Undercover browser

Recently, I told a group to not use Internet Explorer until the update came out to make it more secure. Unfortunately, many sites, especially government ones only allow using Internet Explorer. Why this is, I have no idea. However, an add on to your browser may solve this issue. Add an agent switcher to fool the website you are on to think it's IE or something else, like an iPhone. These switcher agents are great  for testing or getting through something oddly blocked websites. Here is a link for the Chrome add on and Firefox extension

“You affect the world by what you browse.” Tim Berners-Lee

For many years I have led students away from Internet Explorer to another browser. I tell them there are better, faster, and more secure choices out there. The problem is that they leave the classes and are confused what to download and how to do it. Here is a site that makes it easy to find where to download the browsers. Their main goal seems to be to get people from Internet Explorer 6, a rather insecure, in my opinion, poor browser. All this page does is link where to download the browsers but not which one to choose. Here is a page that rates them and gives you a bit of direction on what to download. Give a new browser a try.

"Nothing is too small to know, and nothing is too big to attempt." William Van Horne

Here at PPL we are and have been making the dreaded 2007 Office switcheroo. For some it has been a nonissue and for others it has been a real pain. One example is the size of the icons and how small they can be but for others it has been the size of the text in Outlook. In Excel and Word there are easy to find Zoom tools at the bottom right. In Outlook it is there but is several clicks away and there isn’t a default setting for this so it won’t be the same the next time you go to it. One quick fix for this came up while we were trying to fix it. If you hold CTRL and use the scroll wheel on your mouse you can zoom into the text. This is of course assuming you have a scroll wheel on your mouse. You do have one right? If not a new mouse that has one is priced around 10-15 dollars. By using both the button and mouse you can increase or reduce the text quite quickly. This is a lot easier than guessing the zoom percentage. The nice thing is that it seems to work in many programs. Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer both have it. Firefox has it as well but with a nice added feature. After you zoomed in and then go about your business to some other website when you return to that site it will be the zoomed size for that page only. You can go into the view menu of Firefox and then to reset to change it back. Sometimes you never know what little extras you will find until you look for something else. As for the Outlook issue of it being too small and being changed automatically that is a non starter. There does not seem to be anything that will correct that all the time.

“You have to block everything out and be extremely focused and be relaxed and mellow too.” Jennifer Capriati

As I explore the net I am inundated with advertising and it is driving me insane. Now I understand that sites need to make a living and I really don’t mind text ads but the ones with animation and flashing nonsense are just too much. So I use Flashblock which is an add-on to the browser Firefox. This is one of those great extras that make the web so much more enjoyable. Once installed, anytime it sees flash, it will block it and put a big f in the center of where the animation should be. However if you realize you would like to see it, like in the case of YouTube, give it a click and it will start up instantly. Two reasons I love this. The less to load per page the faster everything moves. The second is that I am no longer bothered by flashing dancing ads. I have only run into one issue that is CNN’s video page would not load because it knew I had a flash blocker installed. To get around this I just opened up another browser. So if you are annoyed by just a bit too much stuff give this one a try.

My Dad used to say 'always fight fire with fire', which is probably why he got thrown out of the the fire brigade. Harry Hill

I have been toting Firefox as the one of the best browsers for a long time. It truly has been good and inventive however it did have some problems like the fact over time it seems to slow down until you restart the application. As of yesterday Firefox 3 is out and ready to be used. I installed it on my home machine with no problems and I am loving every part of it. According to the press release it is 2-3 times faster and it seems to be. The same pages that were dragging to bring up pictures in 2 are zipping onto the page. Also other features like the Awesome Bar that is the address bar but with the ability to keyword search through your history of use is great. Some features will not be as noticeably cool but they are extremely handy like the new security measure for antiphishing. Firefox is trying to set a world record of downloads starting yesterday for a 24 hour period. I really recommend that you jump on board and take a look at the new and very highly improved Firefox. Check out the video introduction that shows you all the new features. Give this one a try