Microsoft introduced a phishing filter in Internet Explorer 7 which checks every website the users visits with a remote database to prevent that phishing websites get accessed. Phishing websites are fake websites that look like a popular website but have the purpose to record credit card information and login credentials of a user to fuel criminal activities.

The phishing filter of Internet Explorer 7 is therefor a layer of defense against Internet crime and should not be deactivated. Users can on the other hand experience serious computer slowdowns when the phishing filter is checking the current website.

This is usually caused by websites who make use of many frames but can also happen if the user was browsing many frames before.

continue reading "Fix Slow Internet Explorer 7 Phishing Filter Response Times"

The IE7 Tweak Utility is a portable software program that allows the user to change a few settings in Internet Explorer 7 that cannot be changed directly in the browser. I assume they are handled in the Registry but have not checked if that is true.

The tool provides a clean interface after starting it up. Changes can be made to the Search Bar, the Menu Bar and the Command Bar which means it basically a tool to tweak toolbars in Internet Explorer 7. The search bar can be set to hidden which would have the effect that it would disappear in Internet Explorer 7.

The same is true for the Command Bar which can also be hidden. The Command Bar is a set if icons that sit directly below the search form starting with a link to the homepage and ending with the Tools menu.

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Firefox users are flooded with add-ons that provide them with the option to download videos from video portals like Youtube but Internet Explorer users are somewhat left in the rain. The Youtube File Hack Tool tries to change this by offering Microsoft Internet Explorer users a way to download videos from Youtube easily.

This plugin for Internet Explorer adds itself to the right-click context menu. All the user needs to do is to right-click a link that points to a Youtube video and select the Download This Youtube Video that was added by the Youtube File Hack Tool.

A download dialog appears and CTRL V enters the filename of the video automatically in the dialog box, another comfort function of the plugin.

continue reading "Youtube File Hack Tool For Internet Explorer"

Internet Explorer users are a bit at the bottom when it comes to useful add-ons for their browser. Sure, there is IE7 Pro which is a fantastic add-on but can you name other ones? I’m not using Internet Explorer regularly and one factor that is playing a role is the lack of add-ons that add features to the browser. In addition I think that the Windows Marketplace, that is the website that stores add-ons for Internet Explorer, is rather complex. There is no way to display only free add-ons for Microsoft Internet Explorer for example.

Qpedia is an add-on for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 that adds Wikipedia Search to the browser. The function becomes available after selecting and right-clicking text in Internet Explorer. The new entry Wikipedia is added to that menu and a click on that entry opens a new Internet Explorer window that opens the Wikipedia page that corresponds to the selected text.

There are not any options to configure the add-on properly. There is no way to make the links open in a new tab. The search also uses the English Wikipedia website to search for the phrases. This add-on could be useful to some users who search Wikipedia regularly and use Internet Explorer.

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That’s at least what Sam Allen discovered who used a software that he programmed to record memory usage of processes in Windows. He tested Safari 3.1 along with Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and Flock and discovered a huge gap between Safari and the other four browsers.

His application recorded the memory usage of the browser every three seconds over a period of three hours each and the graphs show clearly that there does not seem to be an end to Safari’s memory hunger. In the end Safari was using more than 630 Megabytes of RAM compared to 111 Megabytes for Firefox 3, 191 Megabytes for Flock, 190 Megabytes for Opera and 194 Megabytes for Internet Explorer 8.

The conclusion of the author is that “Safari on Windows shows extremely poor memory management [..] certainly a design that looks inefficient and seems to contradict Apple’s marketing”.

continue reading "Safari on Windows is not really memory efficient"