The initial batch of Tracking Protection Lists have received public criticism as they did not necessarily had the best user intent in mind. Analysis of the available lists revealed for instance that one did not block a single domain name, but made sure that almost 4000 different domains were allowed.

Internet Explorer users who installed that particular TPL in their browser were not able to benefit from the new technology at all.

Microsoft yesterday revealed that a privacy initiative will release three new tracking lists in the coming days.

This week two leading privacy advocates – Simon Davies and Alexander Hanff of Privacy International – are releasing three new Tracking Protection Lists for Europe, including one focused on protecting children.

The lists will be made available on the Privacy Online from where they can then be installed directly into the Internet Explorer browser.

• Child Protection: The child protection list has been designed to block all third party technologies embedded into any web site. Exceptions are added for third party technologies that are not used for tracking purposes
• Web Analytics: Blocks web analytic software such as Google Analytics from tracking a user’s movement on the Internet or individual websites.
• Behavioural Tracking: The third and final list blocks scripts that are used for behavioral tracking on the Internet.

It is not clear when those lists become available. Users who are interested in installing those lists should first analyze them to make sure they are indeed benefiting from them.

The initiative in addition plans to release the Custom TPL Engine tool that allows users to create their own Tracking Protection Lists for use in Internet Explorer.

We have developed three different tracking protection lists covering three segments which through comprehensive research, have been highlighted as significant concerns. These include Child Protection, Analytics and general Behavioural Profiling, but our tools also allow you to build a custom list depending on your own requirements. For example, you may be happy to have companies use third party tools (like Google Analytics) to generate data on how their web site is used, but might not want advertising companies to track you across multiple web sites to build a behavioural profile. Similarly, you might be happy to allow companies to track you but might want more protection for your children. Or you may be happy for certain companies that you trust, to track your activities but not companies you have not developed a trust relationship with or companies where you do not receive direct value from such tracking.

Please note that Privacy Online is a project of the London School of Economics that is funded with a research grant from Microsoft.

Other browsers offer automatic updates regularly to keep their user base on the latest version. And while that works well for some (Chrome), others browser developers are also experiencing a divided user base. The reason for not updating is usually different though. Most Firefox users know for instance that a new version is available (as it is displayed to them). They choose to stay with an earlier version of the browser because of design, compatibility or performance reasons.

A new announcement on the Windows Team Blog details that Microsoft is going to change the way the browser is updated from next year on.

Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 users will receive automatic upgrades to update their version of Internet Explorer to the latest one. Depending on the operating system, they are either updated to Internet Explorer 8 (in the case of XP), or Internet Explorer 9 when they are running Vista or 7.

Australian and Brazilian users will receive the first batch of updates in January, followed by users from other countries soon thereafter.

It needs to be noted though that that customers and organizations still have options to avoid the automatic deployment of the new Internet Explorer version on their PC systems. Customers who have previously declined the installation of IE8 or IE9 will not be asked again to install it. Organizations who want to make sure that the browser is not updated automatically can install blocker kits to prevent this from happening.

Available for download and deployment are Blocker Toolkits for Internet Explorer 8 and IE9.

It is likely that the majority of organizations will use the blockers to avoid the automatic installation of a newer version of Internet Explorer on their systems. Most end users on the other hand are likely to accept the browser update, which may improve security on their PC system significantly.

Internet Explorer 9 users click on the Tools icon in the upper right corner of their browser and select Manage Add-ons from the context menu. This opens the add-on manager that displays all toolbars, extensions and search providers installed in the browser. Switch to search providers to see a list of search engines currently available in the browser.

One of the search providers is listed as the default search engine under Status. If you are lucky enough, the new search provider that you want to use is already in the list. If that is the case select the new provider and click on the Set as default button afterwards to switch the default search engine in Internet Explorer.

It is furthermore possible to select a specific search provider manually for a search query that you enter into Internet Explorer’s address bar.

But what can you do if the search provider is not in the list? Easy; You visit the Internet Explorer add-ons gallery and use the available categories, like travel, search or news, or the built-in search to find the provider you are looking for. Please note that everything is mixed up in the beginning. You can use the pulldown menu at the bottom right to filter for search providers so that all other add-on types are not displayed anymore.

You add a new search provider with a click on the add-ons icon on the add-ons website and the selection of Add to Internet Explorer on the next page.

This opens a small confirmation window. You need to click on Add to install the new search provider. Options are available to make that provider the default search provider of the browser.

The new search provider is available right after it has been added to the web browser.

The new version adds support for additional HTML5 technologies including File API improvements, Web Worker Thread Pooling and HTML5 video improvements. Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 offers support for new CSS3 and DOM technologies as well.

Users interested in the browser’s revision history can look at the history page here for a list of all modifications and changes to the web browser.

• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for safe use of XMLHttpRequest across domains.
• File API Writer support for blobBuilder allowing manipulation of large binary objects in script in the browser.
• Support for JavaScript typed arrays for efficient storage and manipulation of typed data.
• CSS user-select property to control how end-users select elements in a Web page or application.
• Support for HTML5 video text captioning, including time-code, placement, and captioning file formats.

Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 scores 299 points and 6 bonus points on the HTML5 Test website.

That’s an increase of 68 points over the second platform preview released earlier this year. In comparison, Firefox 10 Aurora scores 314+9, Google Chrome 17 Dev 344+13 and Opera 11.60 325+9 points. Compare that to Internet Explorer’s 9 score of 141+5 and you will realize that Microsoft made a huge jump in HTML5 compatibility.

Take a look at the following video to see some of the browser’s HTML5 technologies in action.

The Internet Explorer blog post offers additional information for web developers who want to take a closer look at the technologies that are now supported by the browser.

Windows 8 users can download the latest Internet Explorer Preview from the official test drive site.

Expired cookies are not only useless to the site though. Internet users cannot use the cookies as well anymore and they may even leak privacy related information to third parties should they get access to the computer.

It makes therefor sense to delete expired cookies on the computer. And while that is possible in most web browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer does not seem to be doing it.

The free portable software Expired Cookies Cleaner comes to the rescue of Internet Explorer users who want to get rid of out of date cookies on their system. All it takes is to run the application, click the Process button and wait until the application has processed all of the cookies that Internet Explorer has stored on the system.

The program displays all cleaned cookies in a log in the application window. A summary is displayed in the end that lists information about the overall cookie count on the system and the number of expired cookies.

The program deletes expired cookies from the system or individual cookie files if more than one cookie is saved in a file. It happens that only some of the cookies stored in the file are expired while others are still valid. The program removes the expired cookie information from the file and keeps the remaining cookie information on the system.

You can run the software without graphical user interface from the command line. This can be handy if you want to run the program on a regular basis, for instance as part of a batch file.

The command C:\>ExpiredCookiesCleaner.exe a FileName runs the program and saves the output in filename. You can replace the file name parameter with nul if you do not want a log file written.

Expired Cookies Cleaner is compatible with all version of the Microsoft Windows system and all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Interested users can download the tiny portable program from the developer website. (via)

Users who are interested in finding out how spell checking will work in Internet Explorer 10 can head over to the test drive website to find out right now. Microsoft has created a test page where users can test Internet Explorer 10′s spell checking capabilities. The page works only if you run Internet Explorer 10 on the Windows 8 Platform Preview. It won’t work in other web browsers or on other operating systems.

Internet Explorer 10 will not only support spell checking but also auto correction of text which works identical to that of Microsoft’s Office suite.

The test demonstrates the web browsers following capabilities:

Auto-Correction: When you enter a misspelled word in a text area form Internet Explorer 10 may auto-correct the entered word while you may continue to type in the form.

Spellcheck: Words that are not spelled correctly will be underlined in Internet Explorer 10 just like they are in other web browsers that are already supporting spell checking. A right-click on an underlined word displays the suggest correction in the context menu where it can be selected. A right-click on an auto-corrected word brings up the option to force the browser to ignore the word from now on to stop auto-correcting it.

The spelling correction uses Microsoft spellchecking engine and dictionaries. It is important to note that spell checking is by default only enabled for text area HTMl elements and not text boxes. Microsoft notes that web developers can override the defaults.

It is not clear if Internet Explorer 10 users will also be able to change the behavior of the web browser’s spell checking and auto-correction capabilities.

The integration of spell checking and auto-correction in Internet Explorer 10 is a step long overdue, especially when you consider that IE is used by many organizations as the primary browser.

It’s bad news for Microsoft elsewhere as well with Bing only showing up as 4% of the total search engine market, or just under 11% when you also factor in the Bing-powered Yahoo! as well.  Even so those are terrible numbers for a search engine that’s been consistently losing money for the parent company.

Bing do even worse when it comes to mobile search with just 1.1% of the market and Google storming away with over 90% of the market.  This will be because Microsoft has failed to make inroads with its Windows Phone operating system and because both the iPad and Android mobile devices use Google’s search engine by default.

Elsewhere there has been little change.  Windows still has over 90% of the desktop market share with Apple climbing slightly to 6.9% and Linux holding steady at 1.2%.  With tablets the numbers reflect Apple’s huge lead over the competition with 61.6% percent of all tablets an iPad and over 62% of all mobile browsers their Safari (I can only assume there’s some margin for error with the results).

It is intersting in the mobile operating system share figures to see an unexpected Java ME sitting with 12.8% of the market while Nokia’s Symbian OS sits hovering just above oblivion with 3.5%.  Windows Phone doesn’t even make the top four.

The downward progression of IE in market share doesn’t seem to see and end.  Clearly Microsoft have plans to halt this with the new in-built Metro version of the browser in Windows 8, but how successful this strategy will be remains to be seen.

If you have followed Windows 8 news you know that the operating system will ship with two different versions of Internet Explorer. Both use the same core but are different in many regards otherwise. Users can access the standard Internet Explorer 10 browser from the desktop, or the Metro Internet Explorer when they are in the Metro interface of the system. The core difference? Metro Internet Explorer has been optimized for touch based devices like tablets. The browser is started in fullscreen automatically and uses a minimalistic interface with barely any user interface elements.

MetroIE, available in an early beta version, ports that version of Internet Explorer to the Windows 7 operating system. It seems that users need to have the latest version of Internet Explorer 10 which is currently available as a developer preview. IE 10 final will ship with the Windows 8 operating system.

The web browser is only available for Windows 7 and Windows 8, which explains why MetroIE is also only compatible with Windows 7 and not Vista or XP.

MetroIE is a small portable file that Windows 7 users can run to get the metro style Internet Explorer 10 browser on their system. The browser starts in fullscreen and looks in many regards like the original available in Microsoft’s Windows 8 Developer Preview. Here is a fullscreen screenshot of the browser in action.

Users basically have access to the address bar and a few basic browser controls after the browser is started. It does away with the taskbar and other elements of the Windows desktop. Users who want to exit the fullscreen mode need to right-click the address bar and select exit from the context menu. Pressing the Windows button switches to the desktop where everything is available again.

It happened once that the address bar disappeared and that I had to kill the process using the Windows Task Manager. From a user’s perspective, it is safe to say that most Windows 7 users won’t like the slim web browser as it is time consuming to switch back to the standard desktop. It may have its uses on kiosk PCs or public PCs where users need to be limited though.

Windows 7 users can download the latest beta of MetroIE from the developer’s Deviant Art website. The application is part of the developer’s bigger Origami project which tries to port the Windows 8 start screen in metro style to the Windows 7 desktop. (via)

Most Windows users can uninstall the web browser from the operating system’s Control Panel applet. Some users have however reported that the uninstallation does not remove the Internet Explorer version from their computer system.

Finding out if the removal of Internet Explorer was successful is not complicated. You could first try and start the browser and check the reported version under Settings > About Internet Explorer.

If Internet Explorer 9 is listed, or if the browser does not start up at all, it is time for a thorough clean-up to remove the browser from the system.

Microsoft has released a Fix it application to resolve Internet Explorer 9 uninstallation issues. Microsoft Fix Its are lightweight programs that resolve specific issues on a system without user interaction.

All that is usually required to do is to run the Fix It with elevated rights. The program will take care of the rest on its own. The particular Internet Explorer 9 Removal Fix It creates a System Restore point before it starts the removal of the browser.

The Fix It app will remove Internet Explorer 9 automatically and prompt for a reboot once it is done.

Microsoft has furthermore posted a manual fix if IE9 cannot be uninstalled correctly on Windows.

To uninstall Internet Explorer 9, follow these steps:

• Log on to the computer as an administrator.
• Close all Internet Explorer browser windows.
• Start Notepad.
• Copy and paste the following HTML text into Notepad to convert the HTML text into plain text:

  FORFILES /P %WINDIR%\servicing\Packages /M Microsoft-Windows-InternetExplorer-*9.*.mum /c “cmd /c echo Uninstalling package @fname && start /w pkgmgr /up:@fname /norestart”

• Click Start, and then click Run.
• Copy and then paste (or type) the following command in the Open box, and then press Enter: cmd
• Copy the text from Notepad, paste the text into the Command Prompt window at a command prompt, and then press Enter.
• After the command runs, and the Command Prompt window returns, repeat step 7, and then go to step 9.
• Restart the computer to complete uninstallation of Internet Explorer 9. When you do this, the previously installed version of Internet Explorer is installed.

The Fix It hopefully resolves all Internet Explorer 9 removal issues for Windows users. Did you try out Microsoft’s latest web browser? What’s your verdict? (via)

The proof of concept works in Firefox, but the security researchers state that other browsers are also affected by it. They explicitly mention Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and note that the Google Chrome may be vulnerable as well. They do however mention that an attack may not be as easy to implement for that browser due to the fact that Chrome does not “send keydown/keyup events to JS when the autocomplete drop down menu is focused”.

Here is how the issue can be exploited:

It is possible to get key down / up events via JavaScript when a drop down autocomplete menu is shown. This means that it is possible to lure a user to play a game and steal arbitrary values from browsers autocomplete feature.

The proof of concept page demonstrates how third party websites can steal autocomplete information from Firefox. The page can check if autocomplete information are available for sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Microsoft or Yahoo logins as well as three different types of inputs.

According to the security researcher, browser vendors should implement a feature into their browsers that ties the autocomplete input to a particular website. The only way to protect the data from being stolen is to disable the browser’s autocomplete feature for forms and searches.

Firefox users can do that in the preferences under the Privacy tab.

Internet Explorer users can disable autocomplete under Internet Options > Content > AutoComplete > Settings.

Are you using your browser’s autocomplete feature for forms? Let me know what you think of the vulnerability in the comments. (Thanks Venkat)

More often than not, these update issues are due to ActiveX traffic coming through your router. Indeed, it is that simple. There is an easy way to fix this so that you will not have to deal with the various error messages anymore and your computer will get the necessary (and important) updates that it needs. Windows Update is no joke. This has to happen. These updates are important for security and functionality. This tutorial will guide you through a quick method to allow ActiveX traffic. Please note that the admin interface of your router may or may not offer this option. It can also be that the feature is listed under a different name.

Internet Explorer 8 in particular requires ActiveX components to function properly. Disabling IE8 will not solve the problem nor will updating to IE9. You can specify firewall settings for software and hardware to allow appropriate ActiveX filtering, but this is more advanced. Here, we will be using the open source router firmware DD-WRT. This is a user-friendly firewall solution that takes the technical aspects out of more mundane functions.

Navigate to your router’s IP address in any web browser. You may not know your router IP address and you can open a command prompt to find it. Press Win+R and type “cmd” or open command prompt from the Start Menu.

In the command prompt window, type “ipconfig” and press enter. The IP address will be listed under “Default Gateway”. This should be your router’s IP address. Now just enter this IP address (yours, not the one above) in the URL bar of the chosen web browser.

Click the Security tab and find the checkbox labeled “Filter ActiveX”. Uncheck the box and this will clear the filtering and allow ActiveX traffic through.

After doing this, a new window will present. In this window, click the button labeled “Apply Settings”. This should do the trick. Close your web browser and attempt Windows Update again.

If you see an image like the screenshot above, then you have succeeded in clearing the impediment to Windows Update. Every router is different and will handle this change in a different manner. This is by no means a blanket solution, but it is one that works in most cases.

Another simple fix for Windows Update errors is to disable automatic updates and update the recommended updates manually. If they all update successfully, you can turn on automatic updates again and it should continue to work. If, on the other hand, this does not work, identify the update(s) that did not install and contact Microsoft Help regarding the issue. Generally they will help you fix it for free and Windows Update will work normally once again.

While most users would probably be able to name the top sites that they’d consider most productive and time wasting, only a handful would surely be able to come up with exact figures for the last 30 days.

That’s where the Firefox add-on Surf Control steps in. The add-on tracks web usage over time and displays information about a user’s Internet usage in a dashboard in the browser. To add to that, it also allows the user to define sites as productive or time wasting, and to block sites completely or after a certain allowed usage period.

The tracking happens automatically. When you open the dashboard of the application, you will see the top productive and time wasting site, the productivity over time, browsing habits of current week and the top sites of the week.

Productive sites are marked in blue, unproductive sites in read and sites that have not been marked by the user as productive or unproductive.

A click on Details lists the top productive and time wasting sites of the week, and how time has been wasted in the last 30 days of Internet surfing (provided that the add-on had been installed for that time).

But the add-on is not only about tracking a user’s web usage over time. It can furthermore be used to limit or entirely block access to selected web sites or services.

Blocking a site outright blocks site access whenever the site is opened in the web browser. You can alternatively limit site usage per day to a specific amount of minutes per day. The very same blocked page message appears when you try to open the web page after the time runs out for the day.

This is obviously not a protection but more of a self-control feature. You can easily adjust the time or unblock sites any time in the dashboard.

When you first install SurfControl you need to add the add-on’s buttons to one of Firefox’s toolbars. This is done by selecting Firefox > Options > Toolbar Layout and by dragging and dropping the extension’s icons to the desired location.

Firefox users can download and install SurfControl from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

That’s usually the end of the story. Once you switch the default browser you are all set up to work with that Internet browser on the system. There may be situations on the other hand where you need to switch the default browser multiple times.

This can be in a development environment where you have installed multiple browsers. To make the testing easier, you switch default browsers. But it can also have technical reasons. Say you do not get the prompt to make your favorite browser the default browser on the system. While you could edit the Windows Registry manually for this or try to uninstall and re-install your favorite browser, you might also use a program like Change Default Browser for the job.

The program supports the four web browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. It detects the installed browsers automatically and displays them in the interface. You can use the browse button to select a different browser, for instance if you have multiple versions of a browser installed on the system. You can even select other programs or executable in case you want to make a different browse the default on the system.

To make a browser the default, simply select it in the program interface and click on the Set Default Browser to make it the default system browser.

If there is something to complain about it is the need to install the application before you can change the default browser on the system. Other than that it is a solid program with no downsides.

You can download the program that is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows from the official program homepage. Please note that you need to run the program with elevated rights as it needs to make modifications to the Windows system registry.

This is the menu for Internet Explorer that allows for viewing of the source code. “Notepad” is they typical default source code viewer.

Select Source and the source code will open in the default text editor. In this case, EditPad Lite is the text editor. It is an excellent text editor and it is available free from the link above.

How to Choose Your Favorite Text Editor

You probably have a personal favorite as far as text editors are concerned. If not, try EditPad Lite. It is a versatile text editor that supports Unicode, all Windows and all ISO-8859 text file encodings. Additionally, EditPad supports DOS, Mac, EUC, EBCDIC, as well as other legacy encodings. Notepad may be your favorite, though it is limited, and generally you don’t have to set that because it is the usual default text editor.

To begin choosing your favorite text editor, go to the “Tools Menu” and then select “Developer Tools” or you can press “F12” and access the Developer Tools Window. For this demonstration, we switched to TextPad as a default text editor and we are going to change it to EditPad Lite. In the Developer Tools Window, select “File Menu”, then “Customize Internet Explorer View Source” and then click on “Other”.

This will present the “Program Directory” for the default text editor. This is the “Program Files Folder” for EditPad Lite. All you have to do to change the default application is browse for the program folder that you would like to use as a text editor. In this case, EditPad Lite 7 will be selected. You may download many different free text editors with a simple search and these will show up on the list as options for default. You can perform this operation at any time and customize your text editor for any given purpose.

When you have identified the program that you choose as a text editor, click on the .exe file for that particular application and then click “Open”. Now all you have to do is close the “Developer Tools Window” and the process is complete. Your default text editor is set and this is what Internet Explorer will use as a default for viewing source code. Switching from TextPad to EditPad Lite or any other text editor is easy. Now, going to the View menu, select source and you will see something like this:

Select yes to make the selected text editor the default. Now this PC is set for EditPad Lite as the text editor for Internet Explorer 8.

You can view source code with any text editor you see fit for your purposes. EditPad is a practical choice, but you can build a list of various text editors to fit different circumstances.

There are fundamental differences though. The Metro UI version of Internet Explorer is plugin free, which means that you won’t be able to access Flash, Silverlight or Java contents using that browser. Microsoft concentrates fully on HTML5, which is a bold move.

The desktop Internet Explorer 10 on the other hand will continue to support browser plugins and other standards and other browser extensions.

Our approach in Windows 8 starts with one great HTML5 browsing engine that powers two different experiences. The single engine provides strong support for web standards, hardware-accelerated performance, security, privacy, and more. Then, we built two experiences on top of that engine: a new Metro style experience as well as a more traditional, current-generation desktop browser with tabs and relatively minimal “chrome.”

Microsoft notes that “the Metro style browser in the current Windows Developer Preview is for developers, not consumers” which means that it is likely that it will get optimized and fine tuned before the RTM version of the operating system is released.

The two “experiences” share data between each other. This includes the browsing history, typed addresses, favorites and settings among other things.

Here is how Internet Explorer 10 looks under the Metro UI.

The user interface has been reduced to a bare minimum. All you see is a bar at the bottom to enter a web address and perform other actions like reloading the page or opening a previously visited website. The remaining user interface elements auto hide once the user begins interacting with the website. The controls include an option to view the current page in the desktop browser, which can be handy to access websites that rely on plugins.

Microsoft has created a short demonstration video which you can see below.

Offering two versions of Internet Explorer on the same operating system feels redundant on first glance. I can see tablet users working with the Metro UI version of IE10 as it seems easy to use and work with, but even they will run into many websites that do not work properly because of missing plugin support. Think of all the Flash gaming sites for instance, they won’t go away in the next year or so.

And what about Windows users who would like to use the full version of Internet Explorer in the Metro UI? Is there a way to do that?

It is impossible to answer all questions that we have at this point in time. Windows 8 is a work in progress. I do hope that Microsoft will offer ways to customize the operating system to please all users.

You can read more about Internet Explorer 10 in its current form on the Building Windows 8 blog.

Users who want a little bit of comfort can install one of the available browser extensions instead to submit sites and files directly from an Internet browser to Virus Total. We already reviewed the Virus Total Firefox and Virus Total Chrome extensions previously. This time, we take a look at the Internet Explorer version of Virus Total.

The Internet Explorer version of Virus Total is limited in comparison to the Chrome or Firefox version. Unlike those versions that integrate not only into the browser’s right-click context menu but also into the file download dialog, the Internet Explorer version only integrates into the context menu.

When you install the Internet Explorer add-on, you will notice afterwards that a Send URL to VirusTotal entry has been added to the context menu of Internet Explorer. This option is only displayed on right-clicks on links, and not if the user right-clicks on other page elements. This basically means that you cannot really check the site you are on currently, unless it links to itself somewhere on the page.

Another issue that users may come across is that the context menu entry will always submit the url to the Virus Total url analyzer, even if a file is the link target. It is possible to switch to the antivirus report in that report, but it takes another click to load it.

The add-on definitely has its flaws, from the context menu limitations to the fact that it is always the page that gets scanned even if the link is pointing directly to a file. The Explorer add-on is however still handy and faster than having to submit file links or urls directly on the Virus Total website.

Virus Total Explorer is compatible with all recent versions of Microsoft’s Internet browser. downloads are provided at the Virus Total website. There is unfortunately no option to directly link to the page where the download is offered. Open the Browser Addons page and switch to Internet Explorer in the menu below to find information and downloads. (via)

Classic Shell is a free software for Windows that brings back several of the features that were modified or dropped in newer versions of the Windows operating system. The full list of features includes:

• The classic Windows start menu with eight available skins
• Classic Windows Explorer
• Classic Internet Explorer 9

Windows users can select which features they want installed on their system during installation. It is possible to only install the classic start menu for instance, or only classic Windows Explorer. Installation requires elevated privileges and changes are immediately available and visible without a system restart.

The classic Windows start menu for instance is available right after the installation finishes. The classic Windows Explorer menu on the other hand is only partially available.

A right-click on the toolbar and the selection of Classic Explorer Bar enables the toolbar in Windows Explorer. A click on the options button opens a configuration menu with interesting settings. Here it is possible to add or remove toolbar buttons from the Explorer toolbar and configure other features of Windows Explorer.

Some of the things that you can configure here is a different location bar layout (disable breadcrumbs), change the navigation pane style to XP classic or simple, enable sort headers in all view modes or to replace the file and folder conflict dialogs (file exists for instance when copying).

Classic Shell adds three configuration options to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 web browser. It adds a caption to the title bar to display the page title there and shows the security zone and loading progress in the browser’s status bar.

Windows Vista or Windows 7 users who miss some of the features that they used to work with under Windows XP, should take Classic Shell for a test ride to see if it resolves some of the issues that they have.

The Open Source software is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. Downloads are offered at the program homepage over at Sourceforge.

On news sites for instance, links to additional sites with news, videos and images are displayed if available. On shopping sites, you might get price comparison information and links to accessories.

The toolbar displays information on mouse over. One interesting feature is that some of the information can be displayed directly in that overlay window. This is the case for videos and images that the extension suggested as related to the current page.

Some information on the other hand, like web links, open in a new browser tab.

Google explains the concept in detail on their support website:

Whenever you’re navigating to a new page, Google Related will look for interesting related content and, if available, display it in a bar at the bottom of your page. Google Related can display categories such as videos, news articles, maps, reviews, images, web sites and more. To preview a listed item or see additional items, just use your mouse to hover over different categories in the bar. For example, when you hover over a video link, the video pops up in a preview box and you can play the video directly on the page.

A video has been published as well.

Interestingly enough, the video mentions that Google Related is available for both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. The web page on the other hand states that Google Related requires Google Chrome 11 or higher.

Google Related os also be part of the Google Toolbar which would explain this discrepancy.

Google Related works mostly on English Internet pages currently. Toolbar users furthermore need to have google.com configured as their Toolbar’s search engine.

Tracking cookies that record private information are the ones that most people tend to want to block. Choose and customize browsers to block the risky cookies and allow the ones that make browser use more efficient. White lists can be used to specify sites to accept desired cookies for IE versions and Firefox.

This is a different approach to cookie control and is not for the inexperienced user. For those willing to go through the process, this is a good method to gain control over cookies.
The start of this process is to whitelist sites. Starting with Internet Explorer, click Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Sites. You then get the Per Site Privacy Actions menu:

Here begins manual entry of each site that you want to whitelist . You can toggle the settings for first and third-party cookies to make this easier, but you will lose customized specifications. To toggle the cookie settings, click Tools > Internet Options > Privacy. Select Settings and click OK.

IE doesn’t offer many options. Consider taking the time to manually whitelist and save some future troubles.
By specifying the sites to allow on the whitelist, you bypass the pre-set options that will certainly allow cookies that are undesired. Advanced Privacy Settings for IE8 and IE9 are limited and you lose accurate control by taking a shortcut.

Firefox offers better options. For those who do not wish to use Firefox, just stick to manual whitelisting with Internet Explorer. The overrides are limited at best. Give Firefox a shot and see what you can do. If it is not what you want, uninstall and leave it alone. Many people find IE a great browser, but some users might find Firefox more adaptable, faster and more user friendly.

Moving on to Firefox, you can find broad user options that allow for a clean customization.

Open Firefox and click on Tools > Options > Privacy. In the Privacy menu, find the “Firefox will…” option:

As seen here, uncheck “Accept third-party cookies and toggle the “Keep until” option to “ask me every time.” This option is beautifully streamlined compared to Internet Explorer. All you need to do from this time forward is work with the prompts when first-party cookies are attempted. Normally, these would be automatically set in the browser cache. With the above settings, you are prompted to allow or block the cookies. It might take a few days to customize or allow and block settings for given cookies, but Firefox remembers and continues to offer prompts when new first-party cookie attempt to present themselves. Visit the sites used most often and weed through the cookies. Thereafter, you are in complete control.

Whether using Internet Explorer or Firefox, cookie customization is a useful tool. In the end, it spares hassles and gives customized browsing without the annoyance of tracking cookies that can steal private data. Or you could manually clear your cookies each day, but that still allows time for sensitive data to be extrapolated. And besides, who remembers to do that on a daily basis.

Firefox users who do not want to work with prompts can check out the guide Configure Firefox To Delete All Cookies On Exit But Select Ones to work around that by deleting all but selected cookies on browser exit automatically.

They praise Internet Explorer’s SmartScreen filter for protecting users against significantly more social malware than any other current browser, and by the looks of the chart below this is by some significant margin.

In their report the firm describe socially-engineered malware as…

Socially-engineered malware attacks pose a significant risk to individuals and organizations by threatening to compromise, damage, or acquire sensitive personal and corporate information; statistics from 2008 – 2010 show that this trend is increasing at a rapid rate. According to a recent study by AVG, users are four times more likely to be tricked into downloading malware than be compromised by an exploit; criminals continue to increase their use of malware as a cybercrime attack vector. Anti-virus researchers report detecting between 15,000 and 50,000 new malicious programs per day, Kaspersky Lab has even reported detecting up to “millions per month.”

They go on to describe IE’s SmartScreen filter as…

The SmartScreen Filter protection offered by Windows Internet Explorer 9 has two components: URL Reputation, which is included in IE8 and Application Reputation, which is new to IE9. IE9 caught an exceptional 92% of the live threats with SmartScreen URL reputation, and an additional 8% with Application Reputation. IE9 with SmartScreen offers the best protection of any browser against socially engineered malware. Protection against malware targeting European users matched our broader findings from the Q3 2010 global test.

The results are quite something, and other browser makers, Apple, Mozilla and Google will no doubt fight back rigorously with strong statements that their browsers are every bit as safe and secure as Internet Explorer, if not more so.

In the tests though, Internet Explorer 8, the previous generation of Microsoft’s browser, caught 90% of all live threats with IE9 catching 92% and reaching 100% of all threats when the known reputation of applications was factored in.

This is compared to the other browsers.  Apple’s Safari caught just 13% of live threats, Mozilla FIrefox 4 also caught 13% which had dropped from the 19% the browser caught in the same tests last year.  Opera 11 caught only 5% of all threats and Google’s Chrome browser caught, again, just 13% of all live threats.

StartScreen is not a widely talked about feature of Microsoft’s browser.  The company describes it as…

a feature in Internet Explorer that helps detect phishing websites. SmartScreen Filter can also help protect you from downloading or installing malware (malicious software).

They say that is “analyses web pages” as you visit them to “determine iof they have any characteristics that might be suspicious”, “checks the sites you visit against a dynamic list of reported phishing sites and malicious software sites” and “checks files you download from the web against a list of reported malicious software sites and programs known to be unsafe.”

This feature though is only as good as the people who keep the information up to date, which means that a 92% success rate today might not mean you’ll get that tomorrow.

Every week, new social malware is being discovered that is trying to trick users into installing it and surrendering personal information such as their credit card details with ever increasing believability.  The recent attacks on Apple Mac users by Mac Defender is an example of just how convincing this software can be.

The weak link with malware and viruses will always be the user, as it will always be this person who has to click or select something in order for malware to infect their PC.  It’s commonly said that the only safe PC is one that’s still in the box and has never been switched on.