mix those two up. Maybe they are both weird and odd. One of them, last time I checked, still can't cope with HTML email, though there are people who regard this - with some justification - as a feature rather than a bug.)

Whatever, whenever I have to do some data transfer or rescue work with either of those two, I have to RTFM before I start. But unlike Outbreak, they are both perfectly well-behaved from a data integrity point of view. If I saw them more than once or twice a year, I wouldn't keep forgetting how to do it.)

[jim]

I've tried Pegasus. Weird.

[BLWNHR]

I'm a FF3 user, only use IE for MS Exchange Webmail when out of the office.

Thought I'd check the stats on my site too:

IE - 68.89%
FF - 26.11%
Safari - 4.44%
Camino - 0.56%

[tailstrike]

question about this can i have firefox and IE at the same time??? and use one or the other whenever i wanted to??

[Jcas]

question about this can i have firefox and IE at the same time??? and use one or the other whenever i wanted to??

Yes you can, but each will keep asking you which one you want to make your default browser, i hace FF as default, and you can get a plugin for FF that allows you to open a IE page from FF.

[Tannin]

Yes. There is no reason not to have all four browsers installed, if you want all four.

Note that you can't uninstall Internet Explorer, at least not for most practical purposes, as it is integrated into Windows itself - which, of course, is exactly why it is so dangerous.

The best genral policy is to install your choice of Opera, Firefox,or Seamonkey (or all three if you want to), then delete the shortcuts to Internet Explorer so that you don't start it by accident.

[Tannin]

All browsers want to be the "default browser" when they first install. Simply say "yes" to the one you want, and when the other ones complain and want to switch back, untick the box that says "check again next time".

[ving]

...and this is why i use opera at home...

just go and install it if you dont have it, it's free.

[SSSchwing]

Msie 6.0 8.8 % <--- These members are strongly recommended to upgrade

one of those would be me whilst I'm at work. I work for a large Gov't department and they still use IE 6.0.29.....

I use Firefox at home

[wanelad]

Hmm upgraded to I.E 8 not long ago and now seem to be having troubles with pages crashing and not loading properly is this a common thing? or is it another problem and just coincidental

[ricktas]

Site is working fine for me. Have you tried another browser, like Firefox to see if it happens on your system using that? Will at least determine if its IE or not

[Kym]

It's beta code - as in B for buggy.
Do the usual clear cache (delete files) etc.
This site has only been tested with Firefox 3 and IE7 - we do not support beta versions of browsers. That said, it *should* work.
Personally, unless you need to test web sites using IE8, wait for the real release.
And if you want to try beta products do it in a Virtual PC so you can undo it.

[wanelad]

Oh Oh should have read this forum first as my new thread i guess will get hammered ha ha as was asking why I.E. 8 keeps crashing. I do use Fire Fox on my other computer but have never really been as happy with it as I.E. guess i will get abused now not to worry.

[wanelad]

THanks guys I just found anther thread that seems to can I.E. and supports all the others like FIre fox etc . I do use Fire Fox on my other computer but have never felt fully comfortable with it. Maybe i will explore it a little more and try the clear catch etc

[Kym]

IE8 will be an improvement on previous versions; mainly due to Microsoft supporting standards more closely. However it is still in catch up mode regarding features.

[Calxoddity]

You're a brave chap - it's early days for IE8.

Another vote here for Firefox - version 3 has so many nice capabilities that I feel crippled whenever I go back to IE. IE's attempt at tabbed browsing in 7 and 8 still seems quite amateurish. There's also the fact that they don't work on a Mac in any case!

Regards,
Calx