Time To Upgrade Your Browser?

Installing IE 9 on Vista creates a mess for anyone using Windows Mail. The ability to see email attachments disappears (paper clip icon gone missing), "save attachments" is grayed out and unusable, and the yellow information bar that allows you to download blocked images in an email has gone missing too. The TO and FROM and SUBJECT also are displayed in some giant courier font.

This is not unique to my machine, everyone using Windows Mail has this issue. (One step forward, two steps back.) Apparently Windows Mail and the browser have a very deep relationship, although they are separate programs. I uninstalled IE 9 and went back to 8, all is well again.

I just updated Opera today from Version 11.52 to 11.60 and there seems to be a glitch on the top toolbar where an "&" sign is printed over the first letter of each word. I hope they release a fix soon.

Someone asked a question about multiple browsers on one machine. I have four of the five illustrated ones on my machine. If one "breaks down" the others often work. Also, each one has a different purpose (type of browsing) for me.

How about 64 bit browsers? I now use the 64 bit version of IE9 and the 64 bit version of Firefox (which is called Waterfox 8.01 ... google Waterfox to get it). The old disadvantage of 64 bit browsers was that they were not supported by flash. The new Flash 7 works with 64 bit. Try them. You'll like them.

And we're in a catch 22 at work. We have to have IE8 to use our own websites but most of the other sites won't work with IE8 (they just error out or won't work at all). Not to mention our reporting software wont' work with anything above IE6 (though I did find a workaround for that). It's ridiculous. So, I have IE6 on one machine so I can get to the non work sites I have to get to and IE8 on another for everything else.

To answer Patricia McIntyre if I may be so bold :-)

yes, you can have more than one browser on your computer and use different ones for different things.
Foe example, if you have more than one eBay account, cookies only allow you to be logged in to one of your ID's at a time. Opening different ID's in different browsers solves this problem.

We receive our utility bills by e-bill. At least one of the utilitiese-bill site won't work with IE9, only IE8 or older. As far as I know it requires IE rather than any of the other browsers, so we're stuck with IE8. I will update when the issue with e-bill site is resolved.
Is this what's called legacy software?

In response to Ken McLeod's post, I have and use IE9 and Windows Mail on my Windows 7 Home Premium system and have never had ANY of the problems he has mentioned!

So maybe he didn't uninstall IE8 before installing IE9? Or didn't upgrade IE8 to IE9 properly through Windows Update? Maybe he is using a dodgy copy of Windows? Maybe he doesn't clean out his temp files and IE cache regularly? Or maybe his operating system or computer is old and just cannot cope with newer software?

I'm sure there must be dozens of other possible causes for the type of problems he reports - but they are definitely not caused simply by using IE9 and Windows Mail on an up-to-date operating system!

Bob,
Back in the spring of this year I 'attempted' to upgrade from IE7 to IE8. My OS is Windows XP Home. It rendered my computer useless? Had it not been for Acronis and my full backups, I would've been forced to reinstall everything and start from scratch! I've consulted several geek/experts, both locally and online, and they're all at a loss to explain it? I still wish to upgrade, but after that close call I more than a little gun shy. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I trust your recommendations completely.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is my major gripe with IE. It's too closely entangled with the operating system, so in some cases a simple thing like updating your browser can have unintended consequences. Suggestions? Try Firefox or Chrome.

Many new programs insist that you use 'Chrome'. I will not use it again, after the "He's Dead Jim" attack.
Screwed up everything on my new desktop before I had all the new up-dates down-loaded.

I am staying with Firefox.

I do not want to update my firefox browser because I love the addon clip marks ,which does not work with the latest firefox I believe this is a problem with other addons too.

I bought a secondhand laptop on which OEM Vista had been overwritten by a dealer with his OEM XP Pro - two legit Windows copies on the machine but not politically correct so MS won't let me upgrade IE7. Says my copy isn't legal.
I have been mainly using Firefox and Thunderbird but have had enough crashes (including one where the MozBackup profile refused to work) that the rapid release process now induces me to let a few versions pass before updating (just went from FF5 to 8). If they would stop losing all my email and favourites i'd be more amenable.

When I installed FireFox Version 4, it obliterated my Version 3.
There's some rigmarole that allows co-existence, but I choose to omit rigmarole.

If I could install the newest version without losing Version 4, I would. But I'm sticking with Version 4 until I'm forced to replace it.

When something fails in FF 4, I try another browser. Sometimes Chrome does better at displaying videos, but that's all I can say for it.

Regards, Bob

Why doesn't everyone use Opera? It starts quicker even when I have half a dozen tabs open from a previous session. A few sites don't like it so I fall back to Firefox. I had a similar problem to Steve when I tried to update to IE9. At least it was a gave me the excuse (by force) to get a new motherboard!

I have Opera, SeaMonkey, K-Melon, Firfox and of course IE. Opera is my main one. I use the email program built into SeaMonkey (much like Thunderbird). Opera has had poor printing support over the years, on and off, that's where K-Melon comes into play. The "Down-them-all" extension in Firefox is sometimes a godsend. And every blue moon I still actually come across an obscure web page that will only display properly in IE, go figure.

Response to Sheri:

The detail I did not provide is that this affects all users on Vista. A little web search will show that. I actually attempted to re-post that fact but it did not get through. My machine and OS are as up to date and clean as they can be. You are using 7 so something has been changed there.

Windows mail and the IE browser apparently have a very deep relationship.

Something else I like about Opera, is that if for some reason a site will not let you access it because you aren't using a compatible browser (such as a bank website) you can always "Identify As" or "Mask As" either IE or Firefox. Just right click anywhere on the page then click Edit Site Preferences, then click the Network tab, then change the browser identification at the bottom. You will have to refresh the page and possibly dump your cookies but it should work afterwards.

In the business world though you get ham strung but what a vendor will support for their product.

We have one that works in IE7/8 and FF 3.5/3.6 and that's it. Now in IE8 there are issues with JRE 6r26+ due to new features from Oracle. And FF4+ works in most of the product but some bits don't (probably bad JS coding).

We need to use these products so need to keep browser versions back.

I have IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari installed and I use them all at different times. I mainly use Firefox, and rarely use IE as IE seems much slower than the others. I always like to have other options in case one is causing me grief for some reason, I can usally web browse with one of the others. I dont' think I've ever had a problem with Firefox, but I've had many problems with IE. Also, I have found that if browsing isn't working with one and/or is extremely slow to load everything, I will open a different one and browsing will work great and quick.

I mostly use Opera. I have kept Firefox 3 series because of all that I keep reading about problems with Firefox updates. When I begin to read that these problems have been largely resolved I may update Firefox. It also is a memory hog. As for Chrome, I tried it, and didn't care for it.