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IE 8 Minor Foibles

On Monday, I had a whole bunch of questions about Windows 7, which many of you answered clearly and succinctly. (If anyone thought I was complaining about Win 7, I really like it so far -- I just have a few glitches.)

Now I have a few IE 8 comments and questions. Overall, I like it. In fact, I had to ditch Firefox because it doesn't support Flash on Win 7. IE 8 brought in my 'Fox bookmarks with no problem, Flash works and the tabs are a lot like they are in 'Fox. All in all, an easy fix for 'Fox.

But one thing that's strange is Firefox is still my default browser, so it opens when you click on links in messages and so forth. I'll have to search for a way to make IE the default.

Plus, when scrolling through the page, the arrow keys don't work. I have to use the scroll bar unless I left-click first. And this works for some pages but not others. A little odd.

Tabs are also a bit odd. Often, clicking a link launches a new tab and just as often a new window, whereas with Firefox, it was almost always a new tab. You can take the extra step of right-clicking and choosing a tab, but who wants to do this every time you click?

I cut and paste a lot of links writing this newsletter. With IE 8, I have to highlight the URL, then use a keyboard shortcut to copy it. The copy function on the menu doesn't work. Again, a bit odd.

Got any IE 8 head-scratchers of your own? Solutions to these issues I mentioned? Send them to [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on July 15, 2009


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